PROGRAM RETROSPECTIVES: WHAT ARE THEY?

A Program Retrospective is a formal method to discover, capture, and share valuable lessons learned from the successes and failures of any program or project while it is in flight.

• Discover opportunities to improve throughout the lifecycle.  Retrospectives are strategically planned along the lifecycle to guarantee that course corrections are identified and acted upon.  This provides a greater opportunity to influence improvements on both current and subsequent programs than the more common practice of waiting until the end when much program knowledge has been lost.
• Capture information via a skilled facilitator.  An expert facilitator guides the team through the retrospective by asking the right questions, listening to the team share their perspective, and maintaining an objective position to draw out the wisdom from the team so true change can be achieved.  This ensures all action items are tracked, retrospective collateral is documented, and results are managed as improvements are implemented.
• Share the key learnings to improve the effectiveness and efficiency.   Most teams stop after making the list of key learnings. The list gets placed on a team website or someone’s hard drive, never to be seen again.  A retrospective spends time to identify what needs to be done differently, identify solutions, discuss the impact of making the change, brainstorm obstacles, identify the support needed to achieve new business results, and create an action plan for change.  But it doesn’t stop there, once the change has been implemented, best practices and results are shared with other programs across the organization so they can benefit from the lessons learned.