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Derby & Larsen's Five Stages of a Retrospective

A five-stage arc for team retrospectives from Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's book Agile Retrospectives. It works as a container: any retro activity, such as a timeline or a sailboat, slots into one of the stages, so the meeting moves from data to insight to commitment instead of stopping at venting.

5 phasesSession Flow
When to Use This Framework

When your sessions feel disjointed or participants lose focus

Your meetings or sessions need better pacing, clearer transitions, or more engaging sequences to keep participants engaged.

Sprint, project or quarterly retrospectives; any team review that should end in agreed improvements, not just a discussion.

The 5 Steps
Follow this sequence to apply Derby & Larsen's Five Stages of a Retrospective
1

Set the Stage

Restate the goal of the retrospective and get every voice into the room early, for example with a one-word check-in. Agree on how the group will talk without blame.

2

Gather Data

Build a shared picture of what happened in the period under review: events, facts, metrics and how people felt about them.

3

Generate Insights

Look for patterns and root causes behind the data. The group asks why things happened before jumping to fixes.

4

Decide What to Do

Choose one to three improvement actions the team will actually take, with an owner for each.

5

Close the Retrospective

Summarise the decisions, thank people, and do a short check on how the retrospective itself went.

What You'll Achieve

Creates natural rhythm and momentum that keeps energy high throughout.

Use the five stages as the block structure of a sprint or project retrospective and fill each with one activity sized to the time available. The stages can also order a team review or lessons-learned meeting outside agile work.

Practical Tips
How to get the most out of this framework
  • 1
    Vary the pace between high and low energy activities
  • 2
    Use clear transitions between sections
  • 3
    Build complexity gradually throughout
  • 4
    End with actionable takeaways
Best For
  • Sprint retrospectives
  • Project lessons learned
  • Team health reviews
  • Continuous improvement cycles
Key Principles
  • Every voice heard early
  • Data before interpretation
  • Insight before action
  • Few actions, clearly owned
  • Close by improving the retro itself
Watch Out For
  • Teams often skip Generate Insights and jump to actions; protect that stage
  • In longer retros the stages may loop per topic rather than run once
  • Rotate activities so the format does not go stale
  • Needs psychological safety; a manager in the room can mute the data stage
Related Frameworks
Other Session Flow frameworks you might find useful
Daily Scrum (Scrum Guide)The Daily Scrum is the Scrum Guide's 15-minute daily event in which the Developers inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and adapt their plan. The 2020 Guide no longer prescribes questions; the team picks any structure as long as it focuses on the goal and ends in a plan for the day.
EOS Level 10 MeetingThe weekly leadership meeting of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, with a fixed 90-minute agenda. Short reporting segments surface problems quickly so most of the time goes to solving the top issues through Identify-Discuss-Solve.
Holacracy Tactical MeetingThe operational meeting of Holacracy, built to process a lot of practical issues fast. A quick data-sharing preamble is followed by an agenda that the group builds on the spot and triages item by item, each ending in a concrete next action.