Why most retros produce no change

Sprint retrospectives have a structural problem that templates don't fix: teams generate improvement ideas but don't review them. The retro produces five action items. Next retro opens with a clean slate. The same problems surface again.

The template below bakes the review into the opening so it can't be skipped. That single change does more for retro effectiveness than any format adjustment.

The agenda (copy-paste this)

Duration: 60 minutes for a 2-week sprint; 45 minutes for a 1-week sprint
Format: Facilitated, with a shared async board (Miro, FigJam, Notion — your choice)

Section 1 — Action item review (10 min)

Read last sprint's action items one by one
Mark each: Done / In progress / Dropped (brief reason for drops)
Carry any incomplete items forward; don't relitigate them now

Section 2 — Data snapshot (5 min)

Sprint velocity vs. target
Unplanned work that exceeded one day
Incidents or on-call events
Scope changes mid-sprint
Put the data on screen with no discussion yet

Section 3 — What went well (10 min)

Team adds items async before the meeting or in the first 3 minutes
Discuss the top 2-3; skip items with obvious agreement
Don't spend time on things that aren't actionable

Section 4 — What to improve (15 min)

Same format: async input, discuss highest-signal items
For each item: one-time occurrence or recurring pattern? Only patterns become action items
The facilitator's job is to turn "this was frustrating" into something specific and changeable

Section 5 — Action items (15 min)

Each item must have: description, one owner (not "the team"), due date
Aim for 2-3 items max; more than that dilutes accountability
Carry forward any incomplete items from Section 1

Closing (5 min)

Quick +/-/delta on the retro itself
Confirm the recap goes out before EOD

What popular retro formats miss

Start/Stop/Continue and What Went Well/What to Improve/Action Items are both valid formats. The problem isn't the format — it's that templates rarely encode the review step at the front. That step is the only thing that creates accountability continuity from one retro to the next. Without it, the retro is a feeling machine, not a change machine.

Templates also don't address time-box discipline. "What to improve" runs long almost universally because it's more emotionally engaging than "what went well." Without hard boxes, a 60-minute retro becomes 90 minutes of discussion and 5 minutes of rushed action items at the end. The action items are the only part that changes anything.

The third gap: action items get written as vague directives. "Improve frontend-backend communication" is not an action item. "Sarah will schedule a weekly 30-minute sync between frontend and backend leads, starting next Monday" is. The owner and the start date have to be named in the room — later, the specifics soften.

The compounding cost of these patterns shows up weeks later as context that was never captured and decisions that get relitigated. The meeting tax covers how this looks quantitatively over a quarter.

Why retro recaps are harder to write than standup notes

Standup recaps are short. Sprint planning recaps are structured. Retrospective recaps are hard because the content is messy — sticky notes, discussion that jumps between sections, a mix of sentiment and data. Whoever writes the recap has to reconstruct a coherent thread from a meeting that moved in multiple directions at once.

Pavleur handles this well precisely because of that messiness. It captures everything said during the meeting and whatever is on screen — the shared board, the velocity chart from Section 2, the incident ticket someone referenced in Section 4. The post-meeting report is structured, with action items extracted from what was actually decided in the room (with owners and dates, as named). No reconstruction needed, no cleanup after the call.

Audio-only transcription tools capture the words but not the visual context. In a retro, the visual is often the most important part — the sticky note board, the graph that surfaced a pattern, the ticket that anchored a discussion. That context doesn't exist in an audio-only recap. For a direct tool comparison: Pavleur vs. alternatives.

Common retro failure modes

The same action item appears in three consecutive retros. Section 1 is non-negotiable. If an item keeps not getting done, either drop it with a stated reason or escalate it — don't carry it forward indefinitely.

Discussion turns into venting without resolution. The facilitator's job in Section 4 is to translate "that process is broken" into one specific, changeable thing. If it can't be made specific in 30 seconds, it goes in the parking lot.

No one adds items async before the meeting. Send the board 24 hours in advance. Seed it with 2-3 items to break the blank-canvas problem. Meetings run better when everyone arrives with something written down.