Retrospective Meeting

Visualize what your team believes worked and didn't work during the last sprint. Document thoughts and ideas that will help the team become better and more efficient in the future without assigning blame.

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What is a Retrospective?

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Purpose of Retrospective Meetings

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Rules for Retrospectives

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Review Meeting vs Retrospective Meeting

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Conducting Retrospectives in SmartDraw

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With SmartDraw, You Can Create Many Different Types of Diagrams, Charts, and Visuals

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What is a Retrospective?

A retrospective is a team meeting meant to evaluate a project or sprint and reflect on what went well and what could use improvement. A retrospective usually takes place after a sprint or product release and should be no longer than half an hour to an hour long. It is usually run by the product owner or Scrum master, but the entire team usually participates in the discussion.

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Simple retrospective example
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What is the Main Purpose of Retrospective Meeting?

The main reason to do retrospectives is to acknowledge what worked well and had positive outcomes and find processes and tools that could use improvement. the important part is to do this without blame or judgement to help the team work better together, not create a negative atmosphere. The goal is to help the team continuously improve in subsequent projects and sprints.

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What are Some Rules for Retrospectives?

  • Make sure everyone feels safe to share freely and honestly.
  • Maintain a respectful atmosphere and encourage everyone to participate.
  • Celebrate successes.
  • Encourage transparency with challenges.
  • Barinstorm an action plan for improvements.
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5 rules
Product vs Process focus

What is the Difference Between a Review Meeting and Retrospective Meeting?

In general, a review meeting focuses on the product and analyzes what features were received well or poorly. While a retrospective focuses on the process and tools involved and ways to optimize and improve the process of development.

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How to Conduct a Retrospective with SmartDraw

Step 1: Start with the Retrospective Template

Open the retrospective template that will have some placeholder cards organizaed into three columns: "What worked?", "What did not work?", "How do we improve?"

You can add or remove columns as needed using the controls to the left of your workspace.

Step 2: Add Notes and Observations

You can double-click to add text to any of the notes already in your template. You can also drag-and-drop new notes to any of the columns. SmartDraw will automatically expand the columns to make room for new notes. You can also use your keyboard to enter new notes. Simply select an existing sticky note and then hit Ctrl and the arrow key in the direction you want to add a new note.

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Choosing retrospective template

Retrospectives in Real Time

Running a retrospective is a collaborative effort. As you review your project as a team, it's important that adding and moving sticky notes on your board is quick and easy. You don't want to waste time manually lining up or moving notes. SmartDraw's retrospective template makes formatting automatic. When you add sticky notes using action buttons, SmartDraw's board will automatically expand to make room and the notes are aligned with the existing notes on the board. Moving notes from one column to another is just as easy. Just drag and drop and the board will automatically adjust to make room.

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Try SmartDraw's Retrospective Meeting Software Free

Discover why SmartDraw is the easiest retrospective meeting software today.

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