Sprint retrospective in English: phrases for non-native speakers

The retro board is full of sticky notes, the facilitator says "Anyone want to talk about this one?", and the note is yours. You know exactly what you mean in your own language: the release was chaotic because nobody owned the deployment. In English, it comes out as "The deploy was… not good."

Retrospectives are harder than standups for non-native speakers. A standup is a script you repeat every day. A retro asks you to criticise, disagree and suggest changes, often in front of a manager, and to do it without sounding rude. This guide gives you phrases for each part.

What a retro is for

The Scrum Guide describes the Sprint Retrospective as the event where the team "inspects how the last Sprint went with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and their Definition of Done", and identifies the most helpful changes to improve. Most teams run it in some version of three columns: what went well, what didn't, and what we'll change.

The language follows the same three columns.

What went well

This part sounds easy, but "It was good" says nothing. Name the thing and why it mattered.

• "I think the pairing on the payment bug worked really well. We fixed it in a day instead of a week."
• "Shout-out to Ola for the test data script. It saved me hours."
• "Having the designs ready before planning made a big difference."
• "The new review rotation seems to be working. PRs got merged a lot faster."

What didn't go well

Here the goal is to describe a problem without blaming a person. The easiest trick is to talk about the process or the situation, not about "you" or "they".

Useful openers:

• "One thing that didn't work so well for me was…"
• "I found it a bit frustrating that…"
• "I'm not sure if it's just me, but…"
• "I think we underestimated…"
• "It felt like we were…"

"I'm not sure if it's just me, but…" is particularly useful. It invites others to agree and makes a hard point sound like a question, not an accusation.

Agreeing and disagreeing

Retros are discussions, so you'll want to react to what others say.

• "Yeah, I had the same experience."
• "Just to add to that…"
• "I see it a bit differently. For me, the bigger problem was…"
• "I agree it was a problem, but I'm not sure that's the cause."

For more ways to push back without sounding harsh, see how to disagree politely in English.

Action items

A retro without action items is just a complaint session. When it's time to decide what changes:

• "What if we tried… for the next sprint?"
• "Could we agree that…?"
• "I'm happy to take this one."
• "Who wants to own this?"
• "Let's check next retro if it actually helped."

Keep action items small and specific. "Improve communication" is not an action item. "Post the release plan in the team channel the day before" is.

When you're the facilitator

If it's your turn to run the retro, a few lines carry you through:

• "Let's start with a quick check-in. One word for how the sprint felt."
• "We've got about ten minutes left, so let's vote on what to discuss."
• "Let's park that for now and come back to it if we have time."
• "Before we finish, let's go through the action items and owners."

Common mistakes

• "We must…" for suggestions. "We must write more tests" sounds like an order. "We should" or "Maybe we could" is closer to what you mean.
• "Problem" in every sentence. Try "issue", "challenge", "blocker" or "pain point" instead.
• Saying nothing. Many non-native speakers stay quiet in retros, and the team loses the perspective of the person who actually hit the problem. One short, specific point is better than none.

How to get better at it

Read the phrases once, then say two or three of them out loud about your actual last sprint. A retro is about your real work, so practise with your real problems, not textbook examples.