Appreciative Inquiry Retrospective

• After a tough period, to rebuild energy.
• High-performing teams looking for their next step.
• When problem-focused retros have started to feel negative.

Purpose: Identify the conditions that help a team perform at its best and deliberately reproduce them.

• 🔦 Discover

  When did we perform exceptionally well?

• 🌈 Dream

  What if this happened consistently?

• 📐 Design

  What practices and conditions would support this?

• 🎁 Deliver

  What will we try next?

1. 1

   Share successful experiences · 8 min

   Ask for specific moments when the team was at its best. Stories beat generalities.

2. 2

   Identify common strengths · 5 min

   What do these stories have in common? Name the strengths in comments and group similar cards.

3. 3

   Imagine the desired future · 5 min

   Invite bold pictures: what would it look like if this were normal?

4. 4

   Design practical changes · 10 min

   Turn dreams into practices, conditions and agreements the team controls.

5. 5

   Select an experiment · 4 min

   Pick one experiment that builds on a strength. Keep it small enough to start this week.

6. 6

   Commit & plan the review · 3 min

   Give the experiment an owner and a date to evaluate it.

Notes a software team might write:

Expected outcome: A concrete experiment that builds on existing team strengths.

• Stay positive in Discover — problems can wait for another retro.
• Ask 'what made that possible?' to dig into strengths.

Each prompt is a column on a shared board. Everyone writes silently, then the team groups notes, votes with hidden totals, discusses the top cards and turns them into actions with owners.

Each stage comes with instructions for the facilitator and the participants and a suggested timer you can adjust. Teammates join with a link and their name; no account needed.