Reflections/retrospectives are powerful tools that are essential in any job. For any team, analyzing projects, decisions, sprints, and work done is an opportunity to adjust processes and make work more efficient.
5 Rules of Any Retrospective
- Create a positive and inclusive environment where team members feel comfortable and safe to share their thoughts and opinions.
- Clarify the purpose and goals of the retrospective, ensuring that everyone understands the focus of the discussion.
- Collect relevant information and data to provide a factual basis for the retrospective. This can include metrics, feedback, observations, or any other data sources that help the team gain a clear understanding of the project or process being evaluated.
- Encourage open and honest communication among team members to share their perspectives and insights.
- Summarize the key findings, decisions, and action items discussed during the retrospective.
Project Retrospective
When:
- after an unusual, new, unique project
- after a failed or difficult project
- after a very long/scale project
Objectives:
- Analyze the work of the team during the project, find weak and strong parts of the process.
- If something went wrong — understand why and how to prevent it in the future. If something was done particularly well — note it and figure out how to make it a consequence rather than a coincidence.
- Close the project mentally, share the accumulated emotions, and tune in to the new project.
Template for project retro:
Retrospective as a Regular Part of Work Process in Scrum
When:
- at the end of the sprint
- at the end of the quarter
- at the end of the year
Objectives:
- Reflect on the recently completed sprint and to gather insights and learn from the team experiences. Review the progress, achievements, and challenges encountered during that iteration to know the area for improvements.
- Identify what is going wrong in the process and identify problems in time that will potentially prevent you from achieving your quarterly goals or deadlines.
- Keeping a finger on the pulse of the emotional state of the team, the level of workload of employees, their mood swings, and drops in motivation levels. Retro here helps everyone to relax a little, share feelings from the working week, and build team building.
Template for sprint retro:
Template for quarter/year retro:
Unscheduled Retro/Reflections or Check-ups on Team
This type of meeting cannot be called a "retrospective" in the full sense, but nevertheless it contains an important part of reflection on existing processes, situations, routines, sometimes even habits of the team.
When:
- after emotional upheavals, stressful weeks, during unstable market or even maybe political situations
- after major or fundamental conflict situations
- after major changes in the work process
Objectives:
- Understand what's going on with the team, make sure the team can continue to work confidently, to help the team get organized and in tune.
- Analyze existing processes, understand what weaknesses the team sees in the work environment, communications, culture.
- Share experiences, understand what can be done to overcome potential worries, insecurities, conflicts, maybe even layoffs.
Template to check-up on team after tough times:
