Three Wishes retrospective

Someone hands your team a magic lamp. Each person makes three wishes: one for themselves, one for the team and one for everyone around. It is a light format, and it shows what people actually want from their work, which a regular retro rarely asks.

I wish for me

What do I want most for myself?

I wish for the team

What do I wish for my beloved team?

I wish for the world

What do I wish for everyone around?

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What a Three Wishes retrospective is

The app introduces this template with Aladdin's lamp: it's in your hands, and you get three wishes. The three columns sit at three distances from you. I wish for me asks what you want most for yourself. I wish for the team asks what you want for the people you work with. The third column asks what you wish for everyone around — users, neighboring teams, the company, anyone your product touches.

Most retrospectives ask what happened. This one asks what people want, and that changes the answers:

• A wish is easier to say than a complaint. "I wish releases didn't need someone online on Friday night" names the same problem as "our release process is broken", but nobody has to defend themselves against it.
• It makes room for the person. Retros are about the team. The first column gives each person a few minutes to talk about their own growth, focus and working conditions — things a manager otherwise hears only in one-to-ones, or in an exit interview.
• It lets people think big. A wish is allowed to be out of reach. Big wishes often point to a small first step that isn't.
• It ends on a hopeful note. After a hard quarter, a session about what people want is a break from yet another list of problems.

The trade-off: Three Wishes is weak at diagnosis. There is no column for what went wrong, so it won't find the root cause of a missed deadline. Use it when you want direction and energy, not an investigation.

When to use it, and when not to

The format fits moments when the team needs to look up from the backlog:

• the last retro of the year, or the first one in January;
• a holiday-season session, or a light retro after a big launch, when the team has had enough of problem lists;
• a new team's first month, to learn what each person hopes to get from the work;
• a retro that has gone stale, with the same three complaints every sprint;
• the week before planning, so the wishes can feed into next quarter's goals.

Pick something else when:

• Something has just gone wrong. After an incident or a failed release, the team has to go through what happened, and wishing feels like changing the subject. Mad Sad Glad gives the frustration a place.
• You need process changes for next sprint. Wishes give a direction, not a plan. A format with a "try" or "start" column gets to concrete fixes faster.
• The group is large. Three wishes from twenty people is sixty cards, a third of them personal. Split into smaller groups, or skip the personal column.
• People don't feel safe talking about themselves. Make the first column optional, or start with a format that stays at team level.

The three columns

Ask for exactly one card per column per person — three wishes, as the lamp promises. The limit forces people to choose, and the wish someone picks out of five tells you more than all five would.

I wish for me: what you want for yourself

Your own growth, focus, recognition and working conditions. The test against the team column: would this wish still matter if you changed teams tomorrow? Then it's yours.

• A sprint with no support rotation, so I can finish the search rewrite
• To give a talk at the internal tech meetup this spring
• To learn enough Kotlin to review the Android pull requests
• Two weeks of holiday in August without checking chat

I wish for the team: what you want for the people you work with

Practices, relationships, achievements and conditions for the whole team. The test: it would change how the team works together, and the team could in principle make it come true, perhaps with some help.

• Releases we don't have to babysit on Friday evenings
• One planning meeting a sprint instead of three
• That we celebrate launches before moving on to the next ticket
• A designer who stays with us for longer than a quarter

I wish for everyone around: beyond the team

Users, neighboring teams, the company, the wider community. The test: the main beneficiary is outside the team. This column often holds good product ideas, because people write them as gifts rather than as feature requests.

• That support stops apologizing for how slow the reports page is
• That the mobile team gets preview builds like ours
• That every new hire in the company gets a buddy for their first month
• That people on old Android phones get the same app speed as everyone else

Use this template — it's free

A 45-minute Three Wishes agenda

This plan suits four to eight people. With more, give the read-out extra time, or let each person read out only the wish they care about most.

