Learning from the past to improve the future.

After-Action Review Workshop

An After-Action Review (AAR) is a scientifically-driven post-mortem. The approach used in this workshop offers significant improvements over the typical, ‘What went well, what should we change’ approach, which has been shown to be ineffective in driving change.

Workshop Purpose

In this interactive workshop we’ll explore a series of questions designed to surface each attendee’s perspective. The goal is to arrive at a single, shared, version of events, i.e. alignment on the past.

How Does an AAR Help the Team and Project?

The AAR is designed to enhance team performance, it achieves this by:

  • Uncovering new perspectives - no individual person is likely to have a full understanding of past events. Each person will learn from others.

  • Surfacing hidden issues - you will see what your colleagues think, feel, and believe.

  • Creating team alignment - we are aiming for a single, shared version of events.

  • Improving future decision making - improving our knowledge of the past helps us make better decisions in the future.

Workshop Outline

This is a 1/2 day workshop.

  • Introduction - Why After-Action Reviews and not post-mortems? Approx 20 mins.

  • Exercise - Conducting the AAR. This is an interactive workshop where we work together to build a visual timeline of past events. With this framework set, we work our way through 5 key questions, each designed to surface a different perspective on the past. Approx 2-3 hours.

  • Discussion - Discussion is ongoing throughout the exercise, however we may stop at key moments to explore key moments that have been uncovered.

  • Alignment - We conclude the workshop by aligning on a single shared version of past events, and how this can drive action in the future (where ‘the future’ could be the next milestone or the next game). Approx 1 hour.

Format: Remote video (Zoom/Hangouts/Teams etc), or on-site.

Who Should Attend?

This workshop is designed to help team members see events from others’ perspectives, allowing everyone to form a more complete picture of what happened. It's this 'more complete picture' that helps us to learn and perform better in the future. For this reason, anyone who contributed to the time period being explored could participate.

Up to a maximum of 20 people can participate.

Book This Workshop

Get in touch via the Contact page to request this workshop for your team.