Importance of Retrospective

A retrospective meeting is a structured review of the process and outcome of a project. It can be at the end of a project or at the end of a particular phase of the project. If agile methodology is followed, the project would be run in regular interval sprints. In such a case, the retrospective meeting can be at the end of each sprint which typically is 3 weeks.

There can be another name for the retrospective meeting, like lesson learned or postmortem or simply review meeting. Whatever may be the name, the goals for such meetings are same and they maybe as follows:

• Identify the mistakes made during the progress to not make the same ones again.
• Identify the high points to understand the strengths of the team.
• Identify the low points to rectify the cause of them.

So in other words, review the good, bad and ugly of the project or project phase so far.
A good and effective way to conduct such a meeting is to ask these three questions from the participants:

During the sprint or project ...

1. What went well?
2. What didm't go well?
3. What can be improved?

Answers that fall in the same category can be grouped together and the size of the grouping can serve as the priority within all the corrective actions.

The overall idea is simple; continuous improvement.

Reference:

• https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/09/importance-project-retrospectives-part-1/
• https://www.mentimeter.com/blog/great-leadership/the-why-and-how-of-project-retrospective-meetings