Learning Retrospectives

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Locked down over the Lunar New Year, I finally asked why our project (May 2019 → present) felt so exhausting. Morale was low, quality suffered, stakeholders were skeptical. The root issue: no regular retrospectives. To fix that post-holiday, I studied how to run good retros.

Takeaways

  1. Retros must be regular. We skipped them on three consecutive projects—an obvious warning sign.
  2. Surfacing problems is how we respect the team. It requires courage and the belief that exposing issues helps everyone.
  3. Prioritize ruthlessly. Instead of tackling dozens of problems, pick a few, assign owners, and make incremental progress—just like refactoring code.
  4. A retro is a meeting. Keep it efficient; meeting cost scales with headcount.

Our Retro Outline

  1. Participants jot down “Went Well / Less Well / Puzzles” ahead of time (or during the first five minutes).
  2. Facilitator groups similar cards (5 minutes).
  3. Everyone gets five votes to prioritize issues (5 minutes).
  4. Discuss the top three items (10–15 minutes each) and define action items.
  5. Assign owners and deadlines.
  6. Send a recap with the board and action list.

Total runtime: ~60–90 minutes.

funretro.io supports collaborative editing, voting, card merging, and anonymity—and it’s free.

Closing Thoughts

Reflection beats mindless hustle. Slow down, examine the process, then run farther.

Team Process
Authors
Developer, digital product enthusiast, tinkerer, sharer, open source lover