ESVP (Explorers, Shoppers, Vacationers, Prisoners)

What is ESVP?

ESVP is a short anonymous check-in that asks one question before the real retrospective starts: how did each person walk into this meeting? Everyone privately picks one of four roles — Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer or Prisoner — and the board shows the distribution without naming anyone. It takes five minutes and tells the facilitator whether the group is ready to do the work or is quietly waiting for the hour to end.

The exercise comes from Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen, where it opens the "Set the Stage" phase. Its value is diagnostic, not decorative: a retrospective run with four Prisoners in the room produces polite silence and a list of action items nobody intends to do. Knowing that before you open the first topic changes how you facilitate the next fifty minutes.

When to use ESVP

• First retrospective with a new team, when you have no read on how people feel about the ritual.
• After a rough sprint or an incident, when attendance is mandatory and resentment is likely.
• When engagement is visibly dropping — cameras off, one person talking, action items repeating sprint after sprint.
• After a reorg or a change of manager, when the psychological cost of speaking up has shifted.
• Before a long or high-stakes session, such as a quarterly or release retrospective, where a disengaged room wastes a lot of people's time.
• Periodically as a trend line — running ESVP every fourth retrospective shows whether the ritual is gaining or losing the team.

Skip ESVP when the team already talks openly and the retrospective agenda is tight. It is a diagnostic instrument; running it every single time turns it into another box to tick, which is exactly the disease it detects.

The columns explained

Explorers

People who want to discover new ideas and insights. They arrived curious, they will volunteer observations, and they are willing to look at uncomfortable data. Explorers are your engine for the session — but if they are the only ones speaking, the retrospective reflects their view of the sprint and no one else's.

Shoppers

People who will look over everything available and are happy to walk out with at least one useful idea. This is the healthiest default state for a recurring retrospective. A room that is mostly Shoppers with a few Explorers is a room where a normal, productive session will work without any special handling.

Vacationers

People who are not really interested in the retrospective itself but are glad to be away from their regular work. They are pleasant, they nod, and they contribute very little. Vacationers are a signal that the session is not connected to anything the person cares about — usually because past action items went nowhere.

Prisoners

People who feel forced to attend and would rather be doing something else. A single Prisoner is normal. Several Prisoners mean the retrospective has a credibility problem, a safety problem, or both. Do not try to fix this inside the same hour: acknowledge the result out loud, shorten the session, and spend the time on one concrete irritant the team can actually remove.

Example board

A nine-person platform team ran ESVP in the retrospective after a release that slipped twice. Votes were anonymous; the facilitator read the totals aloud before opening the board.

The session that followed dropped the usual four-column format entirely and spent forty minutes on a single question: why the release slipped twice. Two of the three Prisoners spoke. The retrospective produced one action item instead of five, and that one was finished.

Timing for a team of 5–10

Facilitator prompts

• "Before we start: how did you walk into this meeting? One card, one column, no names."
• "Here is what the board says. What does that shape tell us?"
• "Nobody has to explain their vote. I am asking what we should do about the picture, not who made it."
• "If you are a Vacationer or a Prisoner today — what would have to be different for you to be a Shopper next time?"
• "Last time we ran this we had four Shoppers and one Prisoner. Today it is the other way round. What changed?"
• "Given this, I am cutting the agenda down to one topic. Which topic is worth the hour?"

Common mistakes

• Asking who voted Prisoner. This destroys the anonymity that made the answer honest and guarantees the next vote is fake. Never ask, and say up front that you will not.
• Collecting the votes and moving on. If the result changes nothing about the session, people learn the check-in is theatre and start voting Shopper out of politeness.
• Running it with the manager present without saying so. Line-manager attendance changes what people are willing to admit. Decide the guest list before the check-in, not after.
• Treating one Prisoner as a crisis. Someone had a bad morning. Look at the distribution and the trend across sessions, not at a single card.
• Using ESVP every single retrospective. It stops being a measurement and becomes a warm-up ritual people click through without reading.
• Fixing the mood instead of the cause. Prisoners are usually a symptom of unfinished action items. Close two old ones before the next session and the distribution moves on its own.

How to run ESVP in QRetro

1. Create a board from the ESVP template — the four columns are already set up.
2. Share the board link with the team; participants can join without an account.
3. Read the four definitions aloud and confirm that voting is anonymous.
4. Give everyone two minutes to place one card in one column.
5. Reveal the board, state the totals, and discuss the shape rather than the individuals.
6. Decide what you are changing about this session, then open your main retrospective board and run it.