As we were stepping out after our weekly 8D* meeting, Gireesh asked me “Raghav, Tell me why do cars have brakes?”, I responded with a smile “of course to stop the car.”

Gireesh, functional specialist, manager for the verification team, smart and good people’s manager,responded back with a smile “No, we have ‘brakes’ so that we can go fast !!”. I could sense the shift in my perspective. “Is it not true that brakes help us to drive faster?”

This is one of the reasons you should put a brake to your routine and spend time for retrospection,so that you can go faster.

In this blog I will share few points on personal retrospection. The personal retrospection is effective when it spread across few sessions but it is also important that it is done with some planning.

People in the Agile Community are familiar with the doing retrospection with teams. The following points might help you in your personal retrospection.

Step 1. Preparation

Block about 1–2 hours of your time.

Decide on a place that has less distraction and comfortable to sit and contemplate.

Have all your source of information including your phone, laptop, i-pad, Notebooks etc.

Supplies — Notepad, pens, Sharpies plus pack some light snacks/coffee/tea (optional).

Step 2. Making lists

List all the major events of the year.

Write down your accomplishments.

List of your failures.

List of down your incomplete/ work in progress initiatives.

List down people who helped you in your journey.

List down people who let you down.

List down your regrets.

Revisit your goals (if you have one).

Step 3: The process

Go through your lists in the following order.

First, take the List of failures and make note of lessons for the future. If you are feeling bad about the failure, this is the time to let it go. Feel good that at least you got a chance to try many people will not get that opportunity. Finally, failures are not the end but are intermediate milestones.

Next, take the list of “incomplete/ work in progress initiatives” — go one by one and decide the next action. It can be “drop the item” or noting down the next action required or mentioning a revisit required.

Next is to look at people related lists

“List of people who helped you in your journey” — Make a plan in your calendar either to send a thank you note or small gift or time to speak etc.

Next, it is important to look at the list of “people who let you down” — In this is list if there is any unresolved issue or incomplete communication set-up a time in your diary to complete the conversation. If you don’t want to do any of these simply you can forgive and let go any negative emotions that you carry.

Take a moment to wish well for all people on your list.

Then look at your list of regrets.

As you are going through the list ask yourself these two questions

“What I could have done?” — Note down your response.

“What I can do now?” — Note down your response. If there is something you can do now then note down the action in your diary.

Then look at your previous year’s goal and assess your performance, Make notes for your planning exercise (Don’t try to do both retrospective and planning together), make a summary of your retrospection.

Celebrate

Finally look at your accomplishments. Note down the motivation and factors that helped you to achieve these objectives. Make a plan to celebrate your achievements.

Step 4: Completion

Finally take moment absorb all your experience, complete the retrospection process.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. – Lao Tzu

Summary of my retrospection

Overall the year 2017 was good. In terms of experience it gave me lot of time to think and contemplate about my future direction. Made some good friends and connections. Read some extraordinary books !! It was a good year 2017.

Last few years I have spent enough time and money on acquiring new skills, experience and qualifications. Now it is time to put all these back into practice and help others to grow especially our team in ProcessWhirl.

I will continue to share and help people to grow. Personally, I will stop focusing more on “Agile” (not that I will stop working on any Agile assignments) but go beyond and focus on core software engineering.

I will do some research and experiments on SEMAT/Essance and also sharpen my coaching skills along with study of “Ontology” (“being”)/philosophy.

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* 8D : The eight disciplines (8D) model is a problem solving approach typically employed by quality engineers or other professionals and commonly used by the automotive industry.

Raghavendra (Raghav) Mithare, (rmithare@processwhirl.com)

Consultant and coach at ProcessWhirl based in London.

• Published on December 20, 2017 (LinkedIn)