Templates · Themed & fun

Marie Kondo

Tidy the team's habits like a cupboard, keeping what brings joy, throwing out what does not work and recycling the rest.

What it is

A tidying session applied to the way the team works. The picture is that of emptying a cupboard: each thing is taken in hand and the team decides whether it stays. Three columns receive the result: what brings joy and is happy to stay, what went wrong and should not stay, and what is worth improving and reusing.

Goal

A lighter way of working: a few things kept on purpose, a few stopped, a few reshaped. The middle column is where the format earns its place, because it gives the team permission to stop doing something.

When to use it

Take it when practices have piled up: meetings, reports, tools and rules whose reason nobody remembers. It fits the end of a project, a quarter or a year, and the weeks after two teams merge and find themselves with two of everything.

When to pick another format

The board only sorts what already exists; nothing in it asks for something new. When the team needs new practices, DAKI (Drop, Add, Keep, Improve) does the same sorting with a column to add. When the question is how solid things are rather than whether to keep them, take Three Little Pigs.

How to run it

Ask for one thing per card: a meeting, a habit, a tool, a rule.

1. Brings you joy: ask what went well and should stay, and why. A reason written down protects the thing the next time someone wants to cut it.
2. Throw out: ask what went wrong and should not stay. A card here is a proposal to stop, and it needs no replacement.
3. Recycle: ask what the team wants to improve and reuse. The idea is right and the form is not: the card says what would change.

Group the cards. The same thing in two columns is the first topic to discuss. Then vote on Throw out and Recycle. Stopping is an action like any other: write who announces it and from when.

Columns

To start a retrospective from this template, see Create a retro.