Members of a team reflect on a period of work in a constructively critical manner. Retrospectives are a core event in yunity Scrum and many other software development frameworks. Looking at the past period of work as an experiment and analyzing the results allows for empirical decision making for future iterations.

Many of the ideas here taken from Retrospective Wiki - many more good ideas to be found there.

meta

Is a: event
Type: Celebration
Works well with: small groups
Incompatible with:
Part of: Scrum
Requires: Post-it notes or equivalent, pens/pencils/crayons.
Made easier with: A facilitator

The Prime Directive

~1 min. A very nice statement that to set the constructive and progressive nature of the event;

"Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand."
--Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review

Breaking the ice

~5 min. A relatively quick activity at the beginning can be used to ensure that everyone know they can speak and to get an idea of the emotions in the room;

Three words: Participants describe how they are feeling using three words, or a three word sentence.
Animal: Participants describe the iteration as an animal.
Ice-cream: Participants chose up to three scoops, whatever flavour they like

Process analysis

~30 min. The main activity of the event to identify improvements in the process;

Top 3: Participants identify the top 3 things they want to talk about and do so. Can be done using Post-it notage: Give participants post-its to write down things they want to talk about then use dot-mocracy to identify the discussion priority. Can be done by identifying three areas and having timed, facilitated discussion.

Appreciation

~10 min. An opportunity for each contributor to express appreciation for others - very nice to end the retrospective on a positive note.