How to Run a Results-Oriented Retrospective Step by Step

A project retrospective is a structured meeting for a team to review, reflect on, and learn from their work on a project. This exercise can occur during and at the end of a project, and it’s part of the Agile framework of project management, which strives for continuous improvement. 

In technical fields, where Agile arose, the retrospective usually takes place after every sprint, a two-week period during which the team tackles a predetermined body of work such as writing software code for certain features. To learn more about Agile, see “The Comprehensive Guide to Agile Project Management.”

However, Agile has spread to other verticals, including marketing, engineering, construction, and pharmaceuticals. In these fields, a retrospective may focus on how a specific project is performing and may occur on a time interval (similar to every two weeks of a sprint), or at milestones and phases (such as once the content calendar is complete, before writing assignments begin).

In order to be a worthwhile investment of everyone’s time, a retrospective takes planning. This process involves picking a format, identifying other activities that you want (such as an icebreaker), and deciding how the group will vote in the meeting. 

The steps below will help you prepare for your retrospective:

1. Reflect: Before the retrospective, identify who will participate in the meeting and ask them to think about the recent work period. What should the team stop or start doing? What did the team learn?
2. Think About the Environment: Consider your team and the context for the meeting, and plan around what will best suit the conditions. If you are gathering remotely, look at the ideas and suggestions in “17 Activities for Remote and Distributed Retrospective Meetings.”  Icebreakers are especially important for new teams.
3. Timebox the Meeting: Set a start and end time for the meeting to keep it on track and help participants remain engaged. Midproject and sprint retrospectives should typically last no more than an hour. A good rule of thumb is 30 minutes for each week of work. The suggested time allotments in this article are based on a one-hour meeting, though some teams prefer to standardize on a half-hour. 
4. Draft an Agenda: Think about each part of the retrospective and how you will handle it. In their influential book Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, authors Diana Larsen, Esther Derby, and Ken Schwaber break down the retrospective agenda into phases as described below:
   • Set the Stage (10 minutes): Consider your words of welcome. You want to put participants at ease and prime them for open and respectful discussion. At the beginning of the meeting, go over any ground rules, such as Norm Kerth’s Prime Directive, an agreement in which everyone believes all participants did the best job they could. This instills the idea of a “blameless” retrospective. Do a safety or mood check activity and an icebreaker.
   • Review (20 minutes): At this stage, gather information on the project work. Use objective sources of data, such as a burndown chart , a Kanban board, and a project timeline. Your format will often direct how you elicit this information. Ask the following key questions: What is working well? What needs improvement? What did we learn? Which project objectives were met, exceeded, or not achieved? What are our biggest challenges?
   • Brainstorm (10 minutes): Again, your format may dictate how you present this process. In your agenda, specify how you will elicit strong participation and a free flow of suggestions.
   • Prioritize (5 minutes): Choose one of the many activities for the group to winnow down the list of suggestions into two or three action items that will be most effective at addressing the challenges identified earlier.
   • Action Planning (10 minutes): Have the group designate people who are accountable for each action item and set dates for implementation. In the agenda, give thought to how you will ensure that participants don’t forget their tasks after the meeting, such as by having people write notes for themselves, schedule email reminders, and post the plan where everyone will see it.
   • Closing (5 minutes): Recap the meeting and run an activity that gathers feedback from participants about the retrospective itself, such as choosing an emoji, marking their feelings on a continuum between amazing and disappointing, or dropping a colored card in a basket (red for not a good use of time, yellow for OK, and green for worthwhile).

Once you’ve laid the foundation for a productive retrospective with your agenda, you have to run the project retrospective itself. As the retrospective advances, be prepared to address common issues, including teammates not speaking up, one person dominating the conversation, and the team committing to too many action items.

A sprint retrospective focuses on a time-defined body of work, typically two weeks in the high-tech world. A project retrospective may also be concerned with a time-defined segment of work, but it may instead focus on work by milestone or phase, rather than period of time. That said, the substance of a project retrospective and sprint retrospective is the same. 

To run a good retrospective, follow your agenda and conduct the following steps in order:

1. Welcome: Greet participants, and explain the ground rules, especially if there are new team members or people new to retrospectives. Consider holding an icebreaker to help people feel more comfortable, a mood check to gauge the team’s temperament, or a safety assessment that explores whether participants feel safe expressing their honest opinions.

2. Review: Recap what the team accomplished, and cite specifics. Also list any scheduled work that members did not finish. Ask team members to identify successes, challenges, and obstacles, and discuss insights and lessons learned. At this time, apply your project retrospective idea or format, if you are using one. Team members can note their input on sticky notes that go on a whiteboard, marking on a whiteboard, using index cards, or entering information in an online tool.

