What is a retrospective? The 1-minute guide

The term “retrospective” means looking back. In the work context, this usually refers to an “agile retrospective”.

An agile retrospective is a workshop format for reflecting on and improving collaboration. The role and implementation of an agile retrospective have been defined in particular by the Scrum Guide. See: Scrum Guide

Even before retrospectives were used in the world of work, the term Retrospective already in the art world used for exhibitions that retrospectively consider the works of an artist. The big difference to retrospectives in the art world is that retrospectives in the work context also deal with how to further develop the work in the future, instead of exclusively looking back.

See also: Purpose and benefits of retrospectives (simply explained)

The simplest example of a retrospective (and at the same time a popular retro format) is to simply ask:

• What went well?
• What went wrong?
• What can we try in the future?

Since the questions are about stimulating reflection, more and more methods for retrospectives have emerged over time. For example, the sailboat, starfish, or keep-stop-start retrospectives have emerged.

We have summarized a comprehensive overview of the best-known as well as unusual, creative retrospectives here: 32 retrospective methods

The agenda and phases of a retrospective basically take place (regardless of the format) according to a proven pattern:

• Check in
• Data gathering
• Prioritize
• Insides and Action Items
• Completion or check-out

Each of these steps can be customized and designed individually. However, it is always important take the Double Diamond concept when designing the retrospective into account.

Do the phases and the process of a retrospective sound too formal and daunting to you? Don’t be unsettled and just try out a retrospective in a suitable software for retrospectives.

After one or two trial runs at the latest, you will be familiar with the process. It’s best to just open the Keep-Stop-Start Retro in Echometer and familiarize yourself - learning by doing:

After this, you will already have a good feeling for how a retrospective works in practice and how you can moderate it.

Many teams that have established retrospectives use the Scrum framework for organizing their cooperation.

With Scrum, work is organized into iterative sprint cycles. Within these Scrum cycles, the retrospective is an integral part.

With retrospectives, Scrum ensures that teams reflect on their collaboration weekly or at least monthly, depending on the sprint length.

Retrospectives and Scrum belong together. But also other working methods like OKRs or Kanban use retrospectives:

• Kanban Retrospective – In Kanban you don’t work in cycles, but you have regular retrospectives (also sometimes referred to as Service Delivery Reviews ) in which one reflects the flow of work and collaboration.
• OKR Retrospective – When managing objectives with OKRs, at the end of each cycle, it is reflected on how well the objectives were set, how their measurement helped the team, and how one could improve the objective setting and tracking in the next OKR cycle.

A good retrospective allows all team members to openly share their impressions. If the feedback is shared openly, it must of course also be able to be discussed openly and purposefully in the second step.

In order to create this atmosphere of conversation and openness, there is the so-called “Prime Directive,” which should ideally be explained again to all participants at the beginning of the retrospective:

Regardless of what we discover, we must assume that everyone did the best that he/she could, given his/her knowledge, skills and abilities, the available resources, and the situation at hand.

– Norman L. Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews

Accordingly, good retrospectives are always characterized by relatively balanced speaking shares. Especially with inexperienced teams, a good retro facilitation is essential.

In this context very exciting: We have analyzed over 30,000 retrospectives and published our findings from this analysis in our blog: The big analysis of 30,000 retrospectives

Check out our eBook for more tips and tricks: eBook: 20+ Facilitation Tips for Great Retrospectives

A retrospective usually lasts 60 to 90 minutes. We do not recommend going far beyond 90 minutes, as the attention span decreases over time and the team members get tired.

However, retrospectives can also be shorter than 60 minutes. Here our tips for short retrospectives

Of course, with the right remote retro tool (like Echometer) retrospectives can be carried out both on-site, completely remotely and in hybrid setups.

Retrospectives are a key for remote teams in particular for remote team building .

Often, retrospectives are popularly associated with Sprint reviews or Lessons learned workshops confused. Therefore, in these articles, we have taken the time to address what a retrospective is not and where the differences lie:

• Differences between Sprint Review and Retrospective : Retrospective focuses not only on the team’s work result, but on the meta-level of collaboration within the team and how the collaboration led to the result.
• Differences between Lessons Learned Workshops and Retrospective : Retrospectives take place continuously, not just once at the end of a project.

Of course, there are other content-related retrospective anti-patternsthat describe what a retrospective should not be.

Teams that want to continuously develop themselves and their collaboration use retrospectives. For these agile teams, retrospectives are a central meeting format in which they reflect on their collaboration, evaluate their measures, and derive new actions from them.

So, if your team is not yet using retrospectives for continuous improvement, now is a good time to get started!

Try a Retrospective in Echometer

Credits: Woman thinking photo created by wayhomestudio - freepik