🏃♂️🌆 City Marathon
Lace up for our City Marathon Retrospective! Just like navigating bustling city streets, let's reflect on our project pace, hurdles, and the routes that lead to victory. Together, we’ll pave smoother paths, dodge obstacles, and sprint towards our next milestones!
Template Columns
🚦 Hit the Green Lights
Suggest new actions or ideas that will help us pick up the pace in our project run.
Base column: Start🛑 Avoid Traffic Jams
Identify blockers, detours, or habits that slow down our sprint and should be stopped.
Base column: Stop🏁 Maintain the Rhythm
Highlight practices and teamwork strategies that keep us moving steadily through the city streets.
Base column: ContinueAbout this template
The City Marathon retrospective helps teams reflect on project pace, overcome obstacles, and reinforce winning strategies by using a city race metaphor to inspire action and collaboration.
When to use this template
This format is ideal after a project phase or sprint that felt intense, fast-paced, or filled with unexpected challenges. Use it when the team needs to review how to sustain momentum and avoid pitfalls as they reach for key milestones.
How to facilitate
Set the stage by introducing the marathon theme and encourage everyone to think in terms of pace, obstacles, and progress toward project goals.
Briefly review the purpose of each column: actions for acceleration, blockers to stop, and steady practices to maintain.
Ask team members to add points to each column in silence: propose ideas for Green Lights, highlight Traffic Jams, and acknowledge practices to Maintain the Rhythm.
Review each column together, starting with blockers (Traffic Jams). Discuss how specific obstacles impacted the team and brainstorm practical ways to remove them.
Move to the Green Lights, inviting discussion on bold ideas or process improvements that could speed up progress. Prioritize which actions to trial in the next phase.
Highlight and celebrate the successful strategies in Maintain the Rhythm, and agree on how to ensure these steady practices continue.
Conclude by summarizing key actions and assigning clear owners for follow-up. Gather quick feedback from the team on the session format and outcomes.
Pro Tips
Use the city marathon metaphor actively—ask about each person's 'race experience,' not just their tasks.
Encourage honest discussion of blockers by framing them as normal roadblocks every team encounters in a growing city.
Balance energy by moving between practical improvements and moments of celebration, so the focus isn’t just on problems.
Timebox each section to ensure space for group discussion of all columns, especially solutions.
Remind the team that maintaining the right pace often means reducing, not just adding, work.
FAQ
How do I help my team open up about issues slowing us down?
Use the marathon analogy to normalize obstacles—every runner faces setbacks. Let team members share anonymously at first, then discuss openly.
What if the same blockers show up repeatedly?
Address persistent obstacles by developing concrete plans and assigning clear responsibility for action, then track progress in future retros.
How do I keep the conversation constructive when discussing stops or blockers?
Focus discussions on process and habits, not individuals. Prompt the team to suggest practical solutions as they surface blockers.
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At a glance
- Duration
40–55 min
- Team Size
4-10 people
- Columns
3 columns
- Base Format
Start, Stop, Continue
Tags
Ready to get started?
Use this template to run your next retrospective