Google Docs is free, familiar, and accessible. Many teams start with Docs for retrospectives before considering dedicated tools. This guide provides templates and honest guidance on when Docs works well—and when it doesn’t.

Why Teams Use Google Docs for Retrospectives

The Advantages

• Free — No cost for any team size
• Familiar — Everyone knows how to use it
• Accessible — Works in any browser
• Real-time collaboration — Multiple editors simultaneously
• Easy sharing — Just send a link
• Persistent — Documents stay forever

The Reality Check

Google Docs is a word processor. It lacks retrospective-specific features, meaning more manual work and potential friction.

Free Google Docs Retrospective Templates

Template 1: Start-Stop-Continue

Copy this into a Google Doc:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🚦 START-STOP-CONTINUE RETROSPECTIVE
Sprint: [Number]  |  Date: [Date]  |  Team: [Name]
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👥 Participants: [Names]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🟢 START (What should we begin doing?)
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• [Add your items here]
• 
• 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🔴 STOP (What should we stop doing?)
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• [Add your items here]
• 
• 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🟡 CONTINUE (What's working that we should keep?)
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• [Add your items here]
• 
• 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✅ ACTION ITEMS
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| Action | Owner | Due Date | Status |
|--------|-------|----------|--------|
|        |       |          | ⬜     |
|        |       |          | ⬜     |

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📝 Additional Notes:


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Template 2: 4Ls Retrospective

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
4️⃣ FOUR Ls RETROSPECTIVE
Sprint: [Number]  |  Date: [Date]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

❤️ LIKED (What did we enjoy this sprint?)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• 
• 
• 

📚 LEARNED (What new things did we discover?)
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• 
• 
• 

😞 LACKED (What was missing or needed?)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• 
• 
• 

🎯 LONGED FOR (What do we wish we had?)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• 
• 
• 

✅ ACTIONS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. [Action] → Owner: [Name] → Due: [Date]
2. 
3. 

Template 3: Mad-Sad-Glad

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
😤😢😊 MAD SAD GLAD RETROSPECTIVE
Date: [Date]  |  Sprint: [Number]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

😤 MAD (What frustrated or angered us?)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• 
• 

😢 SAD (What disappointed or saddened us?)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• 
• 

😊 GLAD (What made us happy or proud?)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• 
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🎯 TOP 3 ACTIONS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. 
2. 
3. 

Template 4: Sailboat Retrospective

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⛵ SAILBOAT RETROSPECTIVE
Sprint: [Number]  |  Date: [Date]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🏝️ ISLAND (Our Goal/Vision)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[What are we sailing toward?]

💨 WIND (What pushed us forward?)
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• 
• 
• 

⚓ ANCHOR (What held us back?)
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• 
• 
• 

🪨 ROCKS (Risks ahead)
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• 
• 
• 

☀️ SUN (What we're grateful for)
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• 
• 

✅ COURSE CORRECTIONS (Actions)
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1. 
2. 
3. 

Template 5: Plus-Delta

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➕Δ PLUS DELTA RETROSPECTIVE
Date: [Date]
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➕ PLUS (What worked well? Keep doing!)
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• 
• 
• 
• 

Δ DELTA (What should we change?)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• 
• 
• 
• 

✅ CHANGES TO IMPLEMENT
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| Change | Owner | By When |
|--------|-------|---------|
|        |       |         |
|        |       |         |

Setting Up Your Google Docs Retrospective

Step 1: Create from Template

1. Copy template text above
2. Create new Google Doc
3. Paste and format
4. Save to team folder

Step 2: Configure Sharing

For full participation:

• Click “Share” button
• Set to “Anyone with link can edit”
• Or add specific team members

For controlled input:

• Set to “Anyone with link can comment”
• Facilitator moves comments to main doc

Step 3: Organize Your Folder

Create structure:

📁 Team Retrospectives
├── 📁 2026
│   ├── 📄 Sprint 1 Retro - Jan 5
│   ├── 📄 Sprint 2 Retro - Jan 19
│   └── ...
├── 📁 2025
│   └── [Archived retros]
└── 📄 Retro Template (Master)

Running the Retrospective

Before the Meeting

1. Duplicate template — Copy master, rename for sprint
2. Share link — Send to all participants
3. Optional: Pre-populate — Add agenda, time boxes
4. Review previous — Check last retro’s action items

