The five columns
Keep doing: what works as it is?
Practices worth protecting exactly as they are.
Prompts: What would we miss if it stopped? What should nobody change?
More of: what should we do more?
Good practices that would help even more if the team did them more often.
Prompts: What helped, but not enough? What did only some of us do that all of us should?
Less of: what should we do less?
Things with some value that take more time than they're worth.
Prompts: What could be shorter, rarer or lighter?
Start doing: what's new to try?
Practices the team doesn't do yet.
Prompts: What would you like to try next sprint?
Stop doing: what should we drop?
Things with no value left.
Prompts: What would nobody miss?
Retrocycle's template adds an Action items column at the end, so the conversation ends with actions that have an owner.
When to use it
- Mature teams whose process mostly works.
- When Start, Stop, Continue feels too blunt.
- After a process change, to tune it rather than undo it.
When something else may work better: with a new team or a short slot, five columns can be too many. Start, Stop, Continue or KALM are lighter.
A 50-minute agenda
- 1
Set the scene (5 min). Explain the difference between More of / Less of (adjust) and Start / Stop (add or remove).
- 2
Write cards silently (10 min). Five columns need a little more time.
- 3
Reveal and group (8 min). Move cards that landed in the wrong column: it often sparks useful discussion.
- 4
Vote (3 min). Vote on the changes the team most wants.
- 5
Discuss (18 min). Start with the most-voted More of and Less of cards: small adjustments are the easiest wins.
- 6
Agree on action items (6 min). Two or three actions with owners.
Example cards
From a fictional platform team:
| Keep doing | More of | Less of | Start doing | Stop doing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly architecture review | Pairing on on-call handovers | Status meetings with stakeholders | Writing short decision records | Copying release notes by hand |
| Demo at the end of each sprint | Small pull requests | Slack threads for decisions | Rotating the on-call lead |
And the actions that came out of it:
- Replace the weekly status meeting with a written update every Friday for a month (owner: engineering manager).
- Generate release notes from merged pull requests (owner: one engineer).
Tips for a better Starfish
- More of and Less of are the heart of Starfish. Spend most of the discussion there.
- If a card could go in two columns, ask the author which change they mean.
- Merge columns if the team finds five too many: Start and More of often overlap.
- Try a change for two sprints, then review it in the next Starfish.
Run it in Retrocycle
Pick the Starfish template, share the link, and your team joins as guests with just a name: no accounts needed. Turn on blur so cards stay hidden while people write, let people post anonymously if they want, vote, and close the retro with action items that carry over to the next one. How action items work
FAQ
Starfish or Start, Stop, Continue?
Start, Stop, Continue is quicker and decisive. Starfish is better when the right answer is 'a bit more' or 'a bit less' rather than yes or no.
Isn't five columns too many?
For some teams, yes. KALM is a four-column version that drops Stop doing.
How long does it take?
About 50 minutes for a team of five to eight.
Can I remove a column?
Yes. In Retrocycle you can change the columns of any template before you start the retro.