9 articles on Personal Retrospective

Restrospectives are a key tool in Agile practices. They enable your team to see what went well, what went bad. What could be strengthened and what should be avoided. Personal retrospectives can help you look back, evaluate your past year or so and then plan for the next one.

Patrick Kua has tweeted a few links that are worth checking out. I have collected them here for our convenience. Added some of my thoughts and some additional links.

How to Reflect on Your Year in an Actually Useful Way Amy Eisinger suggests took on the bright side of life. Either do a Month-by-Month Review or a Life Area Review. You might also create a table. Each column is an area of your life. Each row is a month. Then go ahead and fill out the boxes. Once you did this, you could revisit this table at the end of every month and add another row to have the retrospective more frequently. That will allow for quicker adjustment of your plans. Some of the topics you might want to have in your columns: Family. Friends. Professional life: Business/Employment. Physical wellness / health. Education. Spiritual life / mental health. Finances. 10 Areas Of Life You Need To Focus On or 9 Life Areas For Goal Setting or 7 Areas of Life.

How to Do Your Personal Retrospective for the End of Year This is a list of 6 questions designed for Scrum Masters, but if you leave out the "Scrum Master" from the questions then they can be applicable to everyone. Especially related to the professional life.

One thing mentioned by Helen Lisowski, the author, that stood out for me is that she, as most other people, feel awkward praising themselves. So maybe these retrospectives should include peer-review as well. People should not do them alone. They could get help from their peers who will be able to remind them about their successes or what was perceived by the outside world as successes.

Kick-start your year with a personal retrospective Steve Martin suggests to do a personal retrospective once a month though I have not seen any specific recommendations on how to do it.

Running a Personal Retrospective for 2015 Patrick Kua provided detailed step-by-step instructions on how to run a personal retrospective using sticky notes and short descriptions of events.

The benefits of personal retrospectives

Why Retrospectives Should Get Personal

How to Do Your Own Personal Retrospective?

Free Running Reflection: A Personal Retrospective Technique

The Need For Frequent Personal Retrospectives