SaMoLo retrospective: Same, More, Less

Most of what a settled team does is right in kind and wrong in amount. SaMoLo asks three questions about each practice: keep it as it is, do more of it, or do less?

Same

Baseline practices to maintain—don’t break what works

More

Things to do more often or at greater scale

Less

Things to reduce in frequency, scope, or rigor

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What a SaMoLo retrospective is

SaMoLo stands for Same, More, Less. The team sorts its habits, meetings and practices into three columns: what should stay exactly as it is, what deserves more time or a wider reach, and what should shrink. There is no column for brand-new ideas and none for killing things outright. Everything on the board already exists; the only question is how much of it you want.

That constraint is the reason to use it. Formats like Start Stop Continue ask yes-or-no questions, and on a team that already works reasonably well, the honest answer to "what should we stop?" is often "nothing, really". Yet the standup still runs 25 minutes and code review still takes two days. SaMoLo turns switches into dials, which matches how a mature team actually improves: by small adjustments, not by revolutions.

What the format does better than its neighbors:

• "Less" is easier to say than "Stop". Proposing fewer status meetings is a suggestion. Proposing to stop them is a confrontation with whoever set them up. Lower stakes bring more honest cards.
• It protects what works. The Same column makes the team name its foundations out loud, so a well-meant change does not quietly break them.
• It is fast. Three columns, familiar material, no metaphor to explain. A full session fits in 45 minutes, and a compact one in 30.
• It exposes trade-offs. Time is finite. When More fills up and Less stays empty, the team can see it is planning to do more of everything with the same hours.

When to use it, and when not to

SaMoLo is a tuning tool. Reach for it when:

• the team is stable and nothing is on fire, but people sense things could run smoother;
• you changed something two or three sprints ago, such as pairing, a WIP limit or a new review rule, and want to calibrate it;
• you need a short retro between longer ones, or the team has little patience for retros at the moment;
• your usual retro produces "nothing to report", which often means the problems are of degree, not of kind.

Pick something else when:

• Something went badly wrong. A failed release or a tense sprint needs diagnosis, not dial-turning. 4Ls or the sailboat retrospective give the problems more room.
• The team needs new practices. SaMoLo has nowhere to put "let's try trunk-based development". Start Stop Continue does.
• You want both the switches and the dials. The Starfish retrospective is SaMoLo plus Start and Stop: five columns, a little longer, and a better fit when the team is ready for bigger changes.
• The team is brand new. There is nothing to tune yet.

The three columns

Ask people to name the practice and the direction on the same card, and, where they can, the amount. "More pairing" is a start; "Pair on anything that touches the data model" is something the team can agree to.

Same: what to keep exactly as it is

Practices that work at their current size, frequency and strictness. The test that separates Same from More: if this happened twice as often, would it be better or just more? If "just more", it belongs in Same.

This column often looks like the boring one, and teams rush past it. Don't. A Same card is a commitment: whoever wants to change this practice later has to argue against a decision the team made on purpose.

• Thursday demo with someone from support in the room
• Two reviewers on anything that touches authentication
• Releasing every Tuesday: predictable, nobody has to ask when
• A WIP limit of three in the In Progress column

More: what to do more often or at greater scale

Practices that pay back what they cost and would pay back more if you widened them: more often, more people, more parts of the codebase. The test: can you say what "more" means? Twice a week instead of once; all four squads instead of one; every ticket over three points, not just the risky ones.

• Pairing on tickets that change the data model
• One-page written proposals before big changes, like the one for the cache rewrite
• Talking to users: two interviews this quarter is not enough
• Feature flags, so unfinished work can be merged instead of living in long branches

Less: what to reduce in frequency, scope or rigor

The app names three separate dials here, and it helps to ask which one the card means. Frequency: the planning meeting could be every two weeks instead of every week. Scope: estimate only what you will start this month. Rigor: a copy change does not need the full design review.

The line between Less and Stop is the honest amount. If the writer would really be happy with zero, the card should say so. That is a signal worth noticing, and a reason to run Start Stop Continue next time.

• Standup has drifted to 25 minutes: back to 15, with a timer
• We re-estimate tickets nobody will touch this quarter
• Mandatory design review for text-only changes
• Chat pings during the no-meeting mornings

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A 45-minute SaMoLo agenda

This plan suits a team of four to nine people. Cut the discussion to ten minutes for a 30-minute version.

