What is a FLAP Retrospective?

The FLAP Retrospective is a simple and effective method to analyze a workflow or a recent project. FLAP stands for:

• Future considerations: Actions or strategies to be adopted for the next stages of the project.
• Lessons learned: What the team has learned during the period or project. This may relate to processes or collaboration in the broadest sense, or to more specific issues.
• Accomplishments: Successes and highlights. This step is essential for celebrating efforts and boosting motivation.‍
• Problem areas: What needs improvement or difficulties encountered. This makes it easier to consider corrective action.

The simplicity of the FLAP method makes it accessible to all teams, whatever their size or level of project management maturity. Thus, organizing this retrospective can make sense in many contexts:

• End of agile sprint meetings
• Project reviews
• Moments of strategic reflection, etc.

What are the benefits of a FLAP Retrospective for your project?

Adopting the FLAP method for your retrospectives brings many advantages:

• A clearer vision of priorities: By structuring your discussions around your achievements, problems encountered and future objectives, the FLAP Retrospective helps you focus on the most important moments for your project.
• A culture of continuous improvement: Repeating this process over time encourages collective learning, better anticipation, and adaptation to change. What's more, it enables you to resolve recurring problems by tackling them constructively.
• Active involvement of teams: By enabling the participants to express themselves transparently, and to contribute actively to the overall vision, the FLAP method strengthens team cohesion and communication, while rewarding individual efforts.
• Deployment of concrete actions: The emphasis on creating an action plan at the end of the session ensures that each retrospective results in clear, measurable initiatives.

Last but not least, the FLAP method is flexible enough to be used in different business sectors and project types, making it a must-have tool for teams looking to structure their project management.

How to organize an effective FLAP Retrospective with this Klaxoon template

Start by sharing your Board with your project team, inviting them by e-mail or via a connection link.

The aim of a retrospective is for everyone to express themselves transparently by sharing their feedback on the project, whether positive or negative. So, offer your team time to reflect and share their ideas in the different areas of the Board, respecting the following color code:

• Future considerations in yellow;
• Lessons learned in blue ;
• Achievements in green;
• Problems encountered in red.

This stage can be carried out in 2 ways:

1. Synchronously: Once the team has joined the Board, launch a Live videoconference. Then, set a timer of 5 to 10 minutes to let the team add their ideas before discussing them together.
2. Asynchronously: Ask your team to fill in the Board before your video call, to save some time and let participants share their ideas at their own pace.

Once all the ideas have been shared, review them to clarify, complete or adjust if necessary. If there are a lot of ideas, you can use Board's AI features to help you categorize them quickly.

Next, duplicate the ideas you will be following up in the “Action plan” section, especially those shared in the “Problems encountered” category. Use a connector to link them to new ideas corresponding to the actions to be taken.

Finally, when all the actions have been identified, decide together who in the team will be responsible for implementing them, and write down their names in the idea’s dimension.

That's it, your retrospective is over! You have clearly defined all your next steps, and the Board remains accessible to the project team members at any time, from anywhere, to review the actions planned together... Until the next one!