If you've ever heard of a retrospective in project management, you might be curious how it differs from a post-mortem. In my experience, my colleagues and I tended to use these terms interchangeably. That had a lot to do with the fact that we used more Waterfall and hybrid processes vs. Scrum and Agile. All that being said, there is technically a difference between a project post-mortem and a retrospective. It basically comes down to the process and rituals you set for your project. Here are the main differences: Timing and scope Post-mortems occur at the end of a fully completed project while retrospectives occur at the end of each sprint or iteration. This means you'll review the entire project at a post-mortem meeting vs just the most recent sprint. Attendees Retrospectives include a smaller group which is just the project team on the current sprint. A post-mortem should span all project team members and management stakeholders across the entire project . Focus Since post-mortems happen after project completion, they typically focus on what went wrong and fixing it for the next project. Retrospectives, on the other hand, focus on improving the quality and effectiveness for the next sprint.