Weather Forecast Retrospective
Sunny, cloudy, stormy, and forecast—mood and outlook for the next sprint.
Sunny
Clear wins and bright spots.
Cloudy
Ambiguous areas—uncertainty or mixed signals.
Stormy
Conflict, incidents, or heavy stress.
Forecast
What do you predict for next iteration—and what would change it?
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What is the Weather Forecast Retrospective?
The Weather Forecast Retrospective uses weather as a metaphor for team experience and outlook. The format blends backward-looking reflection with forward-looking prediction, making it one of the few retrospective formats that explicitly asks the team to forecast the future. Weather is a universally relatable metaphor that makes emotional and situational observations feel natural and non-threatening—saying "it was stormy" is easier than saying "there was conflict."
The four columns capture different atmospheric conditions. "Sunny" represents clear wins, bright moments, and positive energy. "Cloudy" captures ambiguity, uncertainty, and mixed signals—things that are not clearly good or bad. "Stormy" holds conflict, crises, heavy stress, and intense challenges. "Forecast" is the forward-looking column—what does the team predict for the next iteration, and what actions could change that prediction?
The Forecast column is the format distinctive feature. Most retrospective formats look backward exclusively, hoping that insights from the past will naturally inform the future. The Weather Forecast format makes the connection explicit: based on what happened (sunny, cloudy, stormy), what do you expect next, and what would change the forecast? This bridges reflection and planning in a single session.
When to use the Weather Forecast Retrospective
This format is ideal when the team needs to process a mixed experience and plan for what is ahead. Use it at the boundary between sprints or project phases, especially when the upcoming period has significant uncertainty. It is particularly valuable after a sprint that had both high points and low points—the weather spectrum accommodates this complexity better than binary good/bad formats.
The format works well for teams of four to ten people and fits into a 45 to 60 minute session. It is especially effective for teams that enjoy creative and visual formats but need more substance than pure metaphor exercises typically provide. The Forecast column ensures that the playfulness of the weather theme leads to concrete forward-looking commitments.
Use this format when morale check-ins are needed alongside process improvement, or when the team is entering a period of change and needs to collectively anticipate challenges. Avoid it when the team has a specific, urgent issue to resolve—the breadth of four columns may dilute focus when a single-topic deep dive would be more productive.
How to facilitate the Weather Forecast Retrospective
Start with a creative opening: "If this sprint were a weather day, what would it be?" Go around the room for one-word answers (sunny, partly cloudy, thunderstorm, etc.). This quick check-in calibrates the room mood and naturally segments into the columns. Then give the team six to eight minutes for silent card writing across all four columns.
Process Sunny first for positive reinforcement—brief but genuine. Move to Cloudy, which deserves thoughtful exploration: "What made this feel ambiguous? What information would have cleared the clouds?" The Cloudy column often reveals communication gaps and missing context. Then process Stormy with care—acknowledge the intensity of storms before discussing causes and remediation.
Spend the final third of the session on Forecast. Ask each person: "What is your prediction for next sprint, and what would change it?" Collect predictions and look for patterns. If most people forecast storms, the team needs proactive intervention. If forecasts are mixed, explore what is causing the divergence. Convert the most impactful "what would change it" responses into action items. Close by asking: "What is one thing each of us can do to make the forecast sunnier?"
Tips for getting the most out of the Weather Forecast Retrospective
The Forecast column is where this format creates unique value, so allocate at least 30 percent of session time there. Push for specific predictions rather than vague optimism: "I predict cloudy because we have three unresolved dependencies that could clear up or could block us" is more useful than "I think it will be mostly okay." Specific predictions create accountability—the team can check next sprint whether the prediction was accurate and learn from the delta.
Do not treat the Cloudy column as a lesser version of Stormy. Cloudiness represents a genuinely different state from storminess. Storms are intense but clear—everyone knows something is wrong. Clouds are ambiguous and often more insidious because they create uncertainty without urgency. A team that is consistently cloudy—uncertain about priorities, unclear on success criteria, or unsure about stakeholder expectations—needs clarity interventions, not just problem-solving.
Track weather patterns over time. If every sprint is stormy, the team is in a chronic crisis that individual retros cannot solve. If sunny periods always follow stormy ones in a boom-bust cycle, the team may need to moderate their pace to find sustainable weather. These patterns are only visible across multiple sessions and provide strategic insights that individual retros miss.
Variations and adaptations
For remote teams, use weather emojis liberally to add visual warmth to a digital board. Consider starting with a "weather map" where each team member places a weather icon on a shared canvas to represent their personal experience of the sprint. The resulting map instantly shows whether the team experienced the same weather or if some people were in sunshine while others were in storms.
For async teams, run a "weather journal" throughout the sprint. Each day, team members post a brief weather update in a shared channel: one emoji and one sentence. By sprint end, the team has a daily weather record that reveals patterns: "Every Monday was stormy—is there something about our Monday workflow?" The synchronous retro reviews the weather journal and creates the forecast collaboratively.
A popular variation adds seasonal context: "Are we in spring (growth and new beginnings), summer (peak productivity), fall (harvesting results), or winter (recovery and planning)?" This longer-cycle weather metaphor is useful for quarterly reviews where sprint-level weather gives way to seasonal patterns. Another adaptation for teams in organizations with multiple projects replaces the single forecast with a "weather advisory"—a brief, shareable summary of the team current conditions and outlook that can be sent to stakeholders and dependent teams.
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