Alternative plays: 4 Ls, Plus / Delta, Rose / Thorn / Bud
Follow-up plays: Five-Fingered Consensus, Plus / Delta
Timing: Planning
Run time
30 minutes
Group size
4-10
Why: Resolve stagnancy and inefficiency in a team's routine
When: After project milestones, at the end of a sprint, or during quarterly reviews to reassess and recalibrate team efforts
This workshop exercise is part of the Workshop Patterns printed card deck.
A collection of workshop exercises that will help you ditch dull meetings and facilitate with confidence. It will help you master the design process and have more productive time with your team. The card deck will be ready for purchase in the end of 2025 and is now undergoing rigorous testing.
Reserve your deck!Instructions for running this play
- Setup. Create three columns labeled START, STOP, CONTINUE on a large surface.
- Start represents what we should start doing
- Stop represents what we should stop doing
- Continue represents what we should continue doing
- Introduce the exercise. Explain the context of the exercise: team collaboration, a specific project, stakeholder collaboration, etc.
- Generate and share ideas. Give each participant 3-5 minutes to brainstorm answers for the START column on sticky notes. One answer per sticky note. Let participants post their notes one by one in the START colulmn. Cluster similar ideas together.
- Repeat for ‘Stop’ and ‘Continue’: Follow the same process for the ‘Stop’ and ‘Continue’ columns.
- Discuss and reflect. Allocate time to discuss all inputs and reflect on the implications.
- Next steps.Use Blind Voting to identify the top three actions to implement. For these actions, assign responsible individuals and set deadlines using the Who/What/When technique.
Instructions for running this play
- Setup. Create three columns labeled START, STOP, CONTINUE on a large surface.
- Start represents what we should start doing
- Stop represents what we should stop doing
- Continue represents what we should continue doing
- More of represents what we should do more of
- Less of represents what we should do less of
- Introduce the exercise. Explain the context of the exercise: team collaboration, a specific project, stakeholder collaboration, etc.
- Generate and share ideas. Give each participant 3-5 minutes to brainstorm answers for the START column on sticky notes. One answer per sticky note. Let participants post their notes one by one in the START colulmn. Cluster similar ideas together.
- Repeat for ‘Stop’, ‘Continue’,’More of’, and ‘Less of’: Follow the same process for the remaining columns.
- Discuss and reflect. Allocate time to discuss all inputs and reflect on the implications.
- Next steps.Use Blind Voting to identify the top three actions to implement. For these actions, assign responsible individuals and set deadlines using the Who/What/When technique.
This workshop exercise is part of the Workshop Patterns printed card deck.
A collection of workshop exercises that will help you ditch dull meetings and facilitate with confidence. It will help you master the design process and have more productive time with your team. The card deck will be ready for purchase in the end of 2025 and is now undergoing rigorous testing.
Reserve your deck!Related plays
- Start, Stop, Continue Retrospective Template by Miro
- Start, Stop, Continue Retro by Charles Burdett
- The Start-Stop-Continue Exercise: How To Conduct One (+Template) by Emily May
