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I’ve been looking forward to Norm Kerth’s book since
I first learned he was writing it. I need it for my consulting practice. My clients
need it for their process improvement programs. The software industry needs it
in order to become truly professional. And nobody in the world knows more about
project retrospectives than Norm. To me, retrospectives are primarily about
learning. Without information about past performance, there can be no learning.
Though this essential role of feedback is a basic principle of psychology, it
doesn’t yet seem widely understood or practiced in the software industry. Feedback
is built into many processes in life, especially those by which one attempts to
manipulate the physical world. If I try to thread a needle, for example, I can
tell immediately whether or not I have succeeded. Same with kicking a field goal
or building a wall—but not so with software. We in the software industry
are working with a more or less invisible product, yet this very invisibility
only heightens our need for feedback. We aren’t going to get feedback implicitly,
so we have to build it explicitly into our processes—hence, our need for
retrospectives. Feedback on software projects—meaningful feedback,
at least—is not easy to come by. Projects often outlive the accuracy of our
memories. Even when our memories are excellent, people leave during the project
and take their memories away with them. So, in order to capture project learnings,
we need to plan, prepare, and practice. And that’s what Project Retrospectives:
A Handbook for Team Reviews gives us—plans, preparations, and practice.
Retrospectives, of course, are human cooperative processes—calling
on qualities that are not typically the engineer’s strongest. One of the
best features of Norm’s book is how it speaks to an engineering audience
in engineering terms, teaching us how to transform what we know about software
engineering into social engineering. Another strong feature is the
book’s attention to issues that are sometimes considered peripheral to the
retrospective itself—activities such as selling the idea of retrospectives,
qualifying the potential customer, obtaining and maintaining support, creating
a community, coping with legal issues, thinking in advance about the what and
how of data capture, and even considering such details as what kind of food to
serve during the retrospective, and when. Project Retrospectives
is a strong book, full of strong features that will make it the classic work in
this area. In my opinion, though, the very strongest feature of the book is its
many well-designed exercises—exercises that will elevate your chance of success—whether
you are a new or experienced facilitator of retrospectives. As I wrote at
the outset, I’ve been looking forward to this book. It was worth the wait.
Albuquerque, New Mexico | 
