It probably sounds familiar: your team is working hard towards a premiere, opening, or festival. The pressure is high, the days are long, and everyone is doing their best to get everything finished on time. But in between, you notice things are grating: the collaboration between departments isn’t quite smooth, or certain tasks take much more time and yield less than expected. Often, these kinds of experiences are only discussed afterward, when the project is already over. It’s a shame, because you can already learn and adjust during the process. That’s what the retrospective is for; a simple but powerful way for a team to reflect on how the work is going and to investigate together what could be improved.
What is a retrospective?
A retrospective, often shortened to retro, is an evaluation of the work process by asking three or four questions. However, unlike traditional evaluations that take place afterward upon completion of a project or collaboration, the retro is best placed in the middle of the work process. With the aim of inspecting the past, learning from it, and using these lessons in the near future. Instead of saying, ‘this was not good,’ a retro looks at ‘what do we let go of’. After all, it could be that activities have worked well in their time, but that it is now time to stop them.
The retrospective appears in various agile work methods, the most well-known of which is the Scrum framework, a way of working in which you divide the conversation about the work into cycles of four types of meetings: planning, check-in, substantive feedback, and evaluation of the group process (the retro). Meetings therefore take less time and are often more efficient in nature.
Why do a retrospective?
A retrospective brings air and reflection into the hectic pace of the day. It provides space to celebrate successes together, name obstacles, and distribute responsibility. This prevents the same problems from recurring, and you build step by step towards an organization that remains agile, resilient, and creative.
How often do you do a retrospective?
There is no fixed rule, but from our experience, we advise doing it on a regular basis, for example, once a week, every two weeks, or once a month. You can do it with the team, or with multiple teams at the same time, for example, with marketing and programming towards a festival.
How do you approach it?
A retrospective is accessible and can be shaped in various ways. The core is always the same: you ask a number of questions and collect everyone’s input. With this step-by-step plan, you can get started right away.
Step 1 – Determine who will lead the session, we call that person the facilitator. The facilitator leads the group through the retrospective and does not write along themselves.
Step 2 – Determine which questions you are going to ask. Commonly used work methods are:
- Love, stop, start, continue
Ask the following questions: what did we really think was fantastic (love), what is it time to stop (stop), what should we start with (start) and what works well and will we continue with (continue)?
- 4 L’s (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for)
What did we like, what did we learn, what did we miss and what would we like to have?
- Good and even better
What went well and what went even better? This form focuses only on the positive points.
- Sailboat:
The team is the boat. Determine together: what was the wind (the driving forces), the anchors (i.e. the obstacles), the rocks (the risks) and where is the island (what are the goals?).
💡 Tip: Google retrospective, look at the available templates or ask the scrum master/agile coach in your area (believe us, there is one at every neighborhood barbecue) for tips. Find the design that you think suits the team or project.
Step 3 – Invite the team. Mention in the invitation that you are going to do a retrospective.
Step 4 – Write the first question on a whiteboard or flip chart, so that it is readable for everyone.
Step 5 – Collect the answers. Ask all those present individually and without consultation to write down their answers on three to five post-its, with only one answer written on each post-it.
Step 6 – Have everyone stick the post-its on the board and explain them per person. You can alternate when everyone has multiple post-its. As a facilitator, you can group the answers so that patterns become clear. Discuss with each other what this means for the future work process.
Step 7 – Repeat steps 4 to 6 for each question. Tackle one question at a time, and make sure the discussion stays safe and focused on processes rather than individuals.
Step 8 – Complete the retrospective and make clear agreements for the continuation of the collaboration. You can optionally return the post-its to the team via an online board such as Miro or Canva. Or leave the whiteboard standing, so that team members can reread the input provided.
Practical info
🕙 Time: 30 minutes to 1.5 hours
📝Materials: Whiteboard or flip chart + (reusable, magnetic) sticky notes
👥 Group size: 2–10 people (with an experienced facilitator, larger groups are also possible)
The retrospective as part of a larger transition
From TòMò, we often collaborate with cultural organizations, in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, who are thinking about transition in this era of digital resources. Within these transformative trajectories, we work together at MT, team, or organizational level to implement innovative ways of working that ensure an agile organization. An agile organization is by definition a resilient organization, because it has the ability to respond to developments in the field, society, and politics. In this article you can read more about our vision on this.
These trajectories are often customized, but are often characterized by the transfer of – in our opinion – the two most important working methods for a cultural organization of this time: the roadmap and the retrospective. With this step-by-step plan, you can easily get started yourself. If you would like guidance in this, if you would like to bring about change in your organization at a more structural level, or if you are facing major issues that you could use some help with? Please feel free to contact us via the contact form.
