The Sailboat Retrospective Template

The island is your team's objective and the wind is all the things that help your team to reach its goals.

Try this template for free Discover more retrospectives

Sailboat Retrospective Illustration for Neatro

Try this template for free Discover more retrospectives

Sailboat Retrospective Template in Neatro

What is the Sailboat retrospective?

This retrospective's level of difficulty is easy

Difficulty Level

Easy

The Sailboat is a popular and widespread retrospective technique in Agile teams.

Use this engaging and challenging exercise to help your teammates discuss their progress toward the team goal — no matter whether it's about the latest Sprint or a past project.

⛵ Imagine your team aboard a sailboat ready to set sail for a desert island. The island is your team's objective. The wind represents everything that will help the Sailboat reach the island. The anchor symbolizes things that can slow the boat down on its way. The iceberg, meanwhile, illustrates the dangers that could halt the journey.

Last but not least, the Sailboat activity is a good pick for any team, regardless of their experience level with retrospectives.

The 4 elements of the Sailboat template

The Island

Your team's objective.

e.g., acquire 10 new Premium customers by the end of the quarter.

The Wind

What helps your team move forward.

e.g., our blog articles offer great content and capture many leads.

The Anchor

Everything that is slowing you down.

e.g., most of our Freemium users do not understand the value of a Premium account.

The Iceberg

Potential risks.

e.g., our main competitor has launched a key feature, some of our users might be interested to leave us for this.

Why & when should you use the Sailboat retrospective?

The Sailboat is an excellent retrospective idea to project oneself into the team's near future. It is also an effective technique for aligning all team members towards a common goal, discussed and approved by all.

Has your team been given an ambitious objective recently? Do you believe you still need to get things prepared for that journey? Then, the Sailboat could be a wise choice to make your next retrospective a productive session.

This retrospective's design makes it possible to approach all kinds of concerns and challenges for the team.

Therefore, the team could discuss any of these topics (non-exhaustive list): Collaboration, Fun, Learnings, Mission, Ownership, Process, Resources, Roles, Speed, Value. Nutshell, anything that can help the team continuously improve is worth addressing.

The possibilities are endless with the Sailboat! 🐙

Where can I find the Sailboat retrospective?

The Sailboat retrospective is a great activity to run in a remote work context.

You can try the Sailboat template with your team for free by signing up for Neatro. No credit card is required. Note that participants do not need to create accounts to join an online retrospective in Neatro.