Start, Stop, Continue is a reflection method where a team names what it should start doing, what it should stop doing, and what it should keep doing. Everyone writes ideas under the three headings, the group sorts and votes on them, and the session ends with a few concrete changes the team commits to.
It works because the three questions are easy to answer and hard to dodge. "Stop" gives people permission to name what isn't working. "Continue" protects what is. And "Start" turns the conversation toward action instead of complaint.
What exactly are we looking back on?
Name one routine and one time span. "Our weekly meeting over the last six weeks" gets useful notes. "How things are going" gets vague ones.
Put these three questions on the board:
- Start: What should we try that we haven't tried yet?
- Stop: What costs us time without giving much back?
- Continue: What is working that we would miss if it disappeared?
Everyone writes alone first
One idea per sticky note, placed under Start, Stop or Continue. No talking yet.
Silence is the point. When the first speaker, or the most senior person, talks first, the rest of the board tends to agree with them.
Read out, then group by theme
Each person reads their notes aloud, one round, no discussion yet. Then the group moves notes about the same thing together and names each group, for example "Meetings" or "Handovers".
Which ideas do we act on first?
Everyone gets three dots and places them on the ideas they would act on first. Stacking dots on one idea is allowed. The two or three ideas with the most dots move to the next step.
Who does what, by when?
For the top ideas, agree who does it, what exactly changes, and by when. This matters most for Start and Stop: starting something needs an owner, and so does making sure a habit actually stops.
Book the check-in before anyone leaves
Put a date in the calendar two to four weeks out. At that meeting, go through the who, what and when list: what changed, what didn't, and why.
Common mistakes
Before the session, check three things. Can you name the topic in one sentence? Can people write without the manager reading over their shoulder? Is there ten minutes left at the end for owners and dates? If one answer is no, the table below shows what tends to go wrong and what to do instead.
Variations
More of, Less of
Two columns instead of three, for when the question is how much rather than whether.
Plus, Minus, Next
A shorter version: what went well, what didn't, and what we do next. Good for the end of a workshop day.
Which version fits depends on the group and the moment. Each of them also works on its own: a single question like "What do we want more of, and what less?" can carry a whole meeting. It's tempting to pack a session with exercises. Often the better choice is to do less, and give one good question the time it needs.
The method fits almost any shared routine. Here is what a team might write in four common situations:
This is what a finished board can look like at the end of a session:
There is no single documented inventor. Start, Stop, Continue has been used in management feedback and team reviews for decades, and became a standard format for sprint retrospectives in agile teams. Close variants include Keep, Stop, Start and Plus, Minus, Next.
