🍽️ Fine Dining Experience
Welcome to the Agile Bistro! Savor the flavors of our recent sprint—let’s discover new recipes for success, discard what left a bad taste, and keep serving our signature dishes. Bon appétit to improvement!
Template Columns
🥂 New Ingredients to Try
Share fresh ideas or practices we should start adding to our menu for better results.
Base column: Start🍋 Dishes to Take Off the Menu
Identify practices or habits that didn’t impress and should be removed from our service.
Base column: Stop🍰 Signature Dishes to Keep Serving
Celebrate what has consistently delighted our team and customers—let’s keep perfecting these!
Base column: ContinueAbout this template
The Fine Dining Experience retrospective uses a restaurant theme to help teams reflect on new practices to try, ineffective habits to stop, and successful approaches to continue. It encourages creative discussion to spice up team processes and celebrate proven successes.
When to use this template
Use this template when you want a fresh, engaging way to evaluate recent team performance and foster creative thinking about process improvement. It's particularly effective after intense sprints, project milestones, or when the team needs to renew motivation.
How to facilitate
Introduce the Fine Dining Experience theme, explaining the column meanings and setting a collaborative, playful tone.
Invite everyone to spend a few minutes individually brainstorming and adding their thoughts to each column.
Once ideas are posted, review each column as a group, encouraging team members to elaborate on their choices and identify patterns.
Facilitate a group discussion to prioritize the most important new 'ingredients' to try and 'dishes' to discard, as well as to celebrate the team's 'signature dishes.'
Co-create concrete action items based on the prioritized feedback, ensuring each item has an owner and a timeline.
End with a quick appreciation round, letting each team member toast a colleague or celebrate a team achievement.
Summarize action points and schedule a follow-up to check on progress.
Pro Tips
Encourage food-themed language and visuals to make the session engaging and memorable for everyone.
For each 'new ingredient,' discuss potential small experiments rather than immediate large process changes.
Set a timer for brainstorming to keep energy high and participation balanced.
Have the team vote on the top ideas to focus discussion and action planning.
FAQ
What if team members struggle to come up with 'new ingredients?'
Prompt with examples or discuss common challenges to spark ideas. Remind the team to focus on small, testable changes.
How do we ensure action items actually happen?
Assign clear owners and due dates during the session, and schedule a follow-up to revisit progress.
Is this format suitable for serious issues?
Yes, but acknowledge sensitive topics and encourage constructive language, keeping the session safe and respectful.
How do we keep the theme from feeling forced?
Lean into the playful elements but let the team steer the tone; adapt as needed for your team's culture.
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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