A Guide to Reflective Meetings
By: Tom Comerford
Tags: Post Mortems, Product Management, Retrospectives, Meetings, Process

Product Management

A Guide to Reflective Meetings

Differentiating when to use retrospectives and post mortems with your team

Reflection is one of the most important parts of growth, within individuals and within teams. Whether you are a product manager or not, you will likely encounter many work situations that require reflection. This act enables us to learn from the past and improve for the future. In the context of product development, two types of formal reflection are often used: retrospectives and post mortems. You may hear professionals using these two words interchangeably, but they mean two different things. Thus, both forms of reflection have different applications in your work.

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What is a retrospective, and when should we use it?

The word retrospective comes from Latin, meaning to “look back.” In Agile development, retrospectives are a central part of the process. This is a regular ceremony which includes all team members and provides the opportunity to reflect upon previous sprints. Given the preplanned nature of a retrospective, it is a proactive mechanism to reflect upon work. The dictionary defines the noun version of retrospective as “an exhibition or compilation showing the development of the work…over a period of time.” Within the context of Agile software development, the definition is even more precise:

The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next sprint. — scrum.org

If you are familiar with Agile, you’ll know that a retrospective serves to have the entire team answer several questions: what went well in the past sprint? what could have gone better? what can be done to improve next sprint? These questions allow your team to celebrate wins, fix potential issues, and hold each other accountable. Using the retrospective framework on a regular schedule enables continuous improvement. By identifying better ways of working together and eliminating disruptive patterns, the team boosts productivity and morale.

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How is a post mortem different, and when should we use it?

On the other hand, a post mortem translates literally to “after death.” This not only implies a reflection back on something, but that the event was not necessarily positive. The prevailing output of a post mortem are lessons learned. These meetings do not necessarily translate to actionable items, but ideally can provide best practices for the future. Although a post mortem is reasonable to conduct at the conclusion of any project, my experience has typically been that such a review occurs when something has gone wrong. Therefore, a post mortem is a more reactive response that leads to reflection.

Again, if we think in the context of product development, a post mortem is often preceded by a root cause analysis (RCA). In a root cause analysis, we seek to understand the variables that led to an undesirable event occurring. We know that many of the most serious issues arise from multiple contributing factors, not a single point of failure. It’s therefore important to build a full picture and timeline of the causes of the problem. This forensic analysis becomes “evidence” that can be discussed during a post mortem.

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What else should we know about reflection meetings?

While frequent reflection can make us better performers, there are diminishing returns with formal meetings to accomplish this task. If your team holds a retrospective after every sprint and has post mortems on a frequent basis, you may begin to experience meeting fatigue. This analysis of every action and event can reduce the morale of a team, while fostering an environment where people are afraid to make any mistakes. Keeping retrospectives spaced appropriately and using post mortems only when needed will ensure that these meetings are more useful to the team.

It’s also important to note that retrospectives and post mortems are both about actions and teams, not people. Neither form of reflection seeks to place blame on individuals. We all make mistakes; how we react and learn from our mistakes is what is most important. Therefore, it is important for retrospectives and post mortems to create safe environments where we can analyze areas for improvement. Lastly, we want to make sure to recognize positive actions and events along with the negative ones; this reinforces the types of behaviors and outcomes we seek in our work.