During the Meeting

Phase 1: Silent Writing (5-10 min)

• Everyone adds items simultaneously
• Assign colors if you want attribution
• Use comments for anonymous input

Phase 2: Grouping (5 min)

• Facilitator groups similar items
• Or discuss each section sequentially

Phase 3: Discussion (20-30 min)

• Go through each section
• Discuss patterns and themes
• Use highlighting for emphasis

Phase 4: Voting (Optional, 5 min)

• Method 1: Add +1 next to items you support
• Method 2: Use emoji (⭐) as votes
• Method 3: Verbal dot voting

Phase 5: Actions (10 min)

• Convert discussion to action items
• Assign owners and due dates
• Add to action table

After the Meeting

1. Clean up formatting
2. Confirm action owners
3. Move to archive folder
4. Send summary to team

Limitations of Google Docs

No Built-in Voting

Problem: No native voting mechanism Impact: Manual vote counting, messy formatting Workarounds:

• Emoji voting (⭐⭐⭐)
• +1 comments
• Verbal voting with facilitator tallying

No Anonymous Mode

Problem: All edits show author in history Impact: Psychological safety concerns Workarounds:

• Everyone uses anonymous animal mode
• Facilitator collects via form, pastes anonymously
• Trust the team (not always possible)

Chaotic Simultaneous Editing

Problem: Multiple people typing creates confusion Impact: Formatting breaks, overwrites happen Workarounds:

• Assign sections by color
• Use structured turn-taking
• Facilitator controls document

No Facilitation Tools

Problem: No timer, phases, or controls Impact: More manual work for facilitator Missing features:

• Built-in timer
• Phase management
• Participant presence
• Reveal controls

Mobile Experience is Poor

Problem: Docs is hard to use on phones Impact: Remote participants struggle Workaround: Request laptop/desktop use

Google Docs vs RetroFlow

Feature	Google Docs	RetroFlow
Cost	Free	Free
Signup	Google account	None
Real-time editing	Yes	Yes
Voting	Manual	Built-in
Anonymous mode	No	Yes
Timer	No	Yes
Templates	DIY	Built-in
Facilitation tools	No	Yes
Setup time	5-10 min	< 1 min

Most tools support multiple formats. See which ones to try in our retrospective formats guide.

Making Google Docs Work Better

Tip 1: Use Tables for Structure

Tables prevent formatting chaos:

Section	Your Input
What went well?	[Type here]
What could improve?	[Type here]

Tip 2: Color-Code Participants

Assign each person a highlight color:

• 🟡 Yellow = Alice
• 🟢 Green = Bob
• 🔵 Blue = Carol
• 🟣 Purple = David

Tip 3: Create an Action Template

Consistent action format:

☐ [ACTION] → Owner: @name → Due: [Date]

Tip 4: Use Headings for Navigation

Proper heading structure allows:

• Quick navigation via outline
• Easy section jumping
• Clean document structure

Tip 5: Lock Sections

After discussing, change section permissions to “Suggesting” to prevent edits.

When Google Docs Works Well

✅ Small teams (2-4 people) ✅ High trust environments (anonymity not needed) ✅ Team already in Google Workspace ✅ Simple retrospectives (basic formats) ✅ Documentation priority (need searchable archive) ✅ Budget is zero (no tool budget)

When to Use Something Else

❌ Anonymous feedback needed ❌ Larger teams (5+ people, chaos increases) ❌ Voting is important ❌ Remote/distributed teams ❌ Facilitator needs controls ❌ Quick, focused sessions

Hybrid Approach

Combine Google Docs with purpose-built tools:

1. Run retro in RetroFlow — Real-time, anonymous, voting
2. Export notes to Google Docs — Copy/paste results
3. Track actions in Google Sheets — Use existing workflow
4. Archive in Google Drive — Persistent storage

Best of both worlds: purpose-built facilitation with Google Workspace integration.

Get Started

Run a Retrospective retrospective for free with RetroFlow — no signup, no limits, ready in 30 seconds.

Start now →

Related Resources

• Free Retrospective Tools
• Notion Retrospective Template - Notion approach
• Trello Retrospective Template - Trello setup guide
• Best Retrospective Tools - Full comparison