Open The Box Retrospective Template
Examine your team's processes with a practical unpacking metaphor that helps identify what to start, stop, and continue doing. This template uses a box analogy to visualize your team's activities and behaviors, making it easier to prioritize improvements and drive meaningful change in your development workflow.
What Is Open The Box?
Open The Box is a structured retrospective technique that visualizes your team's working processes as items in a box that need to be sorted. Unlike traditional retrospectives that focus on abstract feelings or concepts, this method directly addresses specific team activities, behaviors, and processes.
The metaphor is straightforward but powerful:
- The Box: Represents your current team dynamics and practices
- Added (Inbox): New processes or behaviors to introduce
- Removed (Outbox): Practices that should be eliminated
- Recycled: Valuable processes worth keeping and reinforcing
Benefits & When to Use
This template is particularly valuable when:
- Your team feels overwhelmed by too many processes or ceremonies
- You need to streamline workflows that have become complex over time
- New team members are confused about which practices are essential
- You want to focus on concrete actions rather than conceptual discussions
- Teams need to regularly review their working practices (quarterly works well)
Teams benefit from Open The Box by:
- Creating clarity around which processes add value
- Identifying wasteful activities that can be eliminated
- Building consensus on core practices that should be maintained
- Establishing a clear action plan for implementing changes
How to Run an Open The Box Session
Total time: 45-60 minutes
Introduction (5 minutes)
- Explain the box metaphor and how team processes/behaviors are items to sort
- Clarify that the goal is to optimize how the team works together
Reflection and Note Creation (10 minutes)
- Ask each participant to add sticky notes in the three areas:
- Added: What new processes, tools or behaviors should we start doing?
- Removed: What current practices should we stop doing?
- Recycled: What valuable activities should we keep and reinforce?
- Ask each participant to add sticky notes in the three areas:
Discussion (20-30 minutes)
- Take turns revealing sticky notes from each category
- For each item, discuss:
- Why is this process important or problematic?
- What impact does it have on team productivity?
- Is there consensus about its value or challenges?
Voting and Prioritization (5-10 minutes)
- Use reactions to indicate agreement or disagreement with notes
- Identify the most supported recommendations in each category
Action Planning (10 minutes)
- Create specific follow-up actions based on the most popular sticky notes
- Assign owners and deadlines to ensure implementation
Tips for a Successful Session
- Focus on specifics: Encourage participants to name exact processes rather than general concepts
- Alternative approach: For deeper analysis, first list all team activities, vote on which are most important to discuss, then categorize them
- Ensure psychological safety: Some team members may have introduced processes that others want to remove
- Use the highlight feature: Click on a participant's icon to highlight their contributions
- Set boundaries: Clarify that this is about improving processes, not criticizing individuals
- Follow up: Schedule a check-in 2-3 weeks later to evaluate how the changes are working
This template works exceptionally well for engineering teams who need to regularly evaluate whether their development practices, meetings, and collaboration approaches are helping or hindering their productivity.
