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What is Retrospective?

Retrospective: A team review of what went well and what to improve.

Where Retrospective fits

Retrospective is part of Control & Review in Project Management. Control compares plan with reality: variance, slack, status reports, change requests and risk registers. At the end, run a retrospective.

Practical tip

Route changes through a formal request and capture lessons learned.

Related terms

Scope creep
Uncontrolled growth of a project's requirements.
Contingency plan
A backup plan in case something goes wrong.
Agile
Working in short cycles, learning and adjusting often.
Risk management
Finding, ranking and reducing threats to a business.
Risk register
A list of project risks with their likelihood, impact and owner.
Variance
The gap between planned and actual results.
Slack
How long a task can slip without delaying the project.
Earned value
A method comparing work done against plan and cost.

Formulas you will use with it

Cost performance indexSchedule performance indexSchedule varianceDefect rate

Test yourself

Which term means: “A team review of what went well and what to improve.”?

Agile · Risk register · Retrospective

Answer: Retrospective

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