Retrospectives

After an event or project, all the stakeholders come together to celebrate the successes of the project, and learn from failure in a constructive manner without finger-pointing. After a retrospective participants have concrete actions for the next event or project, and can contain broader organisational change.

Retrospective benefits:

• Closure
• Learning from our own mistakes
• Learning from someone else's mistakes
• Acknowledging aligned practices and accomplishments
• Rewriting organizational stories
• Learning a healthy ritual
• Discovering strengths of the organization
• Clarifying aligned roles for players
• Allowing to connect emotionally
• Challenging each others assumptions
• Providing an overview of what's actually happening in the organization
• Building trust across boundaries
• Clear results, that lead to realistic commitments

Retrospective risks:

• Emotional upset
• Unrealized expectations
• Lack of follow up leading to frustration and distrust
• Last minute sabotage
• Repercussions and retaliations
• Loss of control at the top
• Increase in awareness of personal responsibilities and accountability
• And of the chasm between responsibilities and accountability
• Can be a life style changing event
• Discovering that you waited too long to do aretrospective
• Discovering some of your assumptions are invalid

Risks of not doing retrospectives:

• Emotional upset piles up
• Repeating mistakes over and over again
• Carrying forward unhealthy relationships
• Not using an opportunity for sustaining and reinforcing best practices
• Lack of adaptivity
• Less access to hidden wisdom
• Not having your assumptions challenged
• Would have could have should have thinking
• Learning organization is not learning
• Getting stuck in causality loops
• Less access to hidden resources

Retrospectives can provide lessons on architecture, planning, communication, product information flow and possible early intervention points.

The more tangible, tonal product of this choreography is a report to management by participants, closing feedback loops with recommendations and concrete actions.

I facilitate retrospectives and the introduction of this practice in organizations. For more details, please contact me or members from the retrospective facilitators.

History

I learnt how do to retrospectives through Nynke Fokma and my own experiences. Retrospectives employ techniques from the work of Virginia Satir and Gerald M. Weinberg.