End of Project Retrospectives
I place a lot of importance on retrospectives, especially at project close. All projects have good points and bad points and it is important to learn from them so that the next project benefits. Retrospectives also provide the team an official closure and isolate problems to the scope of the project.
Project management processes like Prince 2 find this so important that it is a key phase for all projects.
If you are thinking of having an end of project retrospective, I recommend reading Agile Retrospectives. It provides a list of patterns for running retrospectives, whether at the end of the project or sprint/epic. My particular favourite is the “Timeline” method for analysing a project. I have had great success with this as it provides an obvious and simple way to gather information about the project and it helps people focus on what actually happened.
Here are some tips for running a retrospective:
- The key skill is to manage the behaviour of the group and to keep the group to analysing the facts and not starting a blaming session.
- Warm people up by starting with introductions or a game. Some people are louder than others, your job is to help everyone be heard, this helps their tongues loosen.
- Have house rules for behaviour during the retrospective, and see that people stick to them.
- Follow a structured approach to extract data, like using the “Timeline” technique. During this phase try to avoid analysing until the next phase. This part is hard as the group wants to talk about the most pressing issues straight away. Although common sense is required.
- As long as you know the group well, keep rolled up pieces of paper to throw at people (gently) if they start deviating from the rules. It seems to help lightens things up when it is needed.
- If there are any action points as part of the retrospective, make sure that they are documented and that someone in the group takes responsibility for each action with a deadline.
- Have a fixed time for the different sections of the retrospective.
- Make sure that you write up the retrospective within a couple of days and circulate while the points are still fresh in people minds.
- Take a digital camera for taking pictures of the timeline and all the materials like post-it notes and pens.
