Because we are in constant "refinement mode" with regard to both our work and our processes, we often find ourselves pursuing the sweet spot between formality and simplicity. I realize that these are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but we have found that insisting on formality, no matter how innocuous it may seem, leads often to creating rules or guidelines which are anything but simple.
We conducted the latest version of our post-mortem meeting this morning, and I was really happy with how it played out, despite it not going exactly as planned. Funny how that happens. As a result, we have achieved a nice framework (another word for "guidelines," of course) to use for our other post-mortems that is simple enough to be re-used and remembered easily. It feels like we hit that sweet spot, so I thought I'd share.
Here is our post-mortem framework - current as of today and liable to change as needed, of course...
One person (hopefully someone not involved in the project) chairs the meeting.
Chair introduces purpose of the meeting, length of meeting, and goes over goals. Something like:
The purpose of this hour-long meeting is to discuss what went well in Project X, what could have gone better, and what actions we can take to address the weaknesses. We should leave with notes on “lessons learned” and a set of actions in place.
One at a time, each participant (stakeholder from the project) gets 5 minutes to talk about his or her top-of-mind, project-related issues.
Chair highlights themes or commonalities among the issues presented.
Team discussion (related to the themes presented by the chair) ensues.
Set of actions or lessons is created.
Meeting is ajourned.
Chair compiles notes and then submits findings (lessons) to the group in attendance.
Group never makes mistakes again.
Alex
- Dynamo's Interactive Director. Alex's holistic mission at Dynamo is to push the team to create beautiful, usable work online, and to exploit new technological and experiential avenues. He is preoccupied with keeping the studio at the forefront of an industry travelling at light speed.
