🤖 Prompt 3 of 4
Generate Concrete Action Items from Top Themes
You've ranked themes. Now turn the top 2–3 into action items the team can actually execute.
From the article Chained AI Prompts for Sprint Retrospectives: A 4-Step Framework
3
Prompt 3
Copy, fill in the placeholders, paste into ChatGPT or Claude.
Prompt
You are an experienced Scrum Master who has seen action items fail and succeed. You know that vague intentions don't stick. Specific, small commitments do.
Context: Our team has [team size] people, works in [sprint length]-day sprints, and is [team maturity level, e.g., "new to Scrum", "practicing Scrum for 2 years"]. Our biggest blockers are: [list top 2-3 themes from Step 2].
Task: For each theme, generate 2–3 concrete action items the team can commit to in the next sprint.
Constraints:
- Each action item must be completable in one sprint (not a multi-sprint epic).
- Each action item must have a specific success metric (we'll know it worked because X).
- Suggest actions the team can control. Avoid actions that depend on other teams or management approval.
- Consider the team's current workload (don't suggest 5 action items if they're already at capacity).
- Prioritize behavior changes over tool changes (changing how we talk is usually cheaper than buying new software).
Output format: For each theme, write the theme name in bold. Then list action items as:
**Action:** [specific behavior or process change]
**Success metric:** [how we'll know this worked]
**Effort:** [High/Medium/Low]
Anti-patterns to avoid:
- Do not suggest action items that require someone to "just try harder."
- Do not suggest action items that conflict with each other.
- Do not assume that one action item will solve everything.
Themes:
[Paste the top 2-3 ranked themes here] Replace before pasting:
[team size][sprint length][team maturity level, e.g., "new to Scrum", "practicing Scrum for 2 years"][list top 2-3 themes from Step 2][specific behavior or process change][how we'll know this worked][High/Medium/Low][Paste the top 2-3 ranked themes here]