1. Warm-up, 5 minutes. Keep it playful. "If you had a 'voucher' for any skill — what would you choose?", one of our icebreaker questions, is practically a wish already.
2. Rub the lamp, 2 minutes. Explain the rules: one wish per column, wishes may be big, and nobody may wish for more wishes.
3. Silent writing, 7 minutes. Cards stay hidden until everyone is done, so nobody bends their wish to match the first one they see.
4. Read-out, 10 minutes. Once the cards are revealed, each person reads their three wishes. Nobody comments yet; the only allowed response is a question.
5. Grouping, 4 minutes. Group the team wishes and the wishes for everyone around. The same wish from several people is the signal. Leave personal wishes as they are.
6. Voting, 3 minutes. Vote on team wishes and wishes for everyone around only. Personal wishes are not a popularity contest.
7. Discussion, 10 minutes. Take the top two or three wishes and ask: what is the smallest step that would make this partly true?
8. Action items, 3 minutes. One or two actions with an owner and a date, plus a note of any wish that needs someone outside the team.
9. Close, 1 minute. Each person names one wish, anyone's, that they would most like to see come true.

Running it with a remote team

• Start with a game. Instead of a question, open with Scribbles, the draw-and-guess warm-up built into ProstoRetro. It suits the tone of a session about wishes.
• Let people choose when to sign. Cards are anonymous by default, and each person decides per card. Some people sign their personal wish so teammates can help with it, and leave a pointed team wish unsigned.
• Read out loud, cameras on. On a call it's tempting to skip the read-out to save time. Here it is the heart of the session: hearing a colleague say their wish lands differently from reading it on a card.
• Allow pictures. Cards can carry images and GIFs. A wish for "one quiet week" with the right GIF needs no explanation.
• Keep the wishes. Every card stays on the retro's summary page, and participants with an account also get it by email. Bring the wishes back in three months, or at next year's session, and count the ones that came true.

Variations

Wishes with a deadline

Ask for wishes that could come true by a set date: "by the end of the quarter, I wish…". It limits the lamp's power and brings the session closer to planning, which helps a team that tends to wish for things nobody can deliver.

Three wishes and one thing to make disappear

Add a fourth column for the one thing each person would wave away if the lamp allowed it. It brings back the "stop" side of a retro in a lighter form. Build it as a custom template: ProstoRetro allows up to five columns, each with its own description and color.

Wishes with your stakeholders

Invite the product manager, a support lead or a designer from another team; when the board is open to anyone, guests join from the link with just a name. Their wishes for your team, and yours for them, are a gentle way to open a conversation about working together.

Common mistakes

• Letting the wishes evaporate. A pleasant session with no follow-up teaches people that their wishes don't matter. One action and one date to look back are enough.
• Treating personal wishes as requests to the manager. A manager who hears "I wish for a bigger role" and responds on the spot puts the person on display in front of everyone. Take personal wishes to a one-to-one.
• Debating during the read-out. "That's not realistic" ends the format. Save judgment for the discussion, and only for the voted wishes.
• Discussing only the team column. Users and neighboring teams appear only in the third column. Give at least one of their wishes a slot in the discussion.
• Running it right after a crisis. A magic lamp the day after an outage looks like avoidance.

FAQ

What is a Three Wishes retrospective?

A light retrospective in which each person makes three wishes: one for themselves, one for the team and one for everyone around. The team then picks the most shared wishes and turns them into a few small actions.

How long does a Three Wishes retrospective take?

Allow 45 minutes for four to eight people. A small team that skips the vote and discusses the single most shared wish can finish in half an hour.

How is it different from Hopes & Fears or WRAP?

Hopes & Fears looks at a specific project ahead and gives worries as much room as hopes. WRAP has a wishes column next to risks, appreciations and puzzles. Three Wishes is only about wishes, at three distances: you, the team and everyone else.

Can I run a Three Wishes retrospective online for free?

Yes. Pick Three Wishes when you create a board in ProstoRetro; it's free, and people join with a link. If it's your first retro in the app, this guide to running a retro covers the facilitation. For February, try the Valentine's Day retrospective; for everything else, the template library has a format.