Rétrospectives

Rétrospectives, often written retrospectives in English, are structured meetings in which a team reflects on its recent work to identify ways to improve. The term emphasizes looking back on what happened and using those insights to adapt future behavior. Although strongly associated with agile software development, retrospectives are used in various knowledge-work teams, including IT, operations, and product development, as a mechanism for continuous improvement. The goal is to surface both successes and problems, and to translate them into concrete changes.

A typical session is time-boxed and facilitated by a neutral facilitator, such as a Scrum Master or coach. Participants include team members and, when appropriate, stakeholders like the product owner. The meeting usually follows a short agenda: set the stage, review what went well and what didn’t, derive insights, decide on concrete actions, and close. Common formats include Start-Stop-Continue, Glad-Sad-Mad, or data-driven reviews such as cycle time or throughput analysis. Actions are assigned owners and tracked until the next retrospective.

Outcomes include an improvement backlog and changes to processes, tooling, or interactions. Benefits include increased transparency, psychological safety, and incremental process improvement. Challenges include ensuring psychological safety, avoiding blame, and turning discussions into concrete actions that are actually implemented. Best practices emphasize a clear purpose, an environment of safety, timeboxing, rotating facilitation, and explicit follow-up on agreed actions. In many organizations, retrospectives are part of a broader cadence of inspect-and-adapt activities, and may be complemented by lessons-learned reviews after larger projects.