Retrospective

A structured meeting in which a team reflects on their recent work and processes to identify what went well, what did not go well, and what they want to improve. In Scrum, the sprint retrospective is a formal ceremony; in other agile frameworks, retrospectives may occur at project milestones or quarterly. Effective retrospectives are blameless — the focus is on systems and processes, not individual failures. Common retrospective formats include Start-Stop-Continue, Mad-Sad-Glad, the 5 Whys root cause analysis, and the sailboat metaphor. The most important outcome is a small number of actionable improvement items that the team commits to implementing in the next cycle.