Retrospectives: Using the Past to Define the Future
Introduction
A retrospective is a structured meeting in which a project team reflects on a previous iteration or phase, assesses its performance, identifies areas for improvement, and formulates a plan for future work. The main objective of a retrospective is to promote continuous improvement by deriving lessons from past experiences. For example, after a product or software release, a retrospective can be conducted to assess the development process and pinpoint areas for improvement in future releases. The objective is to enhance workflows and methodologies throughout the course of the broader initiative. This enables teams to make adjustments and increase efficiency during project execution, rather than waiting until the project completion. Retrospectives support the concept of continuous improvement, reducing the risk of complacency within the project.
To set up a tailored retrospective process, consider the nature of the project and how frequently the team moves through iterations and phases. Start by defining suitable stopping points based on iteration or phase completion. This article provides guidance on establishing a functional and efficient retrospective process.
Relevant Industry Standard Practices
The Project Management Institute (PMI) differentiates between retrospectives and lessons learned within its project management framework. Retrospectives are iterative analyses conducted at the end of an iteration, concentrating on immediate enhancements as part of continuous improvement initiatives. In contrast, lessons learned constitute a comprehensive organizational evaluation conducted at the completion of a project or phase, with the objective of identifying actionable insights for future initiatives. PMI guidance states that the project manager is responsible for ensuring lessons learned activities are conducted, with facilitation led by an independent and objective party.
Retrospectives are an essential part of Agile methodology. Following the guidelines from PMI, Agile retrospectives are held at the end of each Sprint with the intention of improving successive Sprints. According to PMI guidance, the Scrum Master is responsible for the retrospective process. While it is common for the Scrum Master to facilitate the retrospectives, this role can be rotated among the team members.
Tailoring a Retrospective to Meet Project Needs
Although retrospectives are commonly associated with Agile methodology, it is not necessary to follow Agile practices to benefit from them. Projects can design and customize retrospective processes to align with their specific project needs and life cycle. Project managers can enhance the traditional retrospective process by incorporating components from PMI Lesson Learned practice and Agile Retrospective framework. This article is intended for project managers who wish to develop a customized retrospective process that aligns with PMI principles while diverging from the conventional PMI retrospective approach to achieve improved outcomes.
Start with Understanding the Goals and Objectives of Retrospectives
The content of retrospective meetings should focus on the recently concluded iteration or phase, specifically the tasks accomplished during that period. Retrospectives aim to facilitate continuous improvement by reflecting on past performance. However, project managers may fail to capitalize on the opportunity to collect valuable candid feedback from team members if they do not clearly understand the goals and objectives of these meetings. This lack of understanding can hinder the successful implementation of the retrospective process, thereby negatively impacting the outcome. Therefore, when designing and defining the retrospective process, it is imperative that the project manager ensures the process meets all specified objectives and achieves its intended purposes outlined below:
Promote Continuous Improvement: Through regular evaluation of previous iterations and phases, retrospectives help the team in identifying inefficiencies and gaps in workflows, tools, or processes. This fosters continuous improvement aimed at enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.
Identifying Actionable Feedback: Retrospectives are designed not merely for information gathering, but to pinpoint actionable outcomes that must be prioritized and addressed. These outcomes can include corrective and preventive actions or strategies for addressing risks and opportunities. Over time, this iterative approach leads to significant cumulative progress.
Foster Team Collaboration and Communication: When structured appropriately, retrospectives provide a platform for open communication, encouraging team members to share their perspectives, ideas, and concerns without fear of negative repercussions. This exchange fosters a culture of collaboration and trust, enabling teams to address challenges constructively.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Retrospectives can include analyzing data from prior iterations and phases to detect trends and patterns. These insights can help reveal potential risks or opportunities, allowing the team to form data-driven strategies to mitigate risks or capitalize on opportunities for project success.
Knowledge Sharing: Retrospectives offer an opportunity for all team members to gather and collaboratively assess successes, identify areas for improvement, and derive lessons learned. This promotes knowledge sharing within a structured environment across a broader forum.
Benefits of Retrospectives
Retrospectives are a fundamental component of project management. By promoting transparency, collaboration, and continuous improvement, retrospectives enable teams to progress, increase efficiency, and deliver high quality results. The section below examines the benefits of conducting retrospectives in project management, emphasizing their influence on processes, personnel, and projects.
Proactively Identify Risks and Opportunities: Retrospectives are designed to identify and address process deficiencies and gaps, creating a space to uncover potential project risks and opportunities proactively.
Promoting Transparency: Retrospectives allow teams to discuss project successes and failures candidly, focusing on progress and improvement rather than blame. This transparency ensures accountability and enhances trust among team members and stakeholders, resulting in a constructive working environment.
