What role does a project retrospective perform?

Question

What is the main role of the project retrospective? How is it different than a post-project evaluation conducted by the project manager and the project team?

Answer 1

A retrospective is simply a way of looking back to move forward.  There is a very good web site dedicated to retrospectives at http://www.retrospectives.com/.  In the past, these were referred to as project post mortems and more recently as lessons learned. Unlike the written evaluation the PM may supply for the project team members, the retrospective is a team exercise to determine what was done well and should be repeated, what learnings should be captured (e.g. for the improvement of the methodology), what needs improvement, and what requires further investigation.

Another approach to retrospectives is Appreciative Inquiry: http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/.