Four Ws retrospective template
A learning-focused retro with room for open questions.
Also known as: Four Ws retrospective, 4 Ws, What went well / What didn’t.
The Four Ws end on a column most formats do not have: what still puzzles the team. Giving unresolved confusion somewhere to live is the point — it turns "I never understood why that happened" from a thought people keep to themselves into a card someone can pick up as a spike.
The columns, and what goes in each
- What went well
- What worked, and what made it work?
- What didn't
- What did not go the way it should have?
- What I learned
- What do you understand now that you did not before?
- What still puzzles me
- What still does not make sense, that you would like someone to explain?
When to use the Four Ws retrospective
- Teams working in an unfamiliar domain, codebase, or client context
- After an incident whose root cause is not fully understood
- Onboarding retrospectives for a team that has recently grown
How to run a Four Ws retrospective
- Write silently for seven minutes across all four columns.
- Read What I learned before What didn’t — it changes how the criticism lands.
- Treat the puzzles column as a backlog: each card gets either an answer in the room or an owner to go and find one.
- Carry unanswered puzzles into the next session rather than deleting them.
Run this retrospective in RetroCanvas
Four Ws is built in — pick it when you create a board, or set it to recur automatically every sprint. Free, with no credit card required.