Managing Conflicts Efficiently: It is natural for conflicts to arise when team members identify and discuss shortcomings pertaining to their areas. Retrospectives provide a structured and safe space to address team conflicts constructively by discussing challenges, focusing on solutions, and respecting diverse ideas. This transforms conflicts into improvement opportunities.
Capturing Lessons Learned: Retrospectives function as a repository for lessons learned, insights and experiences gained, strategies developed, and actions taken. This repository acts as a valuable reference library for future projects, enabling teams to avoid repeating mistakes and to capitalize on successful strategies.
Strengthening Stakeholder Relationships: The advantages of retrospectives benefit stakeholders as well. Clear communication and continuous enhancement demonstrate a firm dedication to the project's success and the delivery of high-quality results, thus boosting stakeholder confidence and satisfaction.
Empowering Teams: Retrospectives focus on team contributions rather than hierarchy, allowing teams to have an equal say in shaping their workflows and outcomes. Empowered teams are more motivated, engaged, and proactive. This leads to greater commitment and investment in the success of the project.
Enhancing Communication Skills: Retrospectives provide a platform for team members to develop communication and collaboration skills. During discussions, participants articulate their thoughts clearly and constructively, listen actively to others, and respond empathetically. These improvements will gradually expand from retrospectives to daily interactions within the team.
Challenges with Retrospectives
The retrospective should be a positive, inspiring experience for the project team. It enables team members to provide critical feedback, express concerns, and collaborate to develop solutions. Project managers can also gain valuable insights from the retrospectives, including a thorough understanding of team dynamics, the status of previous iterations and phases, and health of the overall project. Holding productive and effective retrospectives comes with its own challenges. Project managers must establish a robust process to overcome these obstacles and address these challenges. Below are examples of challenges and mitigation strategies for project managers:
Inadequate Planning and Facilitation: Retrospectives can be dull and repetitive if conducted in the same format every time. Additionally, inconsistent and poor planning leads to schedule conflicts, shallow discussions, and overlooks crucial issues, causing frustration and a perception that retrospectives are stale and wasteful.
Mitigation: Establish a cadence and allocate time, thereby creating a consistent habit for the participants. Share the agenda prior to the meeting, including the scope, objectives, and unresolved actions. This will help participants anticipate the topics and plan their contributions ahead of the retrospective. Additionally, occasionally hold a retrospective on the process itself, with the aim of shaking up the norm and improving productivity.
Failure to Follow Through on Actions: Ideas are effective only when actions are taken to implement them. A list of gaps and improvements is not beneficial if the team does not prioritize, act, and implement changes. Failure to act on feedback and input may lead to dissatisfaction with the retrospective process and a perception that it does not add value.
Mitigation: Establish a corresponding action log to track and monitor actionable outcomes from retrospectives. The complexity of the action log can be customized to meet the specific needs of the project. At a minimum, it should include essential attributes such as description, assigned date, assignee, priority, and status. The action log should be a key input for iteration or phase planning activities.
Limited Participation: Teams may be reluctant to engage in retrospectives due to fear of judgment or blame, a lack of active involvement, or lack of respect among team members. This can hinder self-reflection and impede participation.
Mitigation: Project managers should establish a safe space where all team members can contribute openly, promote active participation, focus on solutions over blame, and cultivate a respectful and empathetic culture. This can be accomplished by clearly defining and conveying the goals and objectives of the retrospective, as well as establishing and enforcing clear ground rules from the onset. It is advisable to consistently remind the team of these guidelines as needed.
Negative Focus and Lack of Constructive Solutions: Retrospectives should concentrate on identifying gaps and implementing improvements, emphasizing on “what went wrong and how to address it” rather than “who was responsible and how they can be blamed”. When retrospectives devolve into assigning blame and solely focusing on negativity, it can adversely affect team morale and hinder meaningful progress.
Mitigation: Guide and focus the retrospective discussions to identify specific gaps and areas for improvement related to process, tools, and resources. This method fosters team consensus and constructive solutions. Create a space that inspires and motivates the team to focus on innovation and problem solving. Share and celebrate success stories during retrospectives to boost enthusiasm and motivation.
Delayed Feedback and Memory Fading: Infrequent retrospectives, those held on demand, or cover extended intervals, may experience issues such as delayed feedback and memory fading. This makes it challenging to validate the feedback, determine root causes, and assess the benefits to the current status of the project.
Mitigation: Determine the optimal frequency for retrospectives to effectively gather feedback, ensuring a balance between minimizing disruptions to the project schedule and selecting the ideal timing to collect relevant and actionable insights. Typically, retrospectives are conducted at the conclusion of a release, an iteration, or a phase.
