How to Run the Most Efficient Retrospective Meeting
What is a retrospective meeting?
A retrospective meeting is held at the end of a project for team members to reflect on the work process and determine which aspects they need to improve in future projects. This is slightly different from the sprint retrospective meeting.
How do you structure a retrospective?
A retrospective meeting agenda template is the ultimate way to structure a retrospective. Let's find out how to create the most efficient structure for a retrospective meeting:
- Determine the main theme of the retrospective.
- Mention the project's highlights and memorable sprints during the project.
- Analyze these highlights to come up with work patterns.
- Create an action plan to optimize the work process and eliminate time-consuming, faulty patterns.
- Wrap up the meeting.
These simple five steps are the main points to be included in your retrospective meeting agenda template and followed precisely in your meeting.
How long should a retrospective meeting last?
A sprint retrospective meeting is usually held every couple of weeks for an average of an hour and a half. Some teams meet up every week for 45 minutes depending on the sprint's length.
A retrospective meeting after project completion takes a lot longer with the maximum being 3-4 hours.
That being said, bear in mind that having too many meetings is the number one time-wasting factor for teams.
According to the Harvard Business Review, a staggering 71% of senior managers said that "meetings are unproductive and inefficient."
The professionals at HBR even call it "the meeting madness" and urge managers to "establish a clear agenda...because meetings affect how people collaborate and how they get their work done."
This emphasizes the need for a comprehensive retrospective meeting agenda template to save valuable time that could be better spent on the project's development.
Overall, you need to find the perfect balance between having too many retrospectives and not having enough.
How to conduct retrospective meetings online?
Since remote work is on the rise, it's only logical to resort to multiple apps to manage your meetings. Here are a few options you might be using right now:
1. Jira/Asana: a work management tool to track progress throughout the project.
2. Google Drive: a shared document platform to ensure everyone working on the project has access to important files.
3. Google Calendar: a place to schedule all project-related meetings.
4. Slack/Teams: a multi-purpose communication tool to allow teammates to reach each other easily.
5. Trello: a work management tool to stay on track with assignments.
6. Zoom: a video conferencing platform to conduct your meetings.
With adam.ai, you can choose to integrate with the aforementioned communication tools, all from one place. You'll also be able to chat privately or publicly with the attendees and upload, share, and transcribe audio files.
What is a retrospective meeting agenda?
A retrospective meeting agenda is a structure that guides you through your talking points in the meeting and helps you stick to the meeting schedule.
Without a meeting agenda, you'll be risking adding more time to an already long meeting and going off-topic. Having meeting agenda templates that you can customize according to your company's needs can save a lot of time and effort when preparing for your meetings.
When creating your retrospective meeting agenda template, start with the basic three questions we mentioned earlier. The whole idea of a retrospective is to know what procedures the team should continue doing, which ones to stop, and which changes to start implementing.
Let's take a look at a few tips for your retrospective meeting agenda:
- Start your meeting on a positive note by listing all the positive aspects done in the project. People are more likely to accept feedback when you commend them on their hard work.
- Mention the main issues of the project and give the team a chance to discuss what went wrong. Take notes of their concerns to analyze the problems and create action items to resolve them.
- Ask the team to prepare for the meeting by writing down their concerns and share the retrospective meeting agenda template with them. This will help them prepare themselves mentally and participate actively in the discussion.
- Summarize the outcomes of the meeting by compiling feedback and listing action items keeping the three questions in mind.
??Pro Tip. Use a meeting agenda template and customize it according to your meeting objectives to save time and effort. Don't forget to send a thank you mail after the meeting is finished; it has a positive effect on attendees and enhances meeting productivity.
Check out how to create a meeting agenda for effective meetings from this video:
Retrospective meeting agenda template
Download the retrospective meeting agenda template to conduct a well-structured retrospective meeting.
It's free.
It's editable..
It's inclusive...
Just follow this link to the full article and download your free agenda template: