Retrospective
The retrospective is a great way to debrief a team after a period of work has been completed.
This could be anything from a long-term project, to a short workshop. Therefore the activities in this agenda can be lengthened or adapted, depending upon your desired outcomes.
This session is designed to be run remotely, and it will give the participants time to reflect, assess the outcomes of the recent project and organise their next steps by prioritising the tasks which would be most beneficial to them.
Objectives
- Encourage team reflection on a project you’re reviewing, with a focus on what they learned and enjoyed
- Record key takeaways, and help everyone understand what they would do differently in the future
Materials
Instructions
Once a project or workshop has taken place, it’s important for a team to look back and review key learnings, create an action plan and to identify areas for improvement in the future. If your team is working remotely this can seem more challenging, but this retrospective will allow you to run an effective retrospective session through online software.
After recapping the progression and outcomes of the project you’re reviewing, the team will begin their review by assessing the key things they’ve learnt, what they liked about the project, what the project lacked and how it can be improved for the next time. This will help collect a variety of perspectives and opinions which will aid future projects, as well as emphasising the recent project’s highlights.
The final activity will ask participants to define the key actions that they would like to take in the future, and express their reasons on why they want those changes to happen. The outcome will be a suitable closing to your project, with key takeaways and personal action points noted down and sent to each team member.
Who can facilitate it?
Running this session does not require any special certification, but it is useful if you have some experience in facilitating workshops.
You may prefer to appoint a facilitator who has an understanding of the previous project you’re running the retrospective for, however this isn’t essential. Oftentimes, using a facilitator who no familiarly of the recent project brings the benefit of an unbiased perspective, and the ability to lead the conversation focussed on the right process.
Author
At SessionLab, we are passionate about facilitation. We believe good workshop design leads to better collaboration, enabling people to achieve great things. SessionLab is the go-to platform for session design, with an agenda planning tool, library of facilitation resources and vibrant community for facilitators. It enables facilitators to streamline workshop design through drag-and-drop scheduling, automatic timing and seamless sharing with clients and colleagues.