Understanding Techniques
There are various techniques for gathering feedback and input during retrospectives. Project managers have the option to select from existing techniques or design and customize one that best suits the project. For successful implementation, it is imperative that the team understands how the technique works in practice. Therefore, when designing the process, it is important to focus on clarity and simplicity to achieve the best results.
Below are examples of common techniques used in retrospectives to evaluate processes, workflows, and resources:
"What Went Well" Technique: This technique reflects on the previous iterations and phases to determine what went well, what did not, and how to improve. The goal is to retain elements that lead to positive outcomes, remove elements contributing to negative outcomes, and introduce initiatives for improvement.
Liked, Lacked, Learned (L3) Technique: This technique involves reflecting on previous iterations and phases to retain positive aspects (Liked), address elements that were inefficient or insufficient (Lacked), and share new insights and experiences gained (Learned).
Stop, Keep, Start (SKS) Technique: This technique aims to identify and eliminate wasteful and counterproductive elements (Stop), identify and continue with effective practices (Keep), and find and implement new improvement practices (Start).
Keep, Add, More, Less (KALM) Technique: Similar to the SKS technique, the KALM technique involves identifying and continuing effective practices (Keep) and finding and implementing new practices (Add). Additionally, the technique involves emphasizing elements that contribute to positive outcomes (More) and reducing or eliminating elements that contribute to negative outcomes (Less).
Drop, Add, Keep, Improve (DAKI) Methodology: Similar to the KALM technique, the DAKI technique involves identifying and continuing effective practices (Keep) and identifying and implementing new practices (Add). Additionally, the technique involves identifying and eliminating wasteful and counterproductive elements (Drop) and finding and implementing new opportunities for improvement (Improve).
Sailboat Technique: This technique uses a sailboat metaphor to assist the team (Ship) in visualizing their progress towards their goal and focuses on adjusting the contributing elements. The process involves identifying elements that hindered progress (Anchor), risks and blockers that derailed progress (Rocks), attributes that propelled the team forward (Wind), and the ultimate goal the team is striving to achieve (Land).
Three Little Pigs Methodology: This technique uses a metaphor from a familiar story to help teams evaluate project areas by categorizing the risks involved. Items with high risk and instability needing immediate attention are classified as “Made of Straw”. Areas with medium risk that are reasonably reliable and can be improved are categorized as “Made of Stick.” Low risk, reliable and solid areas are identified as “Made of Brick”.
Wishes, Risks, Appreciations, and Puzzles (WRAP) Technique: This methodology involves reflecting on prior iterations and phases, emphasizing positive and progressive elements. It is designed to acknowledge aspirations (Wish), express gratitude (Appreciation), and identify potential blockers (Risks) and areas needing attention (Puzzles).
Running an Effective and Productive Retrospective
Leading retrospectives as a new project manager can feel daunting. Participants often find unproductive and inefficient retrospectives frustrating, potentially viewing them as wasteful exercises. Key to a successful retrospective is establishing clear goals, creating a safe and positive space, utilizing a structured approach, developing and prioritizing action items, and properly celebrating and closing the meeting. Follow the steps below to establish and implement a robust retrospective process:
Step 1: Identify an appropriate frequency that aligns with the project requirements.
Step 2: Create an Action Log to monitor actionable outcomes.
Step 3: Develop and document a customized retrospective process.
Step 4: Select participants and establish a cadence.
Step 5: Establish ground rules.
Step 6: Periodically conduct a retrospective on the process itself to improve.
After the process has been established and communicated to the team, follow the steps below to facilitate retrospectives in an effective and efficient manner for maximum value:
Step 1: Prepare in advance and distribute the agenda.
Step 2: Optional - Remind participants of ground rules.
Step 3: Present the technique to be used.
Step 4: Facilitate and guide the retrospectives.
Step 5: Review the action items.
Step 6: Celebrate achievements and formally conclude the session.
Sample Tools and Templates
Project managers have access to various tools for developing retrospective templates and action logs that are both affordable and practical. These include Microsoft products, Microsoft SharePoint platform; Atlassian products; Google Docs products; free opensource solutions; or more expensive COTS products. The images below illustrate examples of templates that can be replicated using these tools.
Conclusion
Retrospectives are not simply meetings; they are an essential forum for fostering growth, collaboration, and innovation within teams. By consistently reflecting on experiences and adjusting practices based on feedback, teams can attain higher levels of efficiency, cohesion, and project success. Integrating retrospectives into project management processes is not just beneficial; it is crucial for nurturing a culture of continuous improvement and delivering exceptional results.
