The Quick Review retrospective
A short retro for straight after a release, launch or incident. Three columns, Sustain, Improve and Fix now, catch what people noticed while it's fresh.
Quick Review is a short retro for straight after something happens: a release goes out, a launch ends, an incident is resolved. It asks what worked, what should change, and what can't wait.
It's our version of the hot wash. The term comes from the U.S. Army, and emergency planners use it too, for the discussion held right after an exercise or a real event with the people who took part. The Sustain and Improve columns borrow the after-action review's language: practices to sustain, and practices to improve.
The three columns
- Sustain: What worked and must be repeated. Specific enough to repeat on purpose: "The rollback runbook was current, and rolling back took four minutes."
- Improve: What should be done differently. A change, not only a complaint: "Tell support about the release window an hour before," rather than "Support didn't know."
- Fix now: Urgent issues that can't wait for the next cycle. Risks still open: a missing alert, a manual workaround, a customer still affected.
When to use it
Hold it soon after the event. It suits releases, launches, migrations, incidents and outages, and one-off events like a big demo.
It's deliberately shallow. If an incident needs a proper look at its causes, follow up with Plan vs. Actual, whose Why the difference? column gives root causes room. For a regular sprint retro with no single event to look at, Start · Stop · Continue fits better.
How to run it
This plan fits 45 minutes. With a small group and one event, you can finish in 30.
- Set the stage (3 minutes). Name the event and its time span. Say the aim is to learn, not to find who was at fault.
- Write alone (7 minutes). Everyone writes cards in all three columns. Anything still broken goes in Fix now.
- Group (5 minutes). Merge duplicates and read the Fix now cards aloud. If one is truly urgent, give it an owner now, before the vote.
- Vote (3 minutes). Spend votes on the Sustain and Improve topics that matter most.
- Discuss (15 to 20 minutes). Keep each topic short: what happened, and what to do. If one needs a deeper look, schedule it separately.
- Agree actions (5 minutes). Every Fix now card gets an owner and a due date measured in days. Pick one or two Improve items, and add the Sustain items to something the team reuses, such as the release checklist.
- Close (2 minutes). Confirm the owners, and thank anyone who worked late on the event.
Tips
- Invite everyone who took part. Support, operations and whoever handled customers saw things the developers didn't.
- Keep it blameless. After an incident, people are tired and some feel responsible. If the manager who'll judge the incident is running the session, consider another facilitator.
- Don't let Fix now become a backlog. If a card can wait for the next sprint, it belongs in Improve.
Run it in Scrums
Choose New session → Retrospective on your team's page and pick Quick Review from the formats. Everyone writes privately, and other people's cards stay face-down until the facilitator reveals them, so nobody's first card sets the tone. Then group similar cards (or let Auto-group cluster them), vote with hidden tallies, and discuss the topics in order, adding action items with an owner and a due date. Open action items come back in the next retro's Review step. Retros are anonymous by default, and Scrums is free.
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Questions
What is a hot wash?
A short discussion held right after an exercise, a training session or a real event, with the people who took part. The term comes from the U.S. Army and is used in emergency management. It often feeds a fuller after-action review later.
How soon after an incident should we hold a retro?
As soon as the incident is resolved and people have rested, ideally within a day or two. After that, the small details are the first things people forget.
Does a Quick Review replace an incident postmortem?
No. A postmortem digs into the timeline and the causes, and usually ends in a written report. A Quick Review gathers what people noticed and makes sure urgent fixes have owners. You can do both: a Quick Review the same day, and a deeper review later.