Preparation
01 · Schedule immediately
02 · Invite everyone involved
03 · Designate a facilitator who was not in a leadership role
04 · Gather materials
Step-by-step instructions
1
Question 1 — What was supposed to happen? (5–10 min)
- Review the original plan, objectives, or expected outcomes. What were the team's goals? What did success look like?
- This is not a discussion — it's a statement of the shared starting point. Disagreements about what the plan was are important data and should be noted.
2
Question 2 — What actually happened? (10–20 min)
- Build a shared factual account of what occurred: the sequence of events, decisions made, actions taken, and outcomes achieved.
- Focus on observable facts, not interpretations. "We arrived 40 minutes late" not "we managed time poorly."
- Go around the group — every person adds what they observed. The goal is a composite picture, not one person's narrative.
3
Question 3 — Why was there a difference? (15–25 min)
- Analyze the gap between planned and actual. What factors explain the difference? Look for root causes, not symptoms.
- Distinguish between: factors the team could control vs. external factors; one-time circumstances vs. systemic patterns.
- Use "5 Whys" to drill past surface explanations: "Why did the report arrive late?" → "Because we didn't allocate editing time" → "Because we didn't build a realistic timeline" → root cause.
4
Question 4 — What do we do differently next time? (10–20 min)
- Generate specific, actionable lessons — not vague resolutions. "Brief all external partners 48 hours before delivery" is a lesson; "communicate better" is not.
- Assign each lesson to a specific owner and timeline. An unassigned lesson is a forgotten lesson.
- Identify what worked well and should be preserved: AARs that only examine failures miss the equally important learning from success.
5
Document and share (5 min)
- Write a 1-page AAR summary immediately after the session: what happened, why, and what changes. Distribute to all participants and relevant stakeholders.
- Store in a shared, searchable location. The value of AARs compounds over time — a collection of AAR reports becomes an organizational memory.
Materials
Original plan or objectives document (printed or on screen)
Whiteboard, flip chart, or shared digital document for capturing responses
Timer to keep questions on track
AAR summary template for documentation
Practical recommendations
Never skip Question 1. Teams that jump straight to "what happened" lose the shared baseline and end up debating what they were trying to achieve rather than what they learned.
Hold the rule against blame. AARs collapse into defensiveness when individuals feel criticized. Frame everything in terms of system factors, not individual failures. "The handoff process broke down" instead of "Carlos dropped the ball."
Keep it short and frequent. A 30-minute AAR after every major milestone is more valuable than a 3-hour post-mortem once a year. Frequency normalizes reflection as a team habit.
Distinguish Hot AARs from Formal AARs: A Hot AAR (15–30 min) happens immediately after the event — rough, rapid, while memory is fresh. A Formal AAR (60–90 min) happens days later with data and documentation. Both are valuable; they answer different questions.
Follow through on lessons. The fastest way to kill AAR culture is to run reviews that produce lessons no one acts on. Assign owners, set deadlines, and check in at the start of the next AAR.
Inspiration
Application examples by context:
- Humanitarian response: Médecins Sans Frontières and other humanitarian organizations run AARs after every deployment phase, building institutional knowledge about what works in complex emergencies across different contexts and teams.
- Healthcare: Hospital surgical teams use brief post-procedure AARs to identify communication breakdowns and equipment issues before they repeat. Studies show AAR adoption significantly reduces medical errors.
- Education: A teacher runs a 15-minute AAR with students after each major project: what was the learning objective, what did they actually learn, what made the difference? The process teaches metacognition alongside content.
- NGO project management: An NGO team runs AARs at the end of each project phase, documenting lessons in a shared repository that new staff can search. Onboarding time drops because institutional memory is explicit rather than locked in individuals' heads.
- Before Action Review (BAR): Same four questions, applied before an event: What is supposed to happen? What challenges do we anticipate? What can we learn from similar past events? What do we do to prepare? A BAR + AAR pair creates a complete learning loop.
- Post-Mortem: Typically applied to failed projects. Similar structure but usually longer, more formal, and conducted weeks after the event. AARs work better when run immediately and regularly; post-mortems when something has gone significantly wrong.
- Retrospective: The Agile retrospective (common in tech teams) is a periodic AAR applied to team process rather than a specific event. Same learning logic, adapted for sprint cycles.
Consulted sources
- US Army. (1993). A Leader's Guide to After-Action Reviews (Training Circular 25-20). Headquarters, Department of the Army.
- Darling, M., Parry, C. & Moore, J. (2005). Learning in the thick of it. Harvard Business Review, 83(7), 84–92.
- Morrison, J. E. & Meliza, L. L. (1999). Foundations of the After Action Review Process. US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.
- Baird, L., Holland, P. & Deacon, S. (1999). Learning from action: Imbedding more learning into the performance fast enough to make a difference. Organizational Dynamics, 27(4), 19–32.
