Memo #25: Retrospective

An Agile practice (and the open road) on New Year's eve...

On the last day of the year, it’s as if the entire world conspires to create year-end retrospectives—literally, “looking back”—on books, movies, photos, people and events that indelibly marked 2025. Like you, my inbox overfloweth with myriad ways in which I can contemplate or celebrate what has just ended or lies ahead. Ah, the pressure to tally the pros and cons of the “dones” and the “almosts”!

Which got me thinking about the concept of a retrospective in the Agile methodology. As a Product Manager, my training in and practice of the Agile methodology was a gift—not only in helping me manage technical workflows but also as a way of working with shared values across a diverse team of skills and roles.

“Agile retrospectives have been a cornerstone of continuous improvement since 2001, when the Agile Manifesto introduced the principle of regular team reflection: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”

This practice encourages teams to pause, assess what’s working, and identify opportunities for growth—ensuring that progress isn’t just about delivering software, but about evolving how teams work together.” - Atlassian

In a culture obsessed with output and productivity, the retrospective is an exercise focused more on the process itself. Just as important, it builds cultural safety for teams as all members, regardless of position or tenure, are encouraged to speak candidly about their experiences and reflect on processes, procedures, and tasks so the broader team can benefit and improve in the long term. Cue poetic metaphors.

---

Designed with ChatGPT 5.2

Objects in Mirror

“In the pinched bend of your street
you can look back, or ahead, or wait.”
 - from “A Living” by William Stafford 


I steal a glance, 
neon headlights trained on me
chasing forward,
then dim with distance. 

I am unsure of the physics, 
but believe it’s true,
rearview objects appear closer,
just under the surface. 

The pinched bend of highway
is flanked with low hills, jagged rock, 
oversized eggs and bacon, 
promoting a diner just beyond. 

We are dusk driving, 
windshield to rearview ratios,
timestamp each traveler, 
more roads ahead or behind.

Rumble strips are reminders
of interval pains, 
slight vibrations keep me 
in my lane.
 
Whispering now, don’t drift 
across the invisible line
without signaling the world 
your intentions. 

But tonight I am wide open, 
volume rising with the road. 
I slide over, eyes ahead, 
and behind, waiting. 


Heather M. Coughlin (2025)

---

A Living

By William Stafford (1962)

Even pain you can take, in waves:
call the interval happiness. You can
travel; whatever nags you, you can
change it. You can roll this burden away.
In the pinched bend of your street
you can look back, or ahead, or wait.

And there is easy talk, for throwing
back like Annie-Over, or a minuet,
a way to act human in these years the stars
look past. And somewhere around you begins
that lifted road lighted by sunset, offered
again and again, laced where the sky lives:

Someday your road.

---

workLIT Memo:

Today, my poem “Objects in Mirror” was inspired by William Stafford’s “A Living.” In my research, I learned that Stafford’s poems most often take place on a mountainside, a riverbank, or a roadside—”near an exit,” as he told the Chicago Review. I believe we’re all near an exit or an onramp, and the turn of a year urges us to think about the roads taken and those about to come into view, our personal “retrospective”.

Some have claimed that Stafford’s assessment of society is not pessimistic, but rather “a reaffirmation of American life in the twentieth century.... Part of his confidence in the future is founded upon the miraculous ability of the wilderness, independent of any human agency, to renew itself.” - On William Stafford, The Poetry Foundation

I’m a fan of Stafford’s plain language—and took my cues from a recent road trip, where I couldn’t help but contemplate the “pinched bend” of the road behind and in front of me—an opportunity to look back, ahead, or simply “wait” for what comes next.

Thank you for the gift of readership and the encouraging comments and notes since the launch of workLIT. Cheers to renewal in all its forms.

Happy New Year.