A reliable structure has five phases. Set the stage, Gather data, Generate insight, Decide what to do, and Close. You can read more in our guide on how to run a retrospective meeting.

Five formats cover most teams. These include Start-Stop-Continue, Mad-Sad-Glad, The Sailboat, 4Ls and 5 Whys. Each format maps into Menti's Open Ended slides, so you can switch formats between retros depending on the team in question.

Need help setting up a team retro? Menti's Start Stop Continue template is built and ready to go. Sign up for free to get started.

Good retrospective questions should be cover a set period of work, and should be answerable in a sentence. For example:

• What went better than you expected?

• What frustrated you most?

• What would you change if we started again tomorrow?

• What did we learn that we should not forget?

• Where did we lose the most time?

• What did someone else do that helped you?

• On a scale of one to five, how sustainable was the pace?

• What is the one thing we should commit to changing?

Sign up to Menti for free to access our retrospective templates.

A sprint retrospective is the last event of a scrum sprint and is normally time-boxed. Keep it tighter than a project retrospective; stick to one format, collect one round of data gathering, and set a hard limit of two/ three actions to carry to the next sprint. It’s better to leave with two that happen, than eight that do not!

They solve different shapes of the same problem. EasyRetro, Parabol, TeamRetro and Miro give you a retro board with columns, cards, grouping and voting.

Mentimeter is presenter-led, running retrospectives as interactive slides inside a live meeting. Built for fast and easy joining with anonymous responses as standard, Mentimeter is a great choice for large groups, mixed seniority rooms, and one-off projects.

Yes, responses in Mentimeter are anonymous by default, with no configuration needed.