Facilitating Retrospectives
A retrospective is a fixed session at the end of a work cycle where a team examines how it worked rather than what it produced, and commits to changing one thing before the next cycle begins.
Most retrospectives fail the same way. The team names the three problems it named last time, agrees to communicate better, and nothing is different a fortnight later. That is not a facilitation problem. Nobody left the room owning a change.
What is on this page
Three things, all free to download. A short deck on setting a retrospective up and running it. A facilitator script with the prompts and the timings. And a graphic version, the same method drawn as a cartoon, for anyone who would rather see it than read it.
What makes one actually work?
One change, one owner, one date. A retrospective that produces five actions produces none, because nobody can tell afterwards whether any of them happened. Pick the smallest change that would have made the last cycle better, put a name against it, and open the next retrospective by checking that one thing before anything else is discussed.
I have run these with pharmaceutical, FMCG and public-sector teams for over twenty years, and the pattern holds in all of them: the teams that improve are not the ones with the best exercises, they are the ones that close the loop. If you want variety in the exercises themselves, Retromat holds a few hundred of them, free.
A loose cycle blunts even good retrospectives. What goes stale is not the exercises, it is the gap between plan and result when nothing forces a fixed point to measure it against. Time boxing gives you that fixed point: a date that does not move.
Bringing Values into Retros: Seeding ‘Our Way’ Behaviours
Take your retrospectives to the next level by subtly weaving in JTI’s Our Way behaviours. This guide helps facilitators encourage meaningful behavioural reflection during any standard retro.
To decide what deserves the retrospective’s time, use the Topic Triage Matrix. To keep the agreed change visible between sessions, put it on a board: Visualising Work.
Retrospective questions
What is a retrospective?
A fixed session at the end of a work cycle where a team examines how it worked rather than what it produced, and commits to changing one thing before the next cycle begins.
What makes a retrospective actually work?
One change, one owner, one date. Pick the smallest change that would have made the last cycle better, put a name against it, and open the next retrospective by checking that one thing first.
Why do most retrospectives fail?
The team names the same problems as last time, agrees to communicate better and nothing changes, because nobody left the room owning a change.
Are the materials free?
Yes. The retrospective guide, the facilitator script and the graphic novel are free to download on this page.
If you would like to work through this with your team in a live session, see my agile transformation workshops.
