Three Little Pigs retrospective template
Straw, sticks, and bricks — sort the work by how well it will hold.
Also known as: Three Little Pigs retrospective, Straw Sticks Bricks.
The Three Little Pigs sorts the team's work by how durable it is: straw will blow over, sticks will hold for a while, bricks will last. It is unusually good at surfacing technical debt, because it gives people a non-accusatory way to say that something shipped is not going to survive contact with reality.
The columns, and what goes in each
- House of Straw
- What did we build or decide that will not survive the first real pressure?
- House of Sticks
- What is standing for now but will need reinforcing before long?
- House of Bricks
- What did we do properly that we can rely on for a long time?
When to use the Three Little Pigs retrospective
- After a period of deliberate shortcuts, a deadline crunch, or a proof of concept going to production
- Teams that struggle to raise technical debt without it sounding like criticism
- Architecture or platform reviews as much as sprint retrospectives
How to run a Three Little Pigs retrospective
- Set the frame: this is about durability, not blame — straw is sometimes the right call.
- Write silently for six minutes.
- Discuss the straw column first and decide which items are acceptable risk and which are not.
- Turn the unacceptable ones into backlog items with an owner, not just retro actions.
Run this retrospective in RetroCanvas
Three Little Pigs is built in — pick it when you create a board, or set it to recur automatically every sprint. Free, with no credit card required.