**Source:** https://heykiku.com/glossary/retrospective

# Retrospective

Every agency learns from their projects. **Some learn systematically; most learn accidentally**. The difference is whether insights get captured in ways that inform future work, or whether they vanish with the next deadline.

Retrospectives—also called post-mortems or debriefs—create structured moments for reflection. What worked well? What caused problems? What would we do differently? These conversations happen naturally over coffee and in Slack threads. The retrospective **formalizes them into actionable insights**.

The challenge isn't running retrospectives. Most agencies do them, at least for major projects. The challenge is making **retrospective insights findable and actionable**. A brilliant observation in a meeting that nobody documents helps nobody. An insight captured in a Google Doc that nobody can find is equally useless.

Effective retrospective processes include documentation habits. Standard formats for capturing insights. Clear ownership for implementing changes. A **searchable repository** so patterns across projects become visible. When retrospective insights accumulate and stay accessible, agencies actually improve over time instead of repeating the same mistakes.

## Related terms

- [Kickoff Meeting](https://heykiku.com/glossary/kickoff-meeting)
- [Tribal Knowledge](https://heykiku.com/glossary/tribal-knowledge)
- [Standard Operating Procedures](https://heykiku.com/glossary/standard-operating-procedures)
- [Archive Completed Projects](https://heykiku.com/glossary/archive-completed-projects)