Retrospectives are as important for "successes" as they are for failures

The generation before me still believed that children should be "seen and not heard."  I was heard from plenty.

Today children are told, "You can do anything, be anything you want."  I was in my twenties for most of the '80s, and I saw this change happen.  Before the '80s generation kids were told, "get a job" and the ones that didn't were told, "you can't live here anymore ya hippie."  I don't ever remember someone saying, "you can do anything you want" when I was a kid.  Now I over hear kids being told that all the time.


I'll stop my social commentary there and move on to project management commentary.  This is not meant to be (just) a "get off my lawn" post, I believe there's a connection to this "you can be anything you want" attitude and the idea that you can "declare anything you want a success."

A success used to be a project that was well received, shipped relatively on time, for a cost near the budgeted amount but about 20 years ago I started noticing a trend -  failures began to get casts as "successes" regardless of the challenges met along the way.

30 or 40 years ago a business venture which failed would get all sorts of press about it being a failure, even while it was being swept "under the rug" it got called out as a disaster.  Then about 20 years ago, these failures began to get casts as "successes" regardless of disastrous outcomes.  This can happen because by and large we've stopped measuring (and most importantly publicizing) the criteria for success.

This is what's known as a "post fact world."  Want something to be a success?  Don't look at the numbers, just refer to it as a success.

What I'm concerned about is that by calling these things successes we often forge ahead with the next project or effort in exactly the same way.  Why wouldn't we?  The last thing was a "success" so why not do it like that again?

I don't believe I'm going to get managers to change this practice.  I know it's been going on as long as business has been around but it's been institutionalized in the last few decades.  But there is a method for combating it.

Regardless of whether your last project was a soul-less success or a real one, if we focus on "what can we do better" and "what should we stop doing" (and their corollaries, "what should we do more of" and "what should we do less of") then we avoid labeling things as successes or failures and we'll avoid a lot of political bullshit along the way.  In fact, the biggest thing we'll have to overcome is to fight the complacency introduced by labeling our failures as successes.  For this, I'd suggest the age old argument, "Yeah, but if a little is good then a more is better, right?  And these things were good, right?"

So what I'm suggesting is that retrospectives have become just as important for your "successes" as they are for your failures - they just might be the same thing.

Think in terms of what can we do better/more-of and what do we want to stop/do-less-of.