UX designer’s guide to effective retrospectives
Retrospectives are meetings found in — but not limited to — the Scrum development framework where members of a product team reflect on past work and discuss ways to improve in the future. I’ve seen designers occasionally write retrospectives off as not being particularly relevant or interesting to them — sometimes to the point where they don’t even attend, but I’d argue that if you’re not very engaged (or not having them at all) you’re probably making a mistake.
A good retrospective allows a team to:
- Discuss and address things that aren’t working as well as they could be
- Discuss and improve things that are working well to see how they can be better
- See the broader picture instead of getting stuck in an overly reactive or narrow mindset
- Have happier, more empowered team members with a greater sense of control over their work and process
Getting all these things to actually happen isn’t always straightforward though. Retrospectives are cut or consolidated surprisingly often when the value doesn’t quite manifest. In fact, if you close your eyes you can probably imagine that one engineer complaining about yet another meeting interrupting precious working time. The way to overcome this resistance is to show the value of retrospectives by…
