🎨🤝💻 Design Meets Dev Jam
Join the creative studio where designers and developers co-create project masterpieces! Let’s remix our collaboration, highlight smooth moves, and tune up any discord, ensuring we always jam in harmony.
Template Columns
🎬 Kickoff Beats (Start)
Suggest new collaborative riffs or rhythms to jumpstart our teamwork groove.
Base column: Start🚫 Broken Strings (Stop)
Identify practices or habits causing off-key moments that we should retire from our band.
Base column: Stop🎵 Harmonious Hooks (Continue)
Spotlight the grooves in our process worth replaying to keep our collaboration on beat.
Base column: ContinueAbout this template
Design Meets Dev Jam is a collaborative retrospective inviting designers and developers to remix the way they work together, celebrate what’s working, and address cross-discipline friction for a harmonious project workflow.
When to use this template
Use this template when you want to strengthen collaboration and empathy between design and development teams, especially after projects with lots of cross-functional interaction or handoffs.
How to facilitate
Welcome everyone to the session and explain the theme: blending design and development for better teamwork and results.
Briefly introduce each column, clarifying what types of ideas belong in Kickoff Beats, Broken Strings, and Harmonious Hooks.
Ask team members to quietly add their thoughts to each column, focusing on their experience working together and providing specific examples.
Invite participants to review all contributions, then group similar themes or issues for clarity and prioritization.
Facilitate a discussion around each column, beginning with new ideas, then pain points, and finally strong practices, encouraging open dialogue and mutual understanding.
Lead the team in identifying 2-3 concrete actions or experiments to address major pain points or double-down on strong collaborations.
Wrap up by celebrating a few team highlights and confirming accountability for agreed actions.
Pro Tips
Kick off with a quick story or playful metaphor to get everyone in the creative mindset.
Encourage each role to add items about the other side—designers reflecting on dev and vice versa—to build empathy.
If tensions are high, set explicit ground rules for respectful, constructive feedback before idea sharing.
Include visuals or references from recent shared projects to prompt detailed, actionable feedback.
FAQ
What if designers and developers are reluctant to share honest feedback?
Start with positive experiences and remind the team of the goal: better collaboration, not blame. Encourage sharing specific situations rather than generalizations.
How do we avoid this turning into a complaint session?
Balance each critique (Broken Strings) by encouraging celebration (Harmonious Hooks) and ideation (Kickoff Beats). The facilitator should actively steer the tone and pace.
Is this template suitable for teams that already work closely together?
Yes! Even seasoned teams benefit from tuning up their collaboration and surfacing new ideas for cross-functional growth.
At a glance
- Duration
45–60 min
- Team Size
4-12 people
- Columns
3 columns
- Base Format
Start, Stop, Continue
Tags
Ready to get started?
Use this template to run your next retrospective