Retrospectives

A retrospective is a session in which evaluation of a software development project or a part or phase of a project takes place. A retrospective is performed by the people involved (programmers, project leaders, managers, customers), helped by an experienced facilitator. A retrospective provides an opportunity to stop and reflect on what works well, what works less well, and what things need adjustment in a software development project.

A retrospective for a whole project can take up to three days. It is however more effective to hold retrospectives more frequently, e.g. after important milestones or after each iteration. In an Extreme Programming project with one or two week iterations, a retrospective can be done in as little as 30 to 90 minutes. See e.g. Heartbeat Retrospectives by Rachel Davies.

A retrospective provides explicit feedback about software development projects and is an effective way to learn from experience and to improve processes. Although holding a retrospective does require some time from the people involved, these costs are relatively small with respect to the costs of the project as a whole (0,5% to 4%). The results of a retrospective help to work more effectively and efficiently in successive projects, which will save much more time and money than a retrospective costs.

Would you like to learn more about retrospectives or organise a project retrospective? Or would you like to make retrospectives part of your software development process? Feel free to contact me - I can help you in several ways through my company Piecemeal Growth.

Retrospectives

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