Project Retrospectives

1
Project Retrospectives

• CSSE 372, Software Project Management
• Don Bagert
• Rose-Hulman Institute of TechnologyFebruary 7,
  2006
• Thanks to Mark Ardis for most of the slides
  included.

2
Outline

• Why retrospectives?
• Before
• collect
• During
• review, record, cluster, find
• After
• record, report, respond

3
Why Retrospectives?

• Review successes and failures
• Discover causes of success and failure
• Record good things to repeat
• Record bad things to avoid

4
When Should You Retrospect?

• At end of project
• At each major milestone
• At each major iteration

5
Step 1 Collect Data (Before)

• Productivity
• effort
• deliverables (sizes)
• schedules
• Quality

6
Step 2 Review Data (During)

• Compare actuals to plans
• Look for trends
• Compare to other projects

7
Step 3 Record Experiences (During)

• Good things
• Bad things
• Write one thing on each post-it note

8
Exercise Question 2 of Extra Credit Quiz
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Step 4 Cluster Results (During)

• Affinity diagrams or the KJ Method (Kawakita
  Jiro)
• State the overall issue to be explored
• Brainstorm ideas for the overall issue
• Collect the cards or sticky notes
• Arrange the cards or sticky notes into related
  groups
• Create a theme title or heading for each
  grouping

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Step 5 Find Root Causes (During)

• Fishbone or Ishikawa (Kaoru Ishikawa) diagrams
• Place problem in head of fish
• Draw major bones for different aspects or
  viewpoints
• Draw causes as smaller bones (recursively)

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Step 6 Record and Report Results (After)

• Record lists of good and bad things
• Report problems to management
• Propose changes to management
• Propose non-changes to management

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Step 7 Respond (After)

• Make changes to the process
• Watch out that
• good things are repeated
• bad things are avoided