Energy Insights Retrospective

Discover what drains or recharges your team's energy with this visual retrospective template. The Energy Insights Retrospective uses a battery metaphor to help teams reflect on activities that energized or depleted them during their sprint cycle, providing valuable insights into team wellbeing and productivity patterns.

What Is the Energy Insights Retrospective?

The Energy Insights Retrospective is a structured reflection activity that helps development teams identify what activities, events, or interactions impacted their energy levels throughout a sprint. Using a visual battery metaphor, team members categorize items from "fully recharged" to "completely drained," creating a comprehensive energy map of the sprint experience.

This retrospective acknowledges that team productivity isn't just about time management—it's deeply connected to energy management. By visualizing energy patterns across the team, you can make informed decisions about work organization, communication practices, and process improvements that support sustainable performance.

Benefits & When to Use

This retrospective is particularly valuable when:

• Team members are showing signs of burnout or fatigue
• You've completed a particularly challenging or intense sprint
• You want to optimize your team's work processes for better energy management
• You need to identify energy-draining activities that could be eliminated or improved
• Your team is experiencing productivity fluctuations without obvious causes

Benefits include:

• Creates awareness of what activities energize versus drain different team members
• Highlights patterns that may be invisible in traditional retrospectives
• Provides a framework for discussing team wellbeing alongside performance
• Helps prioritize process improvements based on energy impact
• Builds empathy as team members understand each other's energy triggers

How to Run an Energy Insights Retrospective Session

Total time: 45-60 minutes

1. Set the stage (5 minutes)
   Introduce the activity and explain the purpose—to identify what energized or drained the team during the sprint. Start a Meeting to enable private sticky note writing.

2. Individual reflection (10 minutes)
   Each person adds sticky notes to the corresponding battery sections:

   • Recharged energy: What gave you energy?
   • Slightly drained: What took light amounts of energy?
   • Moderately drained: What took a decent amount of energy?
   • Severely drained: What took a lot of energy?
   • Completely drained: What wiped you out?

3. Share and group (15 minutes)
   Reveal all sticky notes and have each person briefly explain their contributions. Group similar items together to identify patterns.

4. Vote and prioritize (10 minutes)
   Conduct a voting round to identify the most impactful energy issues. Focus on both the most serious energy drains and the most significant energy boosters.

5. Create action items (15 minutes)
   As a team, develop specific actions to:

   • Reduce or eliminate the top energy drains
   • Amplify or increase opportunities for energy recharging
   • Create better awareness of energy management in day-to-day work

Tips for a Successful Energy Insights Session

• Focus on specific activities rather than general feelings. "The three-hour planning meeting" is more actionable than "feeling tired."

• Consider both individual and team energy. Some activities may drain one person but energize another—these differences are valuable insights.

• Look for the unexpected. Sometimes small, seemingly insignificant activities can have outsized energy impacts.

• Connect to measurable outcomes. Energy drain often correlates with decreased quality, slower velocity, or increased defects.

• Review energy patterns regularly. Energy insights should inform sprint planning and work distribution going forward.

• Balance the focus. While addressing energy drains is important, equally focus on increasing opportunities for energy-giving activities.

The Energy Insights Retrospective helps teams move beyond simply managing time to actively managing collective energy—leading to more sustainable performance, better team health, and ultimately more effective delivery.