Abstract: Which practice is this?
- Periodically...
- Hold a meeting…
- Where people whine and moan…
- Perhaps generate action items…
- Then don’t do them.
In theory, retrospectives are the heart of agile methods, the reflect and adapt cycle that fuels continuous improvement. In practice, many leaders encounter passive resistance: the teams find them a painful waste of time. How can we get the real world benefit without the pain?
Patient, “It hurts when I do retrospectives. Retrospectives suck!”
Doctor, “Then stop doing that!”
Patient, “...OK, then what should I do instead?”
This session answers that question. Learn a simple system of practices that give retrospectives clear purpose and yield these additional benefits:
- Rapidly align business and development on how much to invest in improvement.
- Enable individuals to make local decisions that naturally implement the agreed investment.
- Actually solve the problems you see.
- Make improvement progress visible.
- Get credit for solving those problems.
- ...Without wasting time complaining in a meeting.
Learning Outcomes: - Easily make team improvement a first class deliverable, like product features.
- Concretely visualize, track, budget, and prioritize improvement like product features.
- Simplify and accelerate both learning experiments and habit changes.
- Align interests of development, product, and management to invest in both product and productivity improvements continuously.
- Provide management insight and data into which teams are improving and which need help.
- Leave with a simple set of practices you can apply immediately with any team that struggles with retrospectives, or fails to repeatedly deliver improvements.
