I’ve talked about the goals of a retrospective. Now I’d like to talk about four principles of effective retrospectives. I generally find that principles help me more to be effective while doing my work than do definitions. Principles help to connect the abstract to the actual practice.

One of the principles is that it’s important to understand the goals. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. That road is, however, unlikely to be a retrospective. As a facilitator, I find the general goals helpful in planning a retrospective. I think that the specific goals are valuable to the participants, and generally discuss them as part of Setting the Stage at the beginning of the retrospective. As always, this is moderated by the understanding of the participants and the time available. Read More

In my previous post, I talked about what a retrospective is not. Understandably, I got immediate questions about what a retrospective is. This post is a partial answer to that.

My current definition of a retrospective is “looking at the past to guide choices for the future.” That definition, however, is insufficient to offer guidance on making your retrospectives effective. It’s even insufficient to distinguish what I would call a retrospective to those who use the word for other similar or related activities. A retrospective is different from a “post-mortem,” a “lessons learned,” or many other forms of “process improvement,” but is often confused with these.

A retrospective should have a purpose. If it’s merely a formality, it’s unlikely to provide much benefit. Perform your retrospectives mindfully, thinking about your goals prior to the retrospective and choosing activities to meet those goals.

You may have many different specific goals for different retrospectives. Whatever the specific goals, the general goals of a good retrospective seem to fit three categories. Read More