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Delivery Mode:	Instructor-led Classroom
Prerequisites:	None
Course Length:	2 or 3 days
Description:	At the end of a project, milestone, or iteration, a team stands to learn a great deal by reflecting on its experiences. The ritual of a retrospective lets the team members and stakeholders stop and reflect, evaluating what works and what doesn't work in their environment. Team members discover insights that can help them launch new projects successfully or make needed midcourse improvements. Retrospectives offer significant benefits: documenting collective wisdom, defining best practices, avoiding faulty decisions or reinvented wheels, and assessing the chances for the success of future innovations. A retrospective requires skillful design and strong facilitation skills. This practical, in-depth course provides experiential learning about retrospectives from both a participant's and a facilitator's point of view. In this carefully designed and executed learning environment you'll participate in interactive discussions, and complete practice exercises. You'll learn how to plan, design, and conduct retrospectives throughout the project life cycle and ways to maximize results. You'll also participate in simulated retrospectives.
Who Should Attend:	This course is valuable for IT directors, managers, project managers and leaders, sponsors, team coaches, QA managers, process engineers, and facilitators who want to improve their experience and results. Others who can profit include business and IT analysts, developers, and testers who want to expand their toolkit of skills.
Objectives:	Explain how retrospectives increase the likelihood of product success and improve team processes Define the participants' roles and responsibilities Design an agenda and activities Learn and use tested retrospective techniques Be prepared to facilitate an interim or end-of-project retrospective Identify key lessons learned from participating in a retrospective simulation Describe several ways to employ retrospectives in your organization
Course Materials:	The participant guide includes detailed text and illustrations. The rich, reusable requirements toolset includes templates, worksheets, sample agendas, questionnaires, checklists, and detailed references. Additional materials are available on the EBG Consulting website.
Outline:	1. Introduction to Retrospectives and Team Reviews Retrospectives versus traditional post-project reviews Fundamentals: who, what, when, where, why, how Retrospective roles 2. Planning and Design Pre-work Assessing complexity Readying the group The "prime directive" Creating "safety" Selecting and sequencing activities Constructing the agenda Creating retrospective reports Types of retrospectives 3. Retrospective Simulation Conducting a mini-retrospective Debriefing the simulation 4. Retrospective Development Plan Leveraging results and recommendations Selling a retrospective's benefits and barriers Assessing the market for retrospectives Profiting from the insights of retrospectives Ways to make retrospectives happen in your organization

To see how this course maps to the IIBA BABOK®, click here.