Agile methods for project work and work organisation: From review to retrospective - frameworks for systematic feedback

Agile meeting formats such as “review meetings” and “retrospectives” offer the opportunity to make work processes visible to all participants in a project team. They illustrate how generating results as a team is influenced by the team dynamics while also demonstrating what drives a team forward, what stops it and what can help a team to enjoy the working process more on individual levels of satisfaction.

In the context of universities and science, both formats can be used efficiently to enhance self managing team dynamics. The self-responsibility among working groups such as student or research teams or administrative working bodies increases and working groups or even individuals improve their working culture. If held on a regular basis, a teams’ performance will grow significantly while simultaneously reduce dissatisfaction and distress.

People in leadership positions are benefitting from the application of reviews and retrospectives remarkably as they help their teams to become more and more self managing and thus reduce a leaders’ workload.

After a short introduction, review meeting formats and retrospectives will be explained and practiced in various formats. Different ways of holding a retrospective meeting will be shown, a step-by-step guide will enable the audience to use these meetings formats by themselves immediately after the keynote event. A working unit of practicing, as well as a q&a session and a discussion are part of the talk. All learned content will be applicable both in online and present formats.

The following topics will be covered: