Purpose

The Starfish Retrospective expands the classic Start/Stop/Continue model into five categories — Keep Doing, Less Of, More Of, Stop Doing, and Start Doing — giving teams a more nuanced view of their practices. It helps prioritize behavioural changes by distinguishing between things to amplify and things to reduce.

At a glance

• Group size: 3–10 people
• Duration: 25 minutes
• Difficulty: Beginner
• Facilitation style: Structured
• Setting: Both / Remote-friendly

How to run

1. Draw a five-pointed star on a board; label each arm: Keep Doing, Less Of, More Of, Stop Doing, Start Doing.
2. Silent brainstorming: participants write sticky notes for each arm (5 minutes).
3. Each person places notes on the relevant arm and gives a one-sentence explanation (8 minutes).
4. Cluster duplicates and discuss top themes (7 minutes).
5. Dot-vote on actionable items and assign owners (5 minutes).

Materials needed

• Whiteboard or digital canvas
• Sticky notes in five colours (one per arm)
• Markers and dot stickers
• Timer

Pitfalls & common mistakes

• Confusing Less Of with Stop Doing — clarify that Less Of means reduce frequency, not eliminate.
• Overloading every arm equally; it is fine if some arms are sparse.
• Failing to convert votes into a concrete improvement backlog.

Inclusion & accessibility

• Label arms with text and icons, not just colour, for colour-blind participants.
• Invite written-first input so introverts contribute before discussion begins.
• Offer asynchronous pre-work for distributed teams in different time zones.

Variations

• Traffic-Light Starfish: add red/amber/green urgency to each note.
• Quantified Starfish: participants rate each arm 1–5 before discussing.
• Team Starfish vs. Individual Starfish: run one per person, then merge.

When NOT to use this

• When the team is brand new and has no shared history to reflect on.
• When the goal is root-cause analysis of a specific incident — use a Fishbone or Five Whys.

Source & further reading

• Patrick Kua, The Retrospective Starfish (thekua.com).
• Retromat (retromat.org).