Project Retrospective Facilitators Guide
Project Retrospective Facilitators Guide
Project Retrospective Facilitators Guide
Best For
15 or fewer people
Contents
Introduction......................................................................2
Key Concepts...................................................................3
Agenda.............................................................................. 4
Step-by-Step Instructions...........................................5
Questions for Retrospectives.................................. 13
Resources for Achieving Meeting Mastery ....... 15
About the Author......................................................... 16
–John Dewey
Preparation is required.
You’re asking the team to reflect on their experience, pull out key
learnings, and turn that into meaningful change. If you rush it, you’ll
get whatever comes to mind in the moment, which will usually say
more about how their current project is going than what happened
in the last one.
Don’t wing it. Have a plan, and make it easy for the team to come
prepared.
DURATION
Welcome
Project Review
• Successes
• Challenges
• Other Insights
Refine the agenda. Decide how you want to run the different
parts of the meeting and update the agenda accordingly. If
this is your first retrospective, we recommend sticking with
the simple format outlined in the online agenda.
Invite the team. Ask them to come prepared with their key
insights, observations, and ideas for improvement.
2 Project Review
Next, make sure everyone has a shared view on the
project. In order to come up with useful ideas that
everyone can agree on, the team needs a shared
understanding of the facts and insight into the parts of
the project in which they may not have been involved.
Do not skip or rush through this step. People will
arrive at the retrospective ready to discuss and solve
problems, often assuming they know everything they
need to know about what happened. This is rarely true.
If you are reviewing a project as a team, that means it
took many people with unique experiences to get to
that point. This step ensures everyone gets all the facts
straight before they try to solve problems they may
only partially understand.
We’ve listed 3 ways you can run this part of the meeting
on the next page.
After you complete the project review, click “Next >” to
begin sharing insights.
3.1 Successes
• Identify themes.
Notice related ideas and work together to pull out the
common themes. For example, a problem with unclear
requirements, a missed deadline, and an unhappy
customer can all be related to a step in the contract
process that needs improvement.
Question Sets
Use columns or a grid to organize answers in categories.