session · operate & reflect
Retrospective
60 minutes. Trio plus anyone whose work is being examined. Three questions, in order. One change — owned, dated, testable. The session that compounds the chain rather than listing it.
When
- Within the week of the Signal reading session.
- Calendar-locked. Held even if the cycle felt smooth — especially if it felt smooth.
Who
- The trio — PO, Tech Lead, Designer.
- Anyone whose work is being examined — Developer, QA, CS Lead, depending on what the signal surfaced.
- (Optional) a peer from another team as a fresh-eyes observer for high-stakes retros.
Time-box
60 minutes. Hard cap. Five action items implemented zero is feelings; one action item implemented is compounding. The discipline is the limit.
Inputs
- The signal reading from this cycle.
- Any postmortems from this cycle.
- The prior retrospective's change (so we can check if it held).
Agenda
| Time | What |
|---|---|
| 0–5 min | Read the signal reading aloud. The room anchors in what reality answered. |
| 5–25 min | Question 1: Which chain links held? Round-robin so everyone speaks once before anyone speaks twice. Name the practice, not just the outcome. "The amigos session caught the negative-balance case" is a link holding. "Things went well" is not. |
| 25–45 min | Question 2: Which chain links broke? Trace to a level, not a person. Scenario-gap? Observation-mismatch? ADR drift? Prediction not checked? Each broken link names a structural gap. |
| 45–55 min | Question 3: What is the one change we are making? One. Owned by name. Dated. Testable. "We should communicate better" is not a change. "The amigos template gains a financial-boundary prompt by Thursday, checked at next retro" is. |
| 55–60 min | Check the prior retro's change — did it hold? Pinned in the team channel; linked from the next cycle's kickoff. |
Outputs
- One change — named, owned, dated, testable.
- A short retro note with: what held, what broke, the change, prior-change status. (Template.)
- A calendar slot for Model update session — same hour as this retro, ideally.
What good looks like
The retro produces a small change — and the next cycle starts from the slightly-sharper-chain. Three to five cycles in, the team finds itself reaching for practices it didn't have a name for before. That is compounding.
The session is dry and honest. Not therapy. The conversation about feelings, if it needs to happen, happens in a separate room. The retro outputs an artefact and ends.
Anti-pattern
The retro produces a list. "Eight things to improve, none owned, all forgotten by Tuesday." Lists compound to nothing. Fix: the discipline is one change. The second thing goes to the next retro. A retro that consistently produces lists has a chain that consistently doesn't improve.
A second anti-pattern: the broken-link discussion drifts into blame. Names get used; the team gets defensive; structural fixes aren't named because the conversation became personal. Fix: the chain-aware labels (scenario-gap, observation-mismatch, adr-drift, integration-gap) exist precisely for this. Name the level. Never the person.
A third: silence in the retro is treated as agreement. Three people speak; two are quiet; the change goes through with two angles dark. Fix: round-robin every question. Silence in a retro is a system signal — what is the system not letting people say?
See also
- Canon — After We Build · The Retrospective
- Template — Retrospective
- Practice — Retrospective
- Checklist — Retrospective · one change
- Clinic — A retro that listed
- Next session — Model update session