Hopes and Fears retrospective template
A forward-looking retro for the start of something, not the end.
Also known as: Hopes and Fears retrospective, Futurespective.
Hopes and Fears points the retrospective forward instead of back. Running one before a project rather than after gives the team a chance to name the risks while there is still time to act on them — and gives the facilitator a list of fears to re-read at the real retrospective later.
The columns, and what goes in each
- Hopes
- If this goes well, what does that look like?
- Fears
- What are you worried about, including the things you would rather not say?
- Actions
- What can we do now to make a hope likelier or a fear less damaging?
When to use the Hopes and Fears retrospective
- Kicking off a project, a quarter, a migration, or a new team
- Before a re-org, a platform change, or anything the team is visibly nervous about
- As a paired bookend: run it at the start, revisit the same board at the end
How to run a Hopes and Fears retrospective
- Set the horizon explicitly — the next quarter, the next release, the next six weeks.
- Write silently for six minutes across Hopes and Fears.
- Group the fears and vote on which ones are worth mitigating now.
- Write one mitigation per top fear into Actions, then save the board and reopen it at the end of the horizon.
Run this retrospective in RetroCanvas
Hopes and Fears is built in — pick it when you create a board, or set it to recur automatically every sprint. Free, with no credit card required.