1. Warm-up, 4 minutes. A quick question to get voices in the room; take one from our list of work icebreaker questions, or let ProstoRetro open the board with an icebreaker round.
2. Review last time's actions, 4 minutes. In a tuning format this matters more than usual: last time's "More pairing" is this time's evidence. ProstoRetro starts the retro with the open action items.
3. Silent writing, 7 minutes. Everyone writes cards in all three columns. Cards stay hidden until writing ends, so people do not just agree with the first card they see.
4. Grouping, 5 minutes. Merge cards about the same practice. Watch for conflicts: one person's More next to another's Less on the same meeting is the most interesting thing on the board.
5. Voting, 4 minutes. Everyone votes on the topics worth changing. Same cards rarely need votes unless someone disagrees with them.
6. Discussion, 15 minutes. For each top topic, turn the direction into a setting: how much more, how much less, exactly? "Standup 15 minutes, timer on, parking lot after" is an agreement. "Shorter standups" is a hope.
7. Action items, 4 minutes. One owner and one due date per change. For every More you accept, ask what the team will do less of to make room for it.
8. Close, 2 minutes. Read back the Same column as well as the changes, so people leave knowing what is staying.

Running it with a remote team

• Settle the number with a poll. When the team agrees on "less" but not on how much, run a quick anonymous poll in the room: "Standup length: 10, 15 or 20 minutes?" It ends a circular debate in a minute.
• Pair it with the pulse survey. ProstoRetro can run an anonymous pulse survey at the start and reveal the results during discussion. If the mood is dropping while every card says "Same", something is missing from the board.
• Let the clock run itself. SaMoLo works well as the short retro. Set a meeting length when you create the board and the app splits it across the phases and topics.
• Collect Less cards as they happen. Annoyances are easiest to describe in the moment. With an infinite room, people add cards during the sprint; they stay hidden until the meeting.
• Make the setting visible. Put the agreed number in the action item itself, "Planning every other Monday from the 14th", so the reminder email and the next retro's review carry it.

Variations

Scoped SaMoLo

Run it on one area only: "our meetings", "code review" or "how we work with the data team". The cards get more specific, and a 30-minute session is enough. State the scope before anyone writes, and park cards outside it for another session.

SaMoLo with a Try column

Add a fourth column, Try, for one or two small experiments. It keeps the tuning focus while leaving room for a new idea. You can build it as a custom template with up to five columns of your own. If the team keeps wanting Start and Stop as well, switch to the Starfish.

The dial log

Open the previous retro's summary on a shared screen while the team writes. Each card then answers a sharper question: did the change we made last time go far enough, too far, or about right? After three or four rounds, the team has a record of how its practices evolved.

Common mistakes

• More with no Less. Every More costs time. If the board adds hours and removes none, the changes will quietly fail by the second week.
• Directions without amounts. "More testing" cannot be checked next retro. Ask for a number, a rule or an example.
• Everything lands in Same. A comfortable team may file everything under "fine as it is". Ask which Same card the team would miss least.
• Hiding a real problem behind a dial. If the same Less card returns three retros in a row, it is no longer a tuning issue. Give it a full session with another format.
• Cutting rigor without a guardrail. Less review on low-risk changes is fine if the team agrees what counts as low-risk. Write that definition into the action item.

FAQ

What does SaMoLo stand for?

Same, More, Less: what to keep as it is, what to do more often or at a larger scale, and what to reduce in frequency, scope or rigor.

What is the difference between SaMoLo and Start Stop Continue?

Start Stop Continue asks whether to have a practice at all; SaMoLo asks how much of it to have. Use Start Stop Continue to introduce or drop practices, and SaMoLo to fine-tune ones that already exist.

How long does a SaMoLo retrospective take?

About 45 minutes for a team of four to nine people. Because the material is familiar, a 30-minute version with ten minutes of discussion works well for teams that run retros every week.

Can I run a SaMoLo retrospective online for free?

Yes. The template is built into ProstoRetro and free to use. With a 30-minute meeting length set on the board, it fits comfortably into a weekly routine. For a walkthrough of the app, read how to run a great retro, or browse all retrospective templates.