Team Culture Retro
Take a closer look at your team's culture, habits, and rituals to decide – together – what to start doing, what's not working, and what's worth keeping.
PREP TIME
15m
Run TIME
60m
Persons
3-10
5-second summary
- Take a closer look at your team's culture, habits, and rituals.
- Use the “Start, Stop, Continue” framework to decide as a team what's working and what to change.
- Assign owners to action items and follow up to keep momentum going.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
- Meeting space or video conferencing with screen sharing
- Physical or digital whiteboard, like a Confluence whiteboard
- Sticky notes and markers for in‑person sessions
- Your preferred AI tool, such as Rovo
PLAY resources
How to run a team culture retro
Reflect on your team's habits and rituals to decide what to start, stop, and continue.
What is a team culture retro?
A team culture retro is a structured exercise where a team reflects on their habits, rituals, and ways of working. Using the “Start, Stop, Continue” framework, team members share what they'd like the team to start doing (what could work well), stop doing (what isn't working and should be dropped), and continue doing (what’s valuable and worth keeping).
Unlike a sprint retrospective, which focuses on project delivery, a team culture retro zooms out to look at the underlying norms and behaviors that shape how a team collaborates.
Why run the Team Culture Retro Play?
Every team develops habits over time – some intentional, some not. A team culture retro creates dedicated time and space to reflect on those habits and make deliberate choices about how you work together.
Research shows that teams with higher levels of reflexivity – the extent to which team members collectively reflect on objectives, strategies, and processes – are more innovative, adaptable, and effective at problem-solving (Schippers, West, & Dawson, 2015).
Organizational culture has also been shown to be a significant predictor of employee attitudes, organizational effectiveness, and financial performance (Hartnell et al., 2019).
By regularly reflecting on your culture, you can build shared ownership of your team's norms and create a foundation for continuous improvement.
When should you create a team culture retro?
You can run a team culture retro anytime your team is:
- Starting fresh with new members or a new project
- Adapting to change, such as a reorg, new tools, or a shift to hybrid or distributed work
- Focused on inclusion and wants to make sure everyone's voice is heard
- Feeling stuck or noticing friction in how the team collaborates
- Looking to adopt new ways of working, like exploring how the team uses AI
5 benefits of team culture retros
Team culture retros are proven to help:
- Align on priorities. Teams zero in on what’s effective and what’s not — because culture works through specific, identifiable practices, not vague values. (Hartnell et al., 2019)
- Build shared ownership. Everyone contributes to shaping team norms — and equal contribution is a hallmark of the highest-performing teams. (Duhigg, 2016)
- Create space for improvement. Encourage candid discussion and follow-through — structured team reflection on processes predicts innovation and better outcomes. (Schippers, West & Dawson, 2015; Schippers & West, 2017)
- Surface hidden friction. Psychological safety — the top predictor of high-performing teams — lets people name what isn’t working without fear of judgment. (Duhigg, 2016)
- Drive intentional change. Reflexivity only improves performance when reflection leads to concrete, adapted behavior — not just conversation. (Schippers & West, 2017)
1. Prep the Play
Est. time: 5 MIN
Schedule a one-hour meeting with your teammates, and pick a topic to discuss that’s related to your team’s culture. It could be a broad topic, like communication or collaboration, or a specific topic, like using AI.
Next, nominate someone on your team to run this activity as the facilitator. It can be someone who's a skilled presenter or who’s keen to build their facilitation skills.
Then, prepare a physical or digital whiteboard, like a Confluence whiteboard, with three columns: Start, Stop, and Continue. If you’re using a digital whiteboard, give all attendees access.
| Start | Stop | Continue |
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|
|
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2. Set the stage
Est. time: 5 MIN
Open the meeting by setting the intention for this session and introducing the topic. Let your team know this is a safe space to reflect on what's working and what could improve. Remind them that the goal is improvement, not blame.
If you're facilitating the meeting virtually, don’t record the meeting or use an AI notetaker. This can help create a more psychologically safe environment that encourages honest feedback.
3. Run the activity
Est. time: 15 min
Ask each person to write down their ideas – one idea per sticky note or whiteboard entry – in each of the three categories:
4. Discuss and assign actions
Est. time: 15 min
Group similar items, and talk through which suggestions you want to try implementing as a team, along with who owns each next step.
If you’re meeting in person, use AI to digitize your whiteboard, save time, and make sure nothing gets lost in translation.
- Take a photo of your physical whiteboard.
- Use your preferred AI tool, like Rovo, to extract the sticky note contents.
Ask AI to sort the sticky notes into the Start, Stop, and Continue categories.
For virtual whiteboards, use AI tool to summarize the key themes and group them into categories. This helps you quickly identify patterns and prioritize what to act on.
Finally, save the digital version of your whiteboard, and link it in a prominent place (like a bookmark in the team Slack channel) where the team can easily find and revisit the norms.
tip: Add team culture norms to onboarding
Consider linking to your team's culture retro results in onboarding guides for new team members. It's a great way to jumpstart their understanding of your team's norms and how you work together.
5. Plan next steps
Est. time: 5 min
Discuss any remaining questions, and schedule a follow-up to revisit the list, check progress, and make updates if needed.
Varianti
Sessione GSD
Ritagliati del tempo per fare quello che deve essere fatto. Questa sessione si focalizza sul completamento effettivo del lavoro, non solo sulle parole.
Team Communication Norms
Make the unspoken spoken and build team safety by making team norms visible and inclusive.
Ritual Reset
Re-evaluate team meetings and practices to focus on what matters most.
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Inizia una conversazione con altri utenti del Playbook dei team Atlassian, richiedi assistenza o fornisci il feedback.
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Riunioni
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Riunioni
Riunioni dirette da una pagina
Delle riunioni migliori iniziano con una pagina che illustra lo scopo, i risultati previsti e i punti chiave da discutere.
Comunicazione
Manuale utente
Aiuta i membri del tuo team a capire come lavorare al meglio con te.
Debriefing
Retrospettiva
Metti a disposizione dei team uno spazio sicuro in cui discutere su cosa ha funzionato e cosa no.
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