Introduction

This document is your guideline to the project closure and reporting. Our goal is to analyse processes and outcomes to identify best practices and address our weak spots.

At the start of the Discovery phase, the PM should create a Project Sheet (using this template), where an estimation, timeline and the stats would be filled. The PM should insert there the actual timeline and estimation breakdown at the start of the project.

Along with that, the PM should create a document for retrospective meetings, using the following template. The team involved in the project should be notified when the project starts, and the PM should share and pin the retrospective document in a project channel in Slack.

The PM should encourage the team to add current issues or notes related to the project – team communication, project management, tasks, client expectations, development, or QA issues.

At the end of the project, the PM must remind the team to fill the documents with their issues or notes and ensure that everyone on the team has provided their feedback. The PM also can include their comments if they consider it necessary.

Retrospective Meeting

Reccurency

• A final retrospective must be conducted at the end of every project, after go-live (maximum 2 weeks after go-live), and receiving feedback from the client.

• For projects lasting more than 3 months, retrospectives should occur every 3–4 weeks, during which feedback and data are collected and updated in a rolling report.

Pre-retro preparations

1. PM should notify the team about the call at least 3 days in advance, sending an invitation to relevant stakeholders (developers, team leads, PMO team, etc.). PM should gather the entire team, including the dev team leads, for the retrospective call.

2. Before the retrospective, the PM should review all team comments, and analyze and consider theoretical steps for improvements, which will then be discussed with the team on the meeting.

Where to take numbers from easyBI and where to paste it

1. Go to Jira > easyBI > Dashboards > Project report sample.
   There you have 3 widgets, needed to fill the Project sheet with numbers.

2. Choose your projects in the widgets.

General stats

To fill this page, you will use widgets Time Spent per Project and Bug fixing. Totals and Delta here are counted automatically, so you will have to copy&paste only the numbers for estimate and spent.

Then, if we have exceeded the estimate, the cells in the Delta column will become red. That means that at the retrospective meeting you will have to discuss that with the team, and as a result – provide the reasoning behind exceeding the estimate in the comment section on the right.

Detailed stats

To fill this page, you will use Time Spent per Page widget. Totals and Delta here are counted automatically, so you will have to copy&paste only the numbers for estimate and spent.

Then, if we have exceeded the estimate, the cells in the Delta column will become red. That means that at the retrospective meeting you will have to discuss that with the team, and as a result – provide the reasoning behind exceeding the estimate in the comment section on the right.

Retro Call Agenda

1. Call opening

• Start by thanking the team for their collaboration.

• Share the key project statistics prepared in advance:

  • Estimate vs. Actual time spent and their differences.

  • Bug statistics.

  • Any overtime instances.

2. Later, the PM should act as a facilitator, allowing each team member to speak in turns to discuss their written points and overtime instances.

3. PM should identify points for future improvement and keep track of them on a list.

4. At the end of the retrospective, the PM should summarize the action plan for the discussed improvements.

Post-Retro Actions

PM should fill out the Retrospective findings document with their project’s information and share the project’s conclusions at the following PM call on Friday to share experiences with other PMs.