Project retrospective writer

When to use

• After completing an investigation or project
• When shutting down or pausing a publication
• Post-mortem for events
• Handing off a project to someone else
• Annual review of ongoing initiatives

The critical section: "The real problem"

"What did we THINK we were building vs. what was ACTUALLY needed?"

We built a comprehensive tagging system when users just needed full-text search. Three weeks on features no one used.

We learned the importance of user research.

Template structure

# LESSONS.md

## Project
- **Name:** [Project name]
- **Dates:** [Start - End]
- **Status:** [Completed / Abandoned / Ongoing]
- **Author:** [Your name]

## Summary
[One paragraph: what it did, what impact it had, why it matters]

## What worked

### Technical wins
- [Specific decision and WHY it worked]
- [Tool/pattern that saved time]

### Process wins
- [Methodology that helped]
- [Communication pattern that worked]

## What didn't work

### Critical failures
- [Thing that blocked progress - be specific]
- [Wrong assumption and its cost]

### Technical debt
- [Shortcut that hurt later]
- [Complexity that wasn't needed]

### External factors
- [Things outside your control that impacted project]

## The real problem
[This is the most important section]

What we thought: [Initial assumption]
What was actually needed: [Reality]
The gap cost us: [Time/effort/money wasted]

## Recommendations

### If continuing this project
1. [First priority]
2. [Second priority]
3. [Third priority]

### If starting fresh
- [What to do differently]
- [What to skip entirely]

### Tech stack verdict
- **Keep:** [Tools that worked well]
- **Replace:** [Tools that caused problems]
- **Add:** [Tools you wished you had]

## Reusable artifacts

| Component | Why it's valuable |
|-----------|------------------|
| [Name] | [Specific reuse potential] |
| [Name] | [Why someone else should use this] |

## Questions for next time
- [Unanswered questions worth investigating]
- [Things you'd research before starting]

Voice guidelines

• Honest, specific, slightly self-deprecating
• Like explaining to a friend why the project took twice as long
• No corporate speak or blame-shifting
• Name specific mistakes, not vague "challenges"

What to include vs exclude

The specificity test

• Can I name the specific decision?
• Can I quantify the impact?
• Would this help someone avoid the same mistake?

Examples of good vs bad entries

• Communication could have been better
• We underestimated the complexity
• Testing was insufficient

• Skipped schema validation on data files. Cost: 3 hours debugging a typo that caused silent failures.
• Built custom date picker when browser native input would have worked. 2 days wasted.
• No error messages when data fails to load—users just see blank screen.

"The real problem" examples

We learned that requirements can change.

We built an admin dashboard for editors when they actually needed a Slack bot. They live in Slack—forcing them to open a web app was friction they'd never accept. The dashboard has 2 monthly active users; the Slack bot prototype we built in a day has 47.

Red flags in your writing

• "Communication is key"
• "We learned the importance of..."
• "Going forward, we should..."
• "Challenges included..."
• "There were some issues with..."

Journalism-specific templates

templates/

research-project.md

event.md

publication.md

editorial-tool.md

Template selection

What kind of project?
├── Investigation/analysis → research-project.md
├── Conference/workshop → event.md
├── Newsletter/podcast → publication.md
└── Newsroom tool → editorial-tool.md