It is now another year, and I have mixed feelings about it. I did not notice myself thinking negatively about it until I hit the bottom of my bucket of Neapolitan ice cream.   

I wanted a fairer representation of my past year (and not wallow in self-pity), so I decided to use the Lessons Learned technique from the Babok guide to revisit my year.  

According to Babok V3 Guide, a lessons learned session (also called a retrospective) “helps identify either changes to business analysis processes and deliverables or successes that can be incorporated into future work. These techniques can also be beneficial at the close of any milestone within the effort.”    

Sessions can include a review of:    

• business analysis activities or deliverables,   
• the final solution, service, or product,   
• automation or technology that was introduced or eliminated,   
• impact to organizational processes,   
• performance expectations and results,   
• positive or negative variances,   
• root causes impacting performance results, and   
• recommendations for behavioural approaches.   

I’ll consider a full rotation around the sun as a “milestone” for my use case. 

I re-examined the three main goals I set for myself at the beginning of the 2021 year:     

• Set more boundaries 
• Work on creating life balance to reduce burnout  
• Learn Web Development/Computer Science  

I stuck with a pretty basic retrospective template with the following questions (what went well, what needs improvement, next steps) to keep it high-level. If you utilize the technique to analyze past business milestones, there are more interesting ways to involve the rest of the team to contribute. Here are a few templates from Innovation Training and Atlassian I found to be quite useful.

It is best to hold retrospective meetings close to the milestone date (about a week’s time) so that the memory of the project is relatively fresh in a participant’s mind.  

Some considerations for using the technique: 

REFERENCES 

10.27 Lessons Learned Babok Guide. (2020). In IIBA International Institute of Business Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.iiba.org/knowledgehub/business-analysis-body-of-knowledge-babok-guide/10-techniques/10-27-lessons-learned/ 

4 Fantastic Agile Sprint Retrospective Templates. (2021). In Innovation Training. Retrieved from https://www.innovationtraining.org/agile-sprint-retrospective-templates/ 

Morales, K. (2021). 5 fun sprint retrospective ideas with templates. In Atlassian. Retrieved from https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/5-fun-sprint-retrospective-ideas-templates