Templates · Essentials

Rose, Bud, Thorn

Looks at what works, what hurts and, between the two, what is only starting and deserves attention.

What it is

A plant in three parts. The rose is in bloom: what is clearly working right now. The bud may bloom: early signs worth investing in before they fade. The thorn pricks: what hurts and keeps hurting until someone fixes it.

Goal

Beside the usual good and bad, a list of young things, such as an idea, a practice tried once or a promising collaboration, that the team decides to look after before they disappear.

When to use it

• When things are beginning: a new team, a new product, practices just introduced.
• When retrospectives only produce repairs and never an investment.
• For a short session: three columns, quick to explain.
• With newcomers or people from outside the team, who understand the picture at once.

When to pick another format

After a hard sprint the gentle picture can feel beside the point: Mad, Sad, Glad meets the mood better. If you need decisions about existing practices, Start, Stop, Continue asks for them directly. If the middle of your sprint is made of things that half worked, not of things that are starting, see WWW.

How to run it

1. Rose: ask what is clearly working right now.
2. Bud: ask for early signs: a first good result, a half-tested idea. A useful prompt: what would be worth more of our time before it fades?
3. Thorn: ask what hurts and will keep hurting until someone fixes it. One-off annoyances do not belong here.

Group the cards and vote on Bud and Thorn. A thorn calls for a fix, with an owner and a date. A bud calls for an action too, of another kind: some time set aside, a trial, a person who looks after it. Read Rose before closing, so that the team knows what it can rely on.

Columns

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