Retrospectives for Humans (the short form)
summary
Uses the 1990 Lake Washington floating bridge collapse as a concrete example: five required failures (storm, open access holes, uneven water distribution, existing cracks, interrupted pumping) sank eight pontoons and cost ~$69M, leading to redesign with smaller sealed compartments. Advocates practical facilitation rules: Miller's law, avoid blame words and don't ask why in favor of contributing factor discovery, run timed agendas, share note-taking, interrupt filibusters, elicit “how/what” answers and make actionable remediation items.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (7)
- 0:00Introduction
- 10:46Why disasters happen
- 16:29Asking better questions
- 23:34Running a great meeting
- 27:28Handling blame and jokes
- 28:35Conway’s law and retrospectives
- 35:42Q&A
related talks
36mRetrospectives for Humans
22mComplex System Failures and Blameless Retrospectives
01h 30mRunning Excellent Retrospectives: Talking for Humans
59mRetrospectives Antipatterns
38mRetrospectives Antipatterns Avoid my Mistakes
29mLearning from incidents: how things went right
15mPragmatic Incident Response: Lessons Learned from Failures
49mRetrospective Anti-Patterns