Team retrospective
[Which deliverable is this retro about?]
Our two commitments
- 1. [Not decided yet]
- 2. [Not decided yet]
Team retrospective facilitator
Run the 30-minute retrospective on the screen, in front of the team. Three phases, three prompts, and exactly two commitments with an owner each - which is the part that decides whether anything actually changes before the next deliverable.
- One 30-minute format, no timer
- No account or server upload required
The 30-minute format
Most MBA teams only talk about how they work when something has already gone wrong - usually at 11pm the night before a deadline. A retrospective moves that conversation to a scheduled, low-stakes moment, when people can be honest without being desperate.
Run it after each major deliverable and timebox it hard. Five minutes of silent writing against three prompts, fifteen minutes reading answers aloud and clustering the overlaps, then ten minutes to pick two changes and give each one an owner. That's the whole method, and this page is a place to run it rather than a different, longer one.
Why retrospectives fail for student teams
Corporate retro advice assumes a standing team with a manager and a sprint cadence. MBA teams have neither: membership changes every term, nobody has authority, and the project may only last six weeks. Three failure modes follow from that.
- The vent session. Everyone airs frustrations, nothing changes, and the next retro feels pointless. The two commitment slots exist to stop this: the meeting isn't over until something specific has an owner.
- The politeness ceiling. Nobody names the real issue - one member's slides always need rework - because you'll sit next to them in class for two more years. That's what the sharper prompts are for.
- The process tax. A 90-minute framework with sticky notes and dot voting, for a team of five, on a six-week project. Overkill breeds skipping, which is why this tool has one format and no configuration.
Make the changes stick
A retrospective's output is behavior, not notes. Put the two commitments at the top of the next meeting agenda and spend sixty seconds on them: did we do it, or not? That single review loop is the difference between a team that compounds and a team that repeats itself - which is exactly what the read-only list at the top of the Prep step is for, if you asked this page to remember your commitments last time.
What stays on this device, and what doesn't
Everything you type is held for this browser tab only and disappears when you close it. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account.
Ticking "remember our commitments on this device" adds one narrow exception, kept in this browser and nowhere else: the deliverable name, the two commitments and their owners, and the review moment. That is the whole list.
What is never written to this device is the middle of the meeting - the keep-doing, slowed-us-down, and one-change notes. Those are candid observations about named people, typed on a screen the whole team can see, and they belong to the conversation they were written in. Untick the box and the remembered copy is deleted immediately, not at some later save.
Frequently asked questions
How often should an MBA team run retrospectives?
After every major deliverable, or every two weeks on long projects. Frequency beats depth - short and regular wins.
What if one teammate dominates the retrospective?
Use silent writing first: everyone writes observations for five minutes before anyone speaks. It equalizes airtime before discussion starts.
Should we write down retrospective outcomes?
Yes, but only commitments: one or two behavior changes with an owner each. A page of notes nobody rereads is worse than two commitments everyone remembers.
Why are there only two commitment slots, with no way to add a third?
Because the cap is the method, not a limitation of the tool. Teams that leave a retrospective with five commitments keep zero of them. Two changes, each with a named owner, is what a team can actually carry into the next deliverable.
Why is there no timer or countdown?
The 5/15/10 card is a reminder of the shape of the meeting, not a clock. A running countdown turns a 30-minute conversation into a performance against a timer - a person facilitates the timeboxes, not the software.
Where do my notes go? Is anything saved on MBA Lab's servers?
No account or server upload is required at any point. Everything you type stays in this browser tab and is gone once you close it. If you tick "remember our commitments on this device", four things are additionally kept on this device only - the deliverable, the two commitments, and the review moment. What people said during the retro is never kept past the tab.
How does the next retrospective know what we committed to?
Only if you ticked "remember our commitments on this device" and open this page again in the same browser. Last time's two commitments then appear at the top, read-only, for the team to mark done or not done before starting the new retro.
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