How to run a Retrospective

This resource first appeared in issue #121 on 07 May 2022 and has tags Technical Leadership: Other, Becoming A Manager: Meetings

How to run a Retrospective - Chase Seibert

Siebert writes this in the context of sprints, but this short and solid how-to for running retrospectives applies to any project. (A sprint is just a a mini-project, after all - it has well-defined objectives, along with a beginning, middle, and end).

Siebert probably feels that actually following up on the retrospective is out of scope of an article on how to run the retrospective meeting, which is fair. Don’t take that as a sign that the followup is secondary, though! People will stop contributing if they don’t see good-faith efforts to incorporate the results of the feedback into improving the work. After all, that’s the whole point, right? For a recurring retrospective after a sprint, you can introduce things in the next sprint kickoff, or some other regular part of the cycle. For longer one-off projects, you might write something up distilling the results and circulate it.

I’d also add that these retrospectives, like standups, can work really well if you as the manager don’t run it, and rotate leadership of the meeting through willing members of the team. It helps develop skills, gets everyone more invested, helps you delegate a task, and lets you pay more attention to the content of the meeting (or even participate!) than the operation of the meeting.