---
title: "Retrospectives"
description: "Retrospectives are presented as a way for software engineering teams to review operational incidents, investigate root causes, create remediation tasks, and improve teamwork. Beyond technical review, the process can focus on emotional and human aspects of projects, including interactions and ways to work better together. The suggested timing includes post-incident or post-project sessions, mid-project course corrections, and weekly meetings; a 90-minute Friday session one week after a project ends is described as effective, while next-day and three-week delays are discouraged. An active, neutral facilitator should prepare an agenda and guest list, state a clear purpose, involve everyone, and use one or two activities such as a timeline, five whys, or Start Doing / Stop Doing / Keep Doing brainstorming."
---

# Retrospectives

[Heroku](https://yomu.fyi/company/heroku) · Noah Zoschke · Aug 14, 2014

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

Retrospectives are presented as a way for software engineering teams to review operational incidents, investigate root causes, create remediation tasks, and improve teamwork. Beyond technical review, the process can focus on emotional and human aspects of projects, including interactions and ways to work better together. The suggested timing includes post-incident or post-project sessions, mid-project course corrections, and weekly meetings; a 90-minute Friday session one week after a project ends is described as effective, while next-day and three-week delays are discouraged. An active, neutral facilitator should prepare an agenda and guest list, state a clear purpose, involve everyone, and use one or two activities such as a timeline, five whys, or Start Doing / Stop Doing / Keep Doing brainstorming.

## Context

Software engineering teams use retrospectives to review operational incidents, examine root causes, create remediation tasks, and improve systems. The practice is also used to examine emotional and human aspects of work, teamwork, and project interactions.

## Approach / What changed

The process uses scheduled, facilitated meetings with a clear purpose, broad stakeholder participation, advance agenda and logistics preparation, neutral facilitation, and guided exercises. Suggested activities include round-table check-ins, timeline reconstruction, five whys, and Start Doing / Stop Doing / Keep Doing brainstorming.

## Takeaways

- Retrospectives can be held after incidents or projects, during a project to course-correct, or weekly; higher frequency also provides practice improving the retrospective process.
- A 90-minute session on Friday afternoon, one week after a project ends, is described as effective; the post advises against holding it the next day or waiting three weeks.
- Facilitators should remain neutral, ask questions of everyone, and use one or two structured activities to keep participants engaged and produce new insights.

**Tags:** [Incident Response](https://yomu.fyi/topic/incident-response), [Teamwork](https://yomu.fyi/topic/teamwork)

- Source: [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/blog/incident-retrospectives)
- Source URL: https://www.heroku.com/blog/incident-retrospectives
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-09T14:23:10.675Z

[Read original post](https://www.heroku.com/blog/incident-retrospectives)