Engagement Retro

Engagement Retro Skill

The end of an engagement is the highest-leverage, most-wasted moment in consulting: the client is happy (hopefully), you've learned things, and the next sale is easiest now. This skill runs the close-out — honest results vs. goals, what to repeat/fix, whether it actually made money, and the explicit renewal/ referral ask — so each engagement compounds into the next instead of just ending.

Required Inputs

Ask for these only if they aren't already provided:

• The engagement — what it was, the original goals/SOW, and what was delivered.
• The outcome — results vs. goals, and the client's apparent satisfaction.
• The reality — scope changes, time vs. estimate, profitability (did the pricing hold?).
• The relationship — is there follow-on work, a testimonial, or referral potential?

Output Format

Engagement Close-out: [client / project]

1. Outcomes vs. goals — what you set out to do vs. what was delivered and achieved. Honest, with the client's view.

2. What worked — the approaches, decisions, and moments to repeat next time (your reusable playbook grows here).

3. What didn't — scope creep, mis-estimates, friction, anything that hurt margin or the relationship — and the specific change for next time (process, SOW clause, pricing).

4. Commercial reality — did the engagement make money? Actual time vs. priced, scope changes captured (or eaten), effective rate achieved. The number that tells you whether to do this kind of work again, and at what price.

5. Lessons log — 2–4 transferable lessons to carry into your standard process / proposal / SOW (e.g. "add an acceptance window clause," "price discovery separately").

6. Grow the relationship — the explicit next step: the follow-on/renewal to propose, the testimonial to request (while they're happy — pair with case-study-writeup), and the referral ask ("who else do you know wrestling with this?"). Don't let a good engagement just end.

Quality Checks

• Outcomes are assessed honestly against the original goals (not just "went well")
• What-worked and what-didn't each yield a specific repeat/change action
• Commercial reality is faced — actual vs. priced time, effective rate, scope eaten
• Lessons are written to feed back into the process/proposal/SOW
• Ends with concrete renewal, testimonial, and referral asks

Anti-Patterns

• Do not skip the money question — "the client was happy" but you lost margin means change the pricing, not repeat it
• Do not write vague lessons — "communicate better" isn't actionable; "add a weekly written status" is
• Do not let the engagement end without asking for the testimonial/referral — now is the easiest it'll ever be
• Do not bury scope creep — name what you ate so the next SOW prevents it
• Do not treat the retro as internal-only — the client-facing close-out also sets up the renewal

Based On

Consulting close-out / retrospective practice — outcome review, profitability reality, lessons-to-process, and the renewal/referral motion.