The Retrospective Column
Jim Benson | Mar 09, 2010 | Comments 8
When we make our work and our process explicit, and we do retrospectives, it makes sense to have a retrospective column in our Personal Kanban. The thought here is fairly simple: at the beginning of each day move tasks from Complete into Retrospective. Then, at the end of the week (or whenever you wish) take a look at the tasks in the Retrospective column. They will remind you what you did over the retrospective period.
This is also handy if you need to do your timesheets every week and want to actually remember what you accomplished.
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Hi,
What application are you using there?
That’s Zen
http://www.agilezen.com
Thanks for the steady flow of ideas you share with your posts. I’m fairly new to the process, but I feel it’s making some impact on my scatterbrained approach to work.
On my two-monitor Mac, I’m experimenting with using Stickies, which can be color-coded, are collapsible, and whose text can be formatted for added emphasis or distinction as needed.
The background for one monitor acts as the cork board with vertical, labeled columns, and watching the flow of projects horizontally gives me a sense of progress.
Most of the day, this display on one monitor is obscured by other application’s palettes (namely Adobe apps), but with a few keystrokes, I can view it clearly while hiding all other windows.
I adjust the monitor’s background image as needed in Photoshop, adding/removing/resizing/relabeling columns. I’m currently using two banks of columns – primary and secondary.
It’s evolving, thanks to your – and your readers’ – ideas. Keep up the good work.
[Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this comment; feel free to move it.]
Thank you Bruce,
There is no wrong place for a post like this though. I’d love to see a screenshot of your use of Stickies.
Ideally, one screen would always be the kanban – but I know as well as anyone, that’s simply not feasible.
Thanks again for the kind words.
Hi Jim,
What’s the difference between the complete column and the retrospective column. It’s not clear to me why both are needed.
Thanks and Regards,
Kel
The complete column is work you’ve done during a day. The work on it is “complete”. At the beginning of the next day, ordinarily one would pull that work into archive. We’ve added a Retrospective column to make the Retrospective an actual part of work flow. We find it helpful, at the beginning of each day to move work from complete into retrospective because sometimes you feel like a task is done. But then the next morning you realize there might be one little bit you missed, so doing that last gut-check and verification is important.
With an explicit Retrospective column, you do that verification, but still keep the week’s work visible _and_ have a column there that says “You need to do your retrospective.”
Even the best of us frequently miss retrospectives because it’s just too easy at the end of the week to skip them.
Thanks Kel!
AgileZen, is there anything missing with that service you think? I’ve tried it but I really want the card names more emphasized, they’re too small.
Certainly there are things missing from AgileZen. The world of on-line Personal Kanban is in its infancy.
We could start with card being able to be owned by more than one person, trackable task types, and interoperability with other work management tools.
But, for now, AgileZen is the easiest to use and the easiest to read.
For power, LeanKit Kanban provides multiple value streams, subdivided columns, and some other robust features – but its interface is more clinical.