I used the following sequence when facilitating a project close retrospective. The project ran for around 8 months and seven people participated in the activities. One hour was enough to gather around 40 notes, which were all recognized and read out loud.

Tell and Cluster as a methodology to present and discuss notes worked really well: everyone had a chance to speak up and all thoughts shared were discussed. Also, having the participants speaking about their notes one at a time also pushed other participants to pay attention to the subject and, even more, add something that they hadn’t thought about before.

1. Set the context: “We are gathered here today to reflect about the past months in which this team worked together. The project is ending and our goal today is to understand what were the things that drove this team to where it is right now.

2. Happiness Radar

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3. Lessons Learned Quadrants: Planned X Success

4. Tell and Cluster

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5. Token of Appreciation

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