A forward-looking retrospective format that helps goal-oriented teams reflect on progress, identify blockers, and plan the next sprint like climbing a mountain.
Drag example cards between columns or try voting to explore the format.
What should we begin doing in the next sprint? New habits, processes, or tools to adopt.
Write integration tests for payment pipeline
Run bi-weekly tech debt reduction sessions
Use feature flags for all new deployments
What's not serving us? Practices, meetings, or processes to eliminate.
Assigning tickets without clear acceptance criteria
Having a separate status-update meeting — use async check-ins
What's working well that we should keep doing? Reinforce positive behaviors and effective processes.
Daily standups — they're tight and focused
Using squash-and-merge for cleaner commit history
Weekly retro — it keeps us honest
What did we achieve last sprint? Celebrate wins and completed goals before diving into improvements.
Shipped the new onboarding flow — 40% fewer drop-offs
Cut P95 API latency from 800ms to 200ms
Onboarded two new engineers to the team
What do we want to achieve in the upcoming sprint? Clear, measurable targets aligned with team OKRs.
Achieve 90% test coverage on all new PRs
Ship the team dashboard by end of sprint
Reduce CI pipeline time to under 10 minutes
Use these prompts and example cards to start a focused conversation.
What did we achieve last sprint? Celebrate wins and completed goals before diving into improvements.
Example cards
Keep in mind: Don't list tasks instead of outcomes
What should we begin doing in the next sprint? New habits, processes, or tools to adopt.
Example cards
Keep in mind: Don't list things that should already be happening
What's not serving us? Practices, meetings, or processes to eliminate.
Example cards
Keep in mind: Don't call out individuals — keep it process-focused
What's working well that we should keep doing? Reinforce positive behaviors and effective processes.
Example cards
Keep in mind: Don't treat this as a filler column
What do we want to achieve in the upcoming sprint? Clear, measurable targets aligned with team OKRs.
Example cards
Keep in mind: Don't set vague goals without measurable outcomes
Mountain Climb takes about 20–30 min. Here's the flow.
Facilitator explains the climb metaphor and each column. Remind the team this is blameless and future-focused.
Team silently adds cards to each column. Start, Stop, Continue get most attention; Goals and Outcomes are forward-looking.
Group cards by theme, discuss the most-voted items. Focus on patterns, not individual complaints.
Each team member gets 3–5 votes. Prioritize action items that will have the most impact on the next sprint.
Assign owners and due dates for top-voted action items. Link directly to GitHub issues or Linear tickets.
The Mountain Climb retrospective is a powerful Agile retrospective format designed for teams that thrive on progress and goal-oriented reflection. Unlike traditional retrospectives that focus primarily on problems, Mountain Climb frames each sprint as a climb — with a clear summit (your goal), the path you took (what worked), the obstacles you encountered (what didn't), and the gear you'll need for the next ascent.
Originating from the software engineering community as an evolution of Start/Stop/Continue, Mountain Climb adds two critical columns — Goals and Outcomes — that make it uniquely effective for Scrum teams running sprint-based work. The format was popularized by engineering leaders who found that traditional retrospectives focused too heavily on negative feedback without enough emphasis on tracking progress toward larger objectives.
The psychology behind Mountain Climb is rooted in progress theory. Humans are motivated more by a sense of forward momentum than by avoiding problems. By structuring the retro around a climb metaphor, teams naturally shift from blame-oriented thinking to growth-oriented thinking. Each column represents a phase of the journey: Outcomes acknowledge where you've been, Start/Stop/Continue define your immediate actions, and Goals point to where you're going.
If you like Mountain Climb, you might also enjoy these formats.
Reconstruct the story of your sprint. Capture what happened at the beginning, middle, and end, then turn the patterns into practical takeaways.
A classic three-column retro format that helps teams identify new practices to adopt, unhelpful habits to drop, and winning behaviors to reinforce.
A metaphorical retro format where the team is a sailboat — Anchors hold you back, Wind pushes you forward, and Rocks are risks to navigate around.
A four-column continuous improvement format — Drop, Add, Keep, Improve — that combines Start/Stop/Continue simplicity with actionable improvement granularity.
Mountain Climb is a goal-oriented retrospective format that frames each sprint as a climb. Columns include Start, Stop, Continue, Goals, and Outcomes — helping teams reflect on progress and plan forward.
20–30 minutes is the sweet spot. The format is structured so teams move efficiently through each column without getting stuck on any single topic.
Anyone on the team can facilitate. Rotate the role each sprint — it builds facilitation skills across the team and brings fresh perspectives to the process.
Yes — LetRetro's async and real-time modes make Mountain Climb ideal for distributed teams. Team members can add cards in their own time, then vote and discuss synchronously.
Absolutely. LetRetro supports async retrospectives where team members add cards throughout the day, vote asynchronously, and the AI generates a summary for discussion.
Mountain Climb is forward-looking and goal-oriented (Start, Stop, Continue, Goals, Outcomes), while Sailboat uses a journey metaphor with Anchors (what's holding us back), Wind (what pushes us forward), and Rocks (risks ahead).
Mountain Climb extends Start/Stop/Continue with Goals and Outcomes columns, making it better suited for teams that want to track progress toward larger objectives across sprints.
Yes — LetRetro's AI automatically generates summaries and extracts action items from every retrospective, helping you spot trends and track follow-through.
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