Why Your Retrospectives Run Over Time
Retrospectives are essential for teams that want to continuously improve. But that doesn’t mean all retrospectives are perfect. Far from it.
Whether it’s due to an inexperienced facilitator, a team with lots of strong opinions, or serious topics that need deep discussion, retrospectives sometimes run over their allotted time. In some cases, facilitators can get a bit of extra time just by asking, allowing them to close things out properly. Sometimes, though, they’re forced to cut things short—compromising the outcome of the retrospective.
Time management is crucial for any good retrospective facilitator. Let’s explore how to avoid the trap of retrospectives that run (way) too long.
In this guide, you’ll discover:
Why your retrospectives take too long
Even the best facilitators can occasionally see their retrospective go into overtime. Here’s why that can happen.
Off-topic conversations and tangents
A good icebreaker can get the team loosened up, while a little bit of levity and banter can keep people engaged. But too many off-topic conversations and tangents can derail your retrospective and eat up essential time. You don't necessarily need to bring everyone to attention every time someone makes an off-topic comment, but gently guiding people back to the topic at hand is important to keep things on track.
Little to no prioritization
If you discuss every single issue or insight from your brainstorm, you're almost guaranteed to run out of time. That's why a good retrospective structure should always include a voting or prioritization phase. This allows everyone to decide what to spend more time on as a team, rather than only spending a little bit of time on every issue—and potentially running out of time.
Loooooong debates
A vigorous debate is usually a sign that a topic is especially important. But it's all too easy for these debates to spiral out of control and take attention away from the point of your retrospective: highlighting wins and fixing problems through concrete actions.
Uneven participation
Some participants might naturally have a more dominant voice than others. Maybe they have strong opinions or they're just more comfortable speaking in public. While uneven participation isn't inherently a problem (sometimes, some people may just not have something to share to resolve an issue), it can make your retrospective run longer as you keep trying to interrupt some participants to give others a chance to speak.
Retrospectives that run too long create serious problems
When your retrospectives go into overtime, it’s tempting to just ask participants if they’re able to stay a little longer, try to close out what still needs to get done, and wrap it up there—all without looking at why the retrospective ran a little too long.
But going over time isn’t just a drag on people’s calendars. It can have a significant impact on the quality of your retrospectives and even on being able to run them at all.
Lower engagement
Ever been in a meeting that just seemed to drag on forever? No matter how ready you were to address whatever situation the meeting was about at the beginning, by the end you were probably just thinking about lunch, your next cup of coffee, or taking a walk around the block.
To some participants, your retrospective is just another meeting. The longer it runs past its planned end time, the more they'll be looking at the door. Any exercises near the end of the retrospective won’t get the same care and attention that the earlier ones do.
Fewer quality insights
Brainpower is a finite resource. So is attention. A retrospective needs both from every participant if you're going to get the actionable insights you’re looking for. Those insights depend on deep work, deep thinking, and active participation in debates and discussions.
The longer your retrospective goes on, the more depleted participants feel, and the harder it is for them to properly answer your questions and come up with new ideas.
Fewer participants
When your retrospectives regularly go past their end time, you're going to start losing participants.
In her book Retrospectives Antipatterns, Aino Vonge Corry, a facilitator with over a decade of experience, explains the impact this can have on participation:
“If the retrospectives are allowed to go over time, it becomes increasingly challenging to convince people to spend time on them, since they will be afraid that 1 hour actually means 2 hours.”
- Aino Vonge Corry, Retrospectives Antipatterns
There are two main reasons for this:
Calendar conflicts: Some participants already have stacked calendars, and they join a retrospective expecting it to end at a specific time. If your retrospective goes long, they might be forced to leave to attend other meetings.
Declined invitations: If it’s well-known that your retrospectives tend to go long by 15, 30, or even 60 minutes, then potential participants might start budgeting for that extra time when they receive your invitation. That can lead them to decline an invitation to a retrospective because the extra time causes an overlap with another meeting—or they just think they don’t have that much time to contribute.
With fewer participants, you’ll get fewer insights, fewer perspectives, and less out of each retrospective.
