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Strategy & DiscoverySD-19
How to run a retrospective
Begin with prior commitments and finish with a few owned improvement experiments; do not turn the reflection into blame.
Product statusAssisted workflowTeklens prepares the reflection and writes the recap; the retrospective conversation is held by the team.
Input3 required inputsPrevious improvement commitments · Team observations and evidence of what changed · Initiative focus and approved Product Brain guidance
SkillsPrepare a retrospective and improvement proposals · Record decisions and follow-up · Prepare task contextProduct Manager + Product Manager Agent
OutcomeRetrospective: prior commitments and their effect, session plan, themes, two or three owned improvement experiments and the next review date.Artifact: Retrospective
Owner
Product Manager
Human-led
Participants · Agents
EngineerDesignerQAProduct Manager Agent
Trigger
A period or event is complete and earlier improvement commitments exist.
Required context
Product BrainPrevious improvement commitmentsFilesTeam observations and evidence of what changedProduct BrainInitiative focus and approved Product Brain guidance
Optional context
JiraWork history of the periodMeetings · BetaRetro notes or transcript
Skills
Prepare a retrospective and improvement proposalsRecord decisions and follow-upPrepare task context
Suggested conversation arc
- 1Review earlier commitmentsAsk what was tried, whether it happened and what effect was observed. Name repeated unresolved issues without assigning blame.Skills: Prepare task context
- 2Prepare the reflectionOrganise concrete observations into useful prompts about successes, friction and repeat patterns; keep interpretations separate from facts.Skills: Prepare a retrospective and improvement proposals
- 3Hold the team reflectionFacilitate the human discussion and capture examples, disagreements and possible changes. Preserve notes or agreed outcomes for resumption.
- 4Choose improvement experimentsChoose two or three changes with named owners, a trial period and a way to judge whether they help; decide the external follow-up destination without creating tasks implicitly.
- 5Record the next reviewProduce a concise recap with retained decisions and links to any separately confirmed external follow-up. State when earlier commitments will be revisited.Skills: Record decisions and follow-up
Output
Retrospective: prior commitments and their effect, session plan, themes, two or three owned improvement experiments and the next review date.
Artifacts
Creates: Retrospective
What good looks like
- Prior follow-up is considered before new actions.
- Preparation is distinguishable from actual team observations.
- No causes, owners or consensus assigned without evidence.
Quality gate
The team agrees the two or three experiments, their owners and the review date.
Destination
Product BrainConfluence
Usually next
People and agents work from the same Product Brain. The owner stays accountable. Assigned agents prepare and check. A named person approves at the gate.
Deep dives from the AI PM Lab
Articles that explain the thinking behind this Activity.
- Build your own company brain: the enterprise AI playbook from Stripe's engineering team
- Agentic loops: from prompting to a multiplayer team of agents
- PM to engineer ratio: why a CPO regrets product management – and still hires PMs
- Structured AI workflows: your team doesn't need better prompts – it needs structure
Choose the path that matches your role.
Set the Product AI direction with us, or test the shared Product Brain on real work with Jira and code.