🌸💰 Garden of Prosperity

Step into our flourishing garden of wealth, where we nurture successes, sow new investments, prune excess, and harvest greater value together.
45–60 min
5-12 people
Based on: Keep, Add, Less, More
🌸💰 Garden of Prosperity

Template Columns

🌿💰 Preserve the Blooming Budgets

Highlight the financial practices that helped our garden flourish.

Base column: Keep
🌱💸 Plant New Investments

Suggest fresh funding ideas to grow our project garden.

Base column: Add
🍂💳 Trim Excess Spending

Identify wasteful costs to prune for healthier growth.

Base column: Less
🌷💎 Cultivate More Value

Find ways to increase value and richness in our deliverables.

Base column: More

About this template

A finance‑focused retrospective that celebrates successful budgeting, explores new investment ideas, cuts wasteful spend, and uncovers ways to deliver higher value.

When to use this template

Use when the team wants to review financial health, prioritize funding opportunities, and align on value‑driving actions.

How to facilitate

1

Set the stage by reminding the group of the sprint’s financial goals and the purpose of the Garden of Prosperity exercise.

2

In the Preserve the Blooming Budgets column, ask participants to write short notes on practices, decisions, or tools that positively impacted the budget, then share and cluster similar items.

3

Move to Plant New Investments, have everyone propose fresh funding ideas or resource allocations that could accelerate growth, encouraging brief justification for each suggestion.

4

For Trim Excess Spending, collect observations of waste, unnecessary costs, or bottlenecks, then vote on the top three items to address in the next iteration.

5

In Cultivate More Value, brainstorm concrete actions that increase the richness of deliverables, then prioritize the most impactful items and assign owners.

Pro Tips

Use colored sticky notes that match each column’s hue to keep visual cues consistent and reinforce the garden metaphor.

Limit each contribution to one sentence to keep the board concise and ensure every voice is heard.

After voting, turn the top items into SMART action items before the meeting ends to guarantee follow‑through.

FAQ

What if the team doesn’t have a clear budget to discuss?

Focus on internal cost drivers such as time spent, tool licenses, or effort estimates; treat those as proxy budget items to still identify savings and investment opportunities.

How do we prevent the session from turning into a blame game when discussing waste?

Frame each comment as an observation about the process, not a person, and use the Trim Excess Spending column to capture systemic issues rather than individual faults.

What if we generate more ideas than we can act on?

Prioritize using a simple dot‑vote or impact‑effort matrix, then commit only to the top two or three actions and schedule a follow‑up to revisit the remaining ideas.

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At a glance

  • Duration

    45–60 min

  • Team Size

    5-12 people

  • Columns

    4 columns

  • Base Format

    Keep, Add, Less, More

Tags

financial health
value creation
budget review
investment planning
process improvement

Ready to get started?

Use this template to run your next retrospective