A starfish retrospective is a team retro format with five sections: start doing, stop doing, keep doing, more of, and less of. Patrick Kua introduced it in 2006, and the name comes from the five arms drawn on a whiteboard. The more-of and less-of sections distinguish it from simpler formats: they capture practices that work but need turning up or down.

Start doing: practices the team hasn't tried but should. Stop doing: things adding no value or actively blocking work. Keep doing: what's working and worth protecting. More of: practices with proven value the team underuses, like pairing on tricky tickets. Less of: things with some value that consume too much energy, like status meetings. Concrete beats vague in every section.

Start stop continue is the three-section core: begin, end, or protect a practice. The starfish keeps those three and adds more of and less of, turning binary calls into a dial. Use start stop continue for new teams or short sessions; use the starfish once a team has running practices that need tuning rather than killing. This board covers both, since the three classic sections are right there.

Plan 60 to 90 minutes for a full team: about ten minutes of silent writing, twenty to thirty for sharing and clustering, five for voting, and the rest for discussing top items and agreeing actions. Five sections take longer than three, so timebox each phase and use a visible timer. For async retros, leave the board open for a day, then meet briefly to vote and decide.

Reach for the starfish when a team has been running for a while and the obvious problems are fixed; what's left is tuning, and that's what more of and less of are for. It also suits bigger groups, since five prompts spread the conversation. Skip it for a team's first retro (start stop continue is gentler) and don't run the same format every sprint; variety keeps retros honest.