Get the Most From Retrospectives So They’re Not Wasting Your Time
Many companies observe practices designed to improve operations and efficiencies. One of those practices is the retrospective meeting.
Retrospectives take place after a project is completed, and typically the teams and individuals involved attend them. Retrospectives serve two purposes:
- To recognize what we did right during development (labeled as the “what-went-wells”) so we can keep doing it, and
- To call out what we didn’t do well (also known as “do-betters”) so we don’t make the same mistakes next time.
On paper, retrospectives are great. They give us the chance to celebrate our wins and improve ourselves through feedback.
In my corporate experience, retrospectives came in two flavors. The first was a discourse that remained civil, productive, and positive despite the long list of do-betters. Everyone walked away in a good mood.
The second one, unfortunately, amounted to nothing more than a bitchfest. These retrospectives followed projects that saw a lot of yelling and head butting. As a result, the meetings were scheduled immediately after product launch. Tempers still ran hot, and people weren’t shy about dumping their raw grievances.
In either case, the problem for me was that the do-betters repeated themselves during future projects, despite the fact that the retrospective facilitator scribbled all kinds of notes and input on the dry erase board then snapped a picture of it for documentation.
We invest our already limited time in these meetings, so how can we get some real benefits from them? I have a few suggestions.
Own Your Mistakes
Ownership means you acknowledge that what you did — or didn’t do — had a negative impact and that you take responsibility for it, even if it wasn’t 100% your fault.
Ownership can sting, especially when a room full of people agree you dropped the ball. But learning from your mistakes only improves your performance and lends to smoother project development in the future. We all want less stress, right?
If you’re a manager and your team was called out for a do-better, conduct a deeper dive during your next regularly scheduled team meeting and devise a better strategy for the next project.
It’s also a good idea to invite people from other teams who were directly involved or impacted so you can get any details they didn’t share during the retrospective. It might turn out that they could have shown improvement in how they handled their end.
If you’re an individual contributor and received a do-better, ask your manager and teammates for their input. Or, talk to your manager about it in a one-on-one, especially if you need his or her help mediating any rough patches between you and another person that surfaced during the project.
Sympathize with People and Their Grievances
During a retrospective I pointed out an issue regarding design assets, and an engineering manager immediately defended the design team and told me my problem wasn’t a problem. That really pissed me off because he not only invalidated my experience but he also gave me zero space to make my case.
Dismissing someone is harmful. It destroys the supportive space retrospectives are supposed to provide. If someone brings up an issue, there must be a reason. There’s no such thing as an invalid grievance, so always go into a retrospective with an open mind.
Plus, if you immediately shoot people down, they will likely tune out for the rest of the meeting. The result is loss of valuable feedback, and that defeats the purpose of a retrospective.
Promote Retrospectives to First-Class Citizenship
After creating new strategies with your team, you should share the wealth of information.
Hopefully your department has regularly scheduled all-hands meetings. These platforms are a valuable place for someone on your team to present retrospective highlights from the last month or quarter. At minimum, this presentation should include the do-betters and the plans going forward to improve them.
There are a number of benefits to doing this:
- You can get even more input from people outside your team;
- Other teams can streamline their processes from your insights;
- Your team earns more respect for owning its mistakes and taking action;
- The presentation re-exposes the lessons to your team members which keeps them fresh in their minds.
So Let’s Do Better With Retrospectives
The valuable time we put into retrospectives should provide an ROI, and they can, if we follow through, keep an open mind, and take them seriously. In the end, you and everyone at your company are on the same team, and leveraging retrospectives will get everyone into the end zone.