Significant follow-up work
Sometimes, even when your retrospective goes long, you might be able to cover all the things you wanted to cover. If you were using the What Went Well template for your retrospective, for example, the “What didn’t go well?” phase could take up more time than you expect, pushing you over your end time all by itself. That leaves you with two choices. You can ask everyone to stay just a little longer so you can close things out or spontaneously decide to complete the retrospective asynchronously (i.e. everyone gets homework).
⚠️ It’s already tough enough for participants to fit a retrospective into their calendars. Getting them to do follow-up work afterward is its own challenge. Not to mention that you, as a facilitator, will have your own follow-up work to do. Running a retrospective is already hard enough without all that extra work.
Fewer retrospectives
Ultimately, all the issues caused by your retrospectives running long can lead to one serious problem: fewer retrospectives.
Think about it this way. If each retrospective brings fewer insights, has fewer participants, and is more work for everyone involved, they'll get less popular. That can make getting approval for them more difficult, with some leaders wondering if retrospectives work at all.
Running a crisp retrospective that stays within its allotted time means you get more retrospectives and your teams improve at a faster rate.
5 ways to keep retrospectives on time
While it might seem like there are a ton of obstacles to running your retrospective within your allotted time, there’s a lot facilitators can do. Here are just a few ideas.
Run timeboxed retrospectives
Sometimes retrospectives drag on just because they weren't properly planned. This typically happens to newer facilitators or team members who were deputized into running their first retrospective.
Getting this right is essential, as Aino Vonge Corry explains:
“For every retrospective, you, as a facilitator, must have an agenda: a plan for how to spend the time."
- Aino Vonge Corry, Retrospectives Antipatterns
Having a plan that clearly timeboxes each stage of your retrospective gives you milestones you can refer to so you can spot when your retrospective might go over time. Here's an example of how you might timebox a 60-minute retrospective:
Intro and icebreaker: 5min
Brainstorm and write comments: 10min
Reveal & introduce comments, and regroup similar comments : 10min
Vote on which items to prioritize: 5min
Build action plan: 25min
Conclusion and ROTI: 5min
💡Need a full guide on time-boxing an agile retrospective? Check out this guide.
Adapt as needed
They say no plan survives first contact with the enemy. While neither your participants nor time itself is the enemy, it's a good way to remember you might need to adapt your plan on the fly.
Again, Aino Vonge Corry has solid advice here: “You should also have a backup plan (that you never show the team), either written next to the official one in your notebook or, if you’re experienced, kept in your head.”
Some discussions might take a lot longer than you expected, meaning you'll have to cut somewhere else. You might get nothing but dead air with some questions, forcing you to shift gears.
Be ready to think on your feet and deviate from your plan when needed.
Plan for longer retrospectives
Sometimes there's just not much you can do; you're trying to pack too much retrospective into not enough time. Preventing your retrospectives from going over might be as simple as booking longer meetings in everyone's calendars. You might face some resistance from potential participants and their managers, but there are times when this is the best approach.
Run parts of your retrospective asynchronously
If you're really strapped for time, you can try having some parts of your retrospective happen before or after the actual session (i.e. asynchronously). Have participants bring their ideas to the session by sharing the plan ahead of time.
Use a dedicated retrospective tool
Most retrospectives are run using a whiteboard, whether it's physical or digital. While this venerable tool gets points for simplicity, it's rarely the best choice.
A dedicated retrospective tool won't just give you a place to write down ideas and discuss topics. It has built-in commenting and voting features. It prompts participants for feedback. It lets you automatically turn ideas into action items. It even lets you quickly produce reports that prove the effectiveness of your retrospectives.
These tools are essential, whether you're on your first, 12th, or 100th retrospective.
So where do you start?
First, try a free tool like Neatro for your next retrospective. Pick a template you’ve used before so you can clearly see the difference it makes. Then, experiment with other templates as needed. Pretty soon, you’ll find all your retrospectives run flawlessly and always end on time.
Find the path to a better retrospective. Try Neatro.