Wishing Well retrospective template
Start from what the team wishes were true, then find the first step.
Also known as: Wishing Well retrospective, Wishes and blockers.
The Wishing Well inverts the usual order: instead of listing problems and deriving fixes, the team names what it wishes were true, identifies what is in the way, and commits only to the first step. Asking for a first step rather than a solution is the part that works — it produces actions small enough to actually happen inside one sprint.
The columns, and what goes in each
- Wishes
- If you could change one thing about how this team works, what would it be?
- Blockers
- What is standing between us and that wish today?
- First Step
- What is the smallest thing we could do before the next retro to move towards it?
When to use the Wishing Well retrospective
- Teams whose action items are consistently too large to finish
- Sessions where the problems are well known and the missing thing is momentum
- Improvement planning at the start of a quarter
How to run a Wishing Well retrospective
- Write wishes first, alone, for five minutes — no constraints, no feasibility filter.
- Group the wishes and vote on the two or three worth pursuing.
- For each winner, fill the Blockers column together rather than individually.
- Write exactly one First Step card per wish, small enough to complete before the next retro.
Run this retrospective in RetroCanvas
Wishing Well is built in — pick it when you create a board, or set it to recur automatically every sprint. Free, with no credit card required.