Retrospectives And Lessons Learned
Retrospectives and Lessons Learned are essential practices in business analysis that focus on utilizing past experience to better plan and execute future work. They provide mechanisms to review what has gone well, what hasn't, and what could be improved, thereby feeding into the continual improvement of processes.
Retrospectives
Timing and Frequency: Conducted either on a regular basis or at the end of a body of work (e.g., iteration), retrospectives are more common in adaptive life cycles.
Agenda: Allows team members to discuss:
- What is working well?
- What is not working or is unclear?
- What needs to change?
- Opportunities for improvement.
Decision-making: Decisions are often implemented immediately and may not require formal documentation.
Collaborative Nature: These are highly collaborative meetings that may even employ collaborative games to foster open discussion.
Scope: Generally focused on the ongoing or just-completed effort. However, recommendations can be elevated for broader organizational application.
Lessons Learned
Timing and Frequency: These are typically conducted at the end of a phase or a significant milestone, often in predictive life cycles.
Agenda: Similar to retrospectives, they aim to find out what worked, what didn't, and what could be improved.
Decision-making: The outcomes are formally documented and stored for future reference or action.
Scope: The learnings can be leveraged for planning future projects or as a historical record.
Differences
The primary distinctions between the two lie in the timing and formality. Retrospectives are frequent and less formal, focusing on immediate changes, whereas lessons learned are less frequent and more formal, focusing on documenting insights for future reference.
Application Across Business Analysis Areas
Elicitation: Past experiences, along with expert judgment, can guide the tailoring of elicitation techniques to better meet project needs.
Analysis Approach: Insights from past projects can inform the selection of analysis techniques and approaches suitable for the current project or future initiatives.
Traceability and Monitoring: Acquired knowledge from retrospectives and lessons learned can inform how to approach traceability and change management processes effectively.
Solution Evaluation: Prior experience can offer insights into effective metric collection and evaluation techniques.
Retrospectives and Lessons Learned serve as a foundation for tailoring various aspects of business analysis, from elicitation to evaluation, and should be integral components in any analysis approach.