Download this sprint retrospective template, and use it to record details on what went well and what did not. You can use this sheet to summarize group input, or give each participant a copy to make notes for contributing to the discussion. 

Download Sprint Retrospective Template

Microsoft Word |  Adobe PDF

3. Brainstorm: Solicit ideas for solving problems and embedding helpful practices. Ensure everyone has a chance to contribute. Record all suggestions.

4. Prioritize: Use an activity, such as voting, to narrow down the list of suggestions to three or fewer ideas that, when implemented, will have the biggest impact.

5. Action Planning: Identify actions to put the ideas into operation. Define the steps and procedures to implement these ideas, as well as assign due dates and the individuals responsible.

6. Closing: Recap what occurred in the meeting and the next steps. Seek feedback from participants on how useful they found the retrospective, or go with another closing activity. Record notes or minutes and the retrospective format you used so you can refer back. These records are helpful for seeing how many times team members raise the same issue and for making sure you don’t reuse the same format too often.

As your team holds more retrospectives and you gain more experience running a retrospective, the meetings will become more productive. Below, we’ve compiled tips to the most out of these events:

1. Make Sure Everyone Gets Air Time: In your opening, check the mood and the team’s sense of safety. If you suspect that someone does not feel comfortable being honest, hold an icebreaker or other activity to promote trust (remember that this is a long-term process). Also consider soliciting feedback anonymously in writing.

To help mitigate this discomfort, remind people ahead of the meeting what they will discuss and ask them to prepare by thinking about the key topics. This will help less talkative colleagues be ready to contribute.

If you have dominating personalities on the team, keep them from taking over by going around the room in order. If the meeting is a remote/in-person hybrid, take special care to keep the groups on equal footing, so that you don’t let in-person participants focus solely on each other.

Lastly, remember not to talk too much yourself or direct the outcome toward certain conclusions. Your role is to lead the group in self discovery.

2. Stick to Time Limits: Keep track of how long you spend on an activity or agenda section, and do not go over the allotted time. If that is hard for you to do while running the meeting, appoint someone to be a timekeeper. If the retrospective runs over time, participants’ attention will wander.

It’s important that all participants feel their time has been respected and well spent, as rambling on or letting the meeting lose structure will weaken team support for the retrospective process.

3. Keep the Tone Constructive: In the welcome phase, go over the baseline expectations for the meeting, such as that no one will blame another or make personal criticisms. If interpersonal relationships have been rocky on the team, address that tension before the retrospective with the individuals involved. Keep the discussion in the meeting focused on team processes and practices, rather than on personalities or individual shortcomings. If the conversation starts to devolve into blaming, realign the group with the ground rules immediately.

4. Do Not Give Short Shrift to Successes: People often assume that since the retrospective is a key tool in continuous improvement, the meeting should only cover what needs improving. That is a mistake.

Recounting triumphs and allowing team members to recognize one another with thanks and appreciation can be very motivating. You can download the kudos cards template below to foster that practice, which you can use digitally or print out and share. They provide a space to write details about the reason for the kudos and the name of the person being recognized.

Download Kudos Cards Template Adobe

Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

Moreover, the retrospective strives to uncover what is going well and what the team should do more. Calling out these practices will help you become aware of the success factors.  

5. Be Realistic: Enthusiastic teams and facilitators often get caught in the trap of taking on too many action items or being overly ambitious, which defeats the purpose.

Continuous improvement is about incremental, cumulative changes. If the team takes on too much at once, everything will likely not get done. That inconsistency weakens your process. With too much on the action list, efforts to implement the items can also crowd out primary work and negatively impact the project.

Action items that are too ambitious can be disruptive. If you ask people to make huge changes in the way they work, adaptation becomes challenging, and things that were working previously may fall apart. Break down ambitious steps into smaller pieces that the team can implement over time.

6. Be Action-Oriented: Make sure the meeting ends with actionable ideas that have owners and due dates. Plan how the team will keep these actions top of mind, whether with reminder emails, calendar notifications, or signs by the coffeemaker. 

You can find even more tips for improving your retrospective meeting in our comprehensive guide.

One of the retrospective facilitator’s most important but challenging responsibilities is prompting team members to identify areas that need improvement. The best way to do this is by asking thought-provoking questions. 

Sometimes, participants feel like their minds are blank. This can occur because the same format has been used repeatedly and no longer prompts meaningful reflection. Alternatively, people may be so accustomed to certain issues and inefficiencies that they no longer see them. Or you may be rushing the retrospective, so team members do not have enough time. Lastly, if your team does not implement action items consistently, participants may lose faith in the retrospective process and disengage.

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