SAP S/4HANA projects: enhancing learning culture through regular retrospectives

First and foremost, it’s crucial to regularly reflect on whether the chosen collaboration model still makes sense and whether the project team can work efficiently with it while maintaining transparency during the project's progress.

For this reason, we recommend moving away from one-time lessons learned sessions at the end of a project, instead establishing regular retrospectives in your project routine. It’s important to consider a few key points to ensure success. The team should recognize the value of retrospectives and prioritize them as a tool.

1. Setting the focus

At the beginning of each retrospective, clearly communicate the specific topics you want to address. It shouldn’t be an all-encompassing project review. For example, "Today, we’ll focus on collaboration aspects like communication and reporting."

2. Frequency of retrospectives

Weekly retrospectives can quickly lose value as there may not be enough time to implement the necessary actions resulting from them. Depending on your project meeting structure, we recommend using existing on-site meetings and conducting retrospectives every eight to twelve weeks. The duration depends on the size of the team. For very large teams, consider conducting retrospectives at different levels, such as with sub-project leaders or teams within the sub-projects.

3. Thorough documentation

The outcomes of the retrospective should be documented in a way that is clear to the project team. This allows everyone to follow up on the discussed topics, even if they were unable to attend. However, this documentation should only be accessible to those who participated in the retrospective to maintain its integrity.

4. Enabling follow-up

Even more important is making the resulting actions from the retrospective transparent and ensuring their status is communicated and documented. Future retrospectives will only have the potential to provide valuable insights for project management if project members feel that the issues they raise are being addressed and, ideally, improved.

5. Variety is key

There are hundreds of ways to conduct a retrospective, and even more templates available. While you don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time, avoid asking the same basic questions every time to keep things engaging. For example, Retromat offers a variety of ideas.

Regular feedback from the project team gives project management the opportunity to adapt the collaboration model to the team’s needs, resulting in greater acceptance within the team. At the same time, it helps ensure that ineffective processes don’t go unnoticed.

Key Benefits of Regular Retrospectives:

1. Continuous improvement

2. Enhanced team engagement and cohesion

3. Establishment of a learning culture