What problem does it solve?
This Skill helps teams transform the messy aftermath of an epic into a structured retrospective that captures lessons learned, evaluates success, and produces actionable next steps without blame.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Epic discovery and verification: Detects the most relevant completed epic by checking sprint status first, then falls back to user input or story artifacts when needed.
- Deep story synthesis: Reviews story records to extract recurring themes across dev notes, review feedback, takeaways, technical debt, and testing signals.
- Continuity with prior retros: Loads the previous epic’s retrospective (when available) and cross-references action items, lessons, process changes, and debt follow-through.
- Next-epic preparation: Previews the next epic to identify dependencies, gaps, and technical prerequisites so improvements connect directly to upcoming work.
- Facilitated, psychologically safe dialogue: Runs a two-part format (Epic Review + Next Epic Preparation) with a “party mode” dialogue structure for authentic team interaction and user participation.
Quick Start
Use the bmad-retrospective Skill when your goal is to run a non-blaming post-epic review and produce lessons learned plus clearly owned action items, for example: “Let’s run a retrospective for the epic I just completed.”
