The retrospective is the most important event within the Scrum framework. Why is this? The whole Scrum idea is based on inspect-and-adapt cycles. The retrospective it the event where the just finished sprint is reviewed team internally to get insights on where the problems are and how to improve the process for the next sprint (see the links below for a Scrum introduction). Without the retrospective the inspect-and-adapt cycle would simply not work.

But retrospectives are not limited to the Scrum framework, they should be part of every agile method. Even outside agile methods retrospectives can be used to review all kind of milestones / projects etc. So if you are not yet familiar with the methodology, you should definitely take a look. (more…)