Reflection Cycle Template

Go through what happened, what it means and what you will do next, and end with one change, a place to try it and a person to discuss it with. Then update your goals and your skills page so the lesson does not get lost.

Practice, not research: What? So what? Now what? is a long-standing practitioner structure for reflection (Borton, 1970; Rolfe, Freshwater & Jasper, 2001), not tested against other structures. Structured debriefs after a piece of work, which this page resembles, have meta-analytic support (Tannenbaum & Cerasoli, 2013). Time boxes are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• A project, a launch, a busy month or a quarter has just ended.
• Something went clearly well or clearly badly and you want to know why before you forget.
• You are about to start a similar piece of work and want last time's lessons in hand.

Skip it when:

• You want to learn from one specific episode in depth, especially an emotional one: use 1.13 Gibbs Deep Reflection Template.
• You want a quick monthly habit rather than a project review: use 1.17 Journal & Monthly Reflections.

This page has three movements: what happened, what it means and what you will do. That is the oldest structure in reflective practice, What? So what? Now what?, which began as a classroom device (Borton, 1970) and was later formalized for the helping professions (Rolfe, Freshwater & Jasper, 2001). It is a practitioner tool. Nobody has tested it against rival structures, and its claim is modest.

The mechanism it relies on is that experience does not teach on its own. Left unexamined, it hardens into habit. The questions force the step most people skip: from describing an event to drawing out something you can carry to the next one, and then to a change the next project can test.

So the page does not stop at what you learned. Step 3 asks for one concrete change, a named place to apply it and a person to discuss it with, because an unapplied lesson is just an anecdote. Step 4 feeds the lesson into your goals and your skills page, because a reflection filed on its own fades.

Name the project or period, compare what you aimed for with what came out, and list the three moments that shaped the result, with what you did at each. Stick to facts; interpretation comes in Step 2.

Strong answer: "Week 8: the client asked for a new entrance design. I said yes on the spot without checking the schedule. The handover slipped two weeks." Not "there were some challenges with scope."

Project or period, and dates:

What I aimed for, and what actually came out:

Illustrative example: the role, the project and all numbers are made up.

A project lead at a construction company in Denmark has just handed over a school renovation for a municipality.

Step 1: Aimed for handover on 1 December; it came on 15 December, with no defects at inspection. Moments: week 3, a supplier warned about late windows and the project lead reordered from a second supplier; week 8, the client asked for a new entrance design and the project lead agreed on the spot; week 12, a tense meeting about the delay, where the project lead explained the cause but no new date.

Step 2: Myself: avoids saying no to clients in the room (week 8). Others: the site manager is excellent under pressure (week 3). The work: design changes late in a project cost far more than early ones. Strength: finding a fast fallback. Development area: agreeing scope. Own share: accepting the change without checking the schedule.

Step 3: Agree a scope freeze date at every kickoff; try it on the library extension in March; discuss with the manager.

Step 4: One of two cross-department projects done. Saying no to clients appeared last quarter too, so it moves to 1.5.