Retrospective

For other uses, seeRetrospective (disambiguation).

Aretrospective(fromLatinretrospectare,"look back" ), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun,retrospectivehas specific meanings in medicine, software development, popular culture and the arts. It is applied as an adjective, synonymous with the termretroactive,to laws, standards, and awards.

Medicine

Amedicalretrospective is an examination of a patient'smedical historyandlifestyle.

Arts and popular culture

A retrospectiveexhibitionpresents works from an extended period of an artist's activity. Similarly, a retrospectivecompilation albumis assembled from a recording artist's past material, usually theirgreatest hits.A television or newsstand special about an actor, politician, or other celebrity will present a retrospective of the subject's career highlights. A leading (usually elderly) academic may be honored with aFestschrift,an honorary book of articles or a lecture series relating topically to a retrospective of the honoree's career. Celebrityroastsgood-naturedly mock the career of the guest of honor, often in a retrospective format.

Awards

A retrospective or retroactive award is one which is created and then awarded to persons who would have received it before. Alternatively, a slight change to the criteria of an existing award may result in retrospective awards being presented to persons who would have won the award under present rules. Comparatively, few awards are presented retrospectively.

Law

The term is used in situations where thelaw(statutory, civil, or regulatory) is changed or reinterpreted, affecting acts committed before the alteration. When such changes make a previously committed lawful act now unlawful in a retroactive manner, this is known as anex post factolawor retroactive law. Because such laws punish the accused for acts that were not unlawful when committed, they are rare, and not permissible in most legal systems. More commonly, changes retroactively worsen the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; by changing the punishment or recompense prescribed, as by adding new penalties, extending sentences, or increasing fines and damages payable; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make exoneration more difficult than it would have been.

Conversely, a form of retrospective law commonly called anamnesty lawmay decriminalize certain acts. Apardonhas a similar effect, in a specific case instead of a class of cases. Anin mitiuschange may alleviate possible consequences for unlawful acts (for example, by replacing the death sentence with lifelong imprisonment) retroactively. Finally, when a previous law isrepealedor otherwise nullified, it is no longer applicable to situations to which it had been, even if such situations arose before the law was voided; this principle is known asnullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali.

Software development

The term is also used insoftware engineering,where a retrospective is a meeting held by a project team at the end of a project or process (often after aniteration) to discuss what was successful about the project or time period covered by that retrospective, what could be improved, and how to incorporate the successes and improvements in future iterations or projects. Retrospective can be done in many different ways.

Inagile development,retrospectives play a very important role in iterative and incremental development. At the end of every iteration, a retrospective is held to look for ways to improve the process for the next iteration.

Standards

In the context of scientific and technical standards, retrospectivity applies current norms to material that pre-dates new rules. An example of a retrospective or retroactive standard is theInternational Code of Zoological Nomenclature(ICZN Code), aconventionwhich governs the formalscientific namingofanimals,of which the 4th edition is effective since 2000. All previous editions of the ICZN Code, or previous other rules and conventions, are disregarded today,and the scientific names published in former times are to be evaluated only under the present edition of the ICZN Code.

See also

• After action report
• After-action review
• Debriefing
• Lessons learned
• Morbidity and mortality conference
• Performance appraisal

External links

• The dictionary definition ofretrospectiveat Wiktionary