Run a simple retrospective to evaluate and improve your work
Use this template to reflect on recent work with your team. Evaluate what went well, what went poorly, what ideas the group has for improvement, and how the group should take action for next time. This simple structure is useful both alone or in groups.
Retrospectives meetings are often held after a sprint review to discuss what went well and what needs improvement. A facilitator (often a project manager or scrum master) guides this meeting to ensure team members understand objectives and provide ideas on how to achieve them.
This retrospective template creates an easy-to-follow foundation for evaluating and improving your work. When you create a template you’ll work with four key quadrants:
Keep these key elements in mind when going through the following steps:
Outline the main focus for the retrospective session and start adding ideas to the template. Working silently and individually, have each participant create a few sticky notes in all four quadrants for about five minutes. With the remaining time, discuss notes in each quadrant.
Have each team member work individually creating sticky notes on what they believe went well during the project. These thoughts should encompass what went well, what should be celebrated, and specific call-outs for progress made and jobs well done.
In this quadrant, your team repeats the above exercise, only this time for what went poorly. This should include where the team faced problems and what held them back. Reflect on processes that were frustrating or steps that caused friction.
By identifying the root causes of what went poorly, team members can contribute ideas on what to improve for next time.
This quadrant is dedicated to the teams’ ideas. Ideas include improvement opportunities, ideas for future work as a team, and areas of opportunity for the next project.
Team members can use the notes from what went well and what went poorly to inspire these ideas. All of this helps form the action items needed in the next step.
Creating actionable steps for improvement is the driving purpose of a quick retrospective. This quadrant covers how the team should take action, including what they should do next, what specific things should change, and what needs to extend beyond the meeting.
After identifying what went well and what went poorly, teams can easily create actionable steps that are both measurable and easily understood.
The main purpose of holding a retrospective is to reflect on a recent agile sprint, project, or period of time in order to identify what went well, what could have gone better, and what changes can be made to improve future performance.
Retrospectives are commonly used in Agile methodology for product management, but can be used in any type of project or team setting. They are typically conducted at the end of a project, a sprint, or a defined period of time, although they can also be held at other points in the project lifecycle.
The retrospective should be structured in such a way that all team members and stakeholders feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas. One way to structure a retrospective is to start with a brief review of the previous sprint. This can be followed by a round of positive and negative "fishes," where team members share one thing that went well and one thing that could be improved.
Finally, the retrospective should end with a plan for the next sprint. This plan should be based on the feedback from the previous retrospective. By following this structure, the retrospective will be more focused and productive, and will help the team to continuously improve.
While all retrospectives share the common goal of identifying areas for improvement and making changes to enhance performance, sprint retrospective meetings are unique in their focus on the specific events and outcomes of the just-completed sprint.
This allows the agile or scrum team to make timely adjustments and improvements to their processes, performance, and backlog prioritization based on the feedback and insights gained during the sprint retrospective.
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