Time For Reflection

Reflection is a technique that I first leaned about while working with BruceAnderson. It's really about spending time looking back at what you've done and thinking about why you've done it this way, what you've learned, what you don't understand, etc. Sounds simple but, like most simple things, is very hard to do in practice (particularly in the face of fast-approaching deadlines and environments where not working to solve the next problem is not working at all).

Currently I'm working on ways to introduce explicit time for reflection in my company - a financial services company trying hard to roll a product out in the next six to twelve months. Suggestions are appreciated, experiences will be posted when I have something useful to say about them -- PaulDyson

A quick way to get a baseline to look back on is to use MindMapping at the beginning of a project to capture what you know about the project goals, your best guesses about what the key issues and risks will be, and whatever other aspects you'd like to track. Once you've done a couple of mind maps, this takes 5-10 minutes. (I leave mine on the wall during the project.)

At the end of the project, mark the map (or a copy) up in red, crossing off issues or risks that weren't a factor, and adding new items to capture what really happened. This gives you a delta on the baseline, and a good starting point for further reflection. --DaveSmith

Note: last edited in November 1997

I wanted to add a note that one of the tools I use for reflection is PebblePad, which has been adopted where I work as an educational tool for reflection. -- JohnFletcher

CategoryKnowledge