How to run a Localization Post-mortem ... because Humans are the only animals that trip over the same stone twice
Beers in the fridge, champagne in the freezer, and it smells pizza, popcorn and other snacks everywhere! Time to celebrate that the project we have been localizing is over!
Gone are countless hours coordinating different stakeholders, reviewing glossaries, preparing style guides and many other misc tasks.
It's time to celebrate success and move on to the next project ... sure? Are we sure it's time to move on to the next project? I'm sure it's time to celebrate, sometimes we're a bit masochistic in our industry and we do not stop to recognize the things we've done well in a project, but what I'm not so sure about is that when we finish a localization project it's the moment to move immediately to the next project.
Once we have finished a project and we have celebrated it, before embarking on a new journey to globalize our next application, software or game that we have in the roadmap, we have to stop and think that, the next thing we have to do is ... .. plan our post-mortem! Or lessons learned as they call it the Project Management Insitute or retrospective as it is called in the Agile world.
Whatever we call it, we have to take the time to reflect and analyze the performance we have had during the project, compare results and think how we can do even better next time!, because as the proverb says, Humans are the only animals that trip over the same stone twice
If you are interested in how we can do a post-mortem or why we should do it ... You are in the right place ... keep reading
What is a post-mortem meeting?
The post-mortem meeting is a session where the Globalization / Localization team will sit down with internal stakeholders, or vendors or clients, depending on which side of the fence we are operating. It's an event that is at the conclusion of a project, where we identify and analyze all aspects related to the project's lifecycle.
It's important not to focus only on the bad things! In what went wrong; during my career, I had the opportunity to attend multiple postmortem meetings, and sometimes those meetings became long meetings of complaints, in which the focus was on what went wrong. But in a postmortem we must look at everything, talking about what went well can also have a powerful impact in the long term.
If you need help on how to make a post-mortem download these slides I have prepared, maybe this template can help us to make our next project even better!
Localization is all about adapting content from one culture to another, from one market to the next. The tricky part is the thin line separating appropriation and appreciation. The challenge is to adapt content respectfully and give proper credit. It's easy to blur the line between appreciation and appropriation. My post this week reflects on that.