3 Metrics for Reviewing Progress

This is a part of a series that was cre­at­ed to help you get the prac­tice of ret­ro­spec­tives built into your com­pany.  This series will walk through the approach, nec­es­sary roles, in addi­tion to guides for each role to help your com­pany get started quickly.

Metrics are extremely helpful for tracking performance and gaining insights that will help you improve your retrospective practice efforts.

The metrics for retrospectives fall under 3 broad categories:

1.    Retrospective activity metrics, which measure the inputs to your retrospective efforts, such as:
•    Are the retrospective meetings taking place?
•    Is everyone attending the meetings?
•    Are the meetings well organized and effective?
•    Are the participants actively engaging?
•    Are the meetings generating prioritized and actionable items for improvement?
•    What are the issues that are preventing solid meetings from taking place?

2.    Retrospective implementation metrics, which measure whether the actionable items for improvement are actually getting implemented, such as:
•    What prioritized actionable items for improvement have been implemented?
•    What prioritized actionable items for improvement have not been implemented?
•    What are the issues that are causing items not to be implemented?

3.    Retrospective result metrics, which measure whether the implemented changes are leading to meaningful improvements to your customer perception, employee perception, and/or business, such as:
•    Higher customer satisfaction scores
•    Improved conversions in one or more areas of the business
•    Overall productivity metric improvement
•    Higher quality scores
•    Improved employee satisfaction scores

Next week, I’ll share some common challenges that are related to retrospectives in addition to some proposed solutions to tackle them.