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🖼️ An art exhibition 🔙 Looking back 🤝 A review meeting
retrospective

retrospective

1 6.1
A meeting where a team looks back and plans ways to improve
  • noun
  • /ˌrɛtrəˈspɛktɪv/
  • Jargon
: retrospectiva
  • At the end of the sprint, the team held a retrospective to discuss what went well and what could be improved.
  • retrospective study
  • retrospective review
  • retrospective analysis

I wonder if you do retrospectives on relationships that didn't work always.

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Examples

  • In week 17, the teams conduct a course debriefing through a project retrospective moderated by the instructor.

    Academic text (2017)

  • The developers always look forward to the retrospective meeting, as it helps them enhance their workflow for the next iteration.

  • During the retrospective, each member shared their thoughts on the project’s challenges and successes.

Synonyms

debriefing
vsretrospective
  • Formal
24 5.6

A meeting after a task to talk about what happened and how to improve

is held at an iteration end for team reflection and planning future improvements
reappraisal
vsretrospective
3 6.2

Looking at something again to judge its importance or quality

is a scheduled team meeting after each sprint to reflect and improve future work
post-mortem
vsretrospective
  • Jargon
2 6.5

A meeting after an event to find what went wrong and how to improve

focuses on regular sprint end review aimed at iterative process improvement

How Reflective

post-mortem
  • Jargon
2 6.5
retrospective
  • Jargon
1 6.1
review
18 1.9
check-in
  • Texting
7 3.5

Surface Forms

retrospective singular
retrospectives plural

Etymology

Retrospective comes from the parts retro- 'back' and -spect 'to look', the same root in inspect. In project work, a retrospective is a meeting to 'look back' at what happened so the team can learn and do better next time.