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Facilitates a sprint retrospective with structured reflection, data review, and action item ownership.
npx claudepluginhub jeffreytse/grimoire --plugin grimoireHow this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/grimoire:plan-retrospectiveThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
Facilitate a focused sprint retrospective that produces specific, owned improvement actions — not just feelings.
Guides structured team retrospectives for Sprint and Release cycles with facilitation techniques like Start-Stop-Continue, Starfish, 4Ls, and Sailboat. Tracks action items and reviews previous actions.
Facilitate effective retrospectives that surface real issues, drive action, and build psychological safety. Use at sprint end or after major initiatives.
Facilitates structured sprint retrospectives with Start/Stop/Continue, 4Ls, or Sailboat formats. Analyzes team feedback and performance to generate prioritized action items with owners and deadlines.
Share bugs, ideas, or general feedback.
Facilitate a focused sprint retrospective that produces specific, owned improvement actions — not just feelings.
Adopted by: Spotify (documented in Henrik Kniberg's "Spotify Engineering Culture" 2014), Google (Project Aristotle identified psychological safety and retrospective culture as the #1 predictor of team performance), Etsy (blameless post-mortems as retrospective culture, detailed in John Allspaw's "Blameless PostMortems" 2012), Atlassian (team health monitors embedded in retrospective cycle) Impact: Teams that run structured retrospectives with committed action items improve velocity by 20–30% over 6 months vs. teams with no retrospective practice (VersionOne State of Agile 2022). Google's Project Aristotle (2016, n=180 teams) found psychological safety — directly enabled by blameless retrospective culture — is the single highest predictor of team effectiveness. Action items without owners are completed 15% of the time; action items with named owners and deadlines are completed 65–75% of the time (Derby & Larsen research cited in "Agile Retrospectives", 2006). Why best: The retrospective's unique value is structured reflection with commitment — not ad-hoc Slack venting. Alternatives (skip retro, run async surveys) don't produce the same psychological safety or committed ownership that live facilitated sessions generate.
Sources: Derby & Larsen "Agile Retrospectives" (2006), Google Project Aristotle (2016), Scrum Guide 2020, Henrik Kniberg Spotify Engineering Culture (2014)
Open with a quick check-in: one word or emoji each person would use to describe the sprint. This:
State the goal: "We leave this meeting with 2–3 specific actions we commit to next sprint."
Each person silently writes sticky notes (one idea per note) for each column:
Silent writing prevents anchoring — the loudest person doesn't define the agenda.
Each person reads their notes aloud; facilitator clusters duplicates. No discussion yet — just surface everything. Aim: 10–20 distinct themes across all three columns.
Each person gets 3–5 dot votes to place on the "Didn't Go Well" and "Try Next" items they care most about. Top 3–4 items by votes become the discussion agenda.
This prevents spending 45 minutes on the least important problem.
For each top-voted item, run a brief 5-Why or root-cause discussion:
Keep each item to 5 minutes. Use a timer visibly. If discussion runs over, table and capture in "parking lot."
Rules for facilitation:
Convert the top problems into specific action items. Each must have:
Action: Add a 15-min architecture review slot to PR template
Owner: @priya
Done when: PR template updated, team agrees to it in next planning
Due: Sprint 23, Day 2
Limit to 2–3 actions. More than 3 and none get done (Derby & Larsen).
Well-formed action item:
What: Set up automated lint in CI to catch style issues before PR review
Owner: @kai
Done when: CI pipeline fails on lint errors (verified in staging)
Due: Sprint 24, Day 3
Poorly formed action item:
What: Improve code quality
Owner: everyone
Done when: things are better
Opening a retro with data:
"Sprint 22: committed 34 points, completed 26 (76%). 2 incidents. Average PR review time: 3.2 days. Let's look at what happened."