Retrospective Workflow

Overview

Capture lessons learned immediately after significant work. Promotes insights to memory for future sessions.

When to Use

• After completing a Conductor track
• After significant milestones
• After incident resolution
• After failed attempts (especially valuable)
• Before context compaction

Process

1. Trigger Retro

When work completes or after incidents, run retro to capture learnings while fresh.

2. Gather Context

Review:

• Completed tasks and their actual vs. estimated complexity
• Blockers encountered and how resolved
• Code review feedback received
• Test failures and their root causes
• Decisions made and their outcomes

3. Create Retro Document

Create history/retros/<date>-<topic>.md:

# Retro: [Topic/Track ID]

**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
**Duration:** [Actual time spent]
**Outcome:** [Success | Partial | Failed]

## What Went Well
- Specific wins with context
- Patterns that worked
- Tools/approaches that helped

## What Didn't Go Well
- Specific challenges
- Time sinks
- Approaches that failed

## Lessons Learned

### Technical
- Code patterns discovered
- Architecture insights
- Tool learnings

### Process
- Workflow improvements
- Communication insights
- Planning accuracy

## Action Items
- [ ] Concrete improvements for next time
- [ ] Memory updates needed
- [ ] Documentation to write

## Quotes / Key Moments
> Notable insights or breakthroughs worth remembering

4. Promote to Memory

For significant learnings, update .memory/project.md:

## Learnings

### [Date] - [Topic]
- Key insight that should persist across sessions

Integration with Conductor

After track completion:

1. Mark track complete in conductor/tracks.md
2. Run retro
3. Link retro in track's final status
4. Optionally archive track folder

Anti-Patterns

• Skipping retros - "No time" means losing learnings
• Vague retros - "It went well" teaches nothing
• Blame focus - Focus on systems, not individuals
• No action items - Retros without changes are theater

Memory Promotion Criteria

Promote to .memory/project.md when:

• Learning applies to multiple future tasks
• Insight saves significant time if remembered
• Pattern should become standard practice
• Gotcha could cause repeat failures

Trigger

retro

Or after completing track: retro track-001