Retrospectives: A Superior Alternative to Traditional Postmortems

Organizations have traditionally relied on project postmortems to assess the performance of product development teams. The irony is that "postmortem" literally means "after death," implying a discussion of project failures. These reviews, held at the end-either the completion or cancellation-of a project, often do not create a safe environment for team members to express their opinions. Postmortems rarely result in fundamental improvements in the development process as "lessons learned" sessions quickly become "lessons forgotten." And because they come at the end of the project, they have no chance to positively impact the current project. John Terzakis introduces the concept of retrospectives to address these problems and contrasts these two review methods. John describes the benefits of conducting multiple retrospectives within the product life cycle, the four phases of the retrospective process, and the role of the retrospective facilitator. Implement retrospectives in your current and future projects to lead your organization toward a culture of continuous improvement, increased effectiveness, and improved harmony within the development teams.

• A comparison of postmortems and retrospectives
• Four phases of a retrospective review process
• Vital role of the facilitator in retrospectives