In over a decade of working in agile.
And.
Facilitating more retrospectives than I can remember.
My single biggest recommendation for you, regardless of industry or ways of working.
Focus more on retrospectives.
Because:
- The Key to Agility is Continuous Improvement
- The Key to Continuous Improvement is Retrospection
- At the heart of retrospection? Individuals and their interactions
- Enable these and great things will follow
Without retrospection, we aren't improving.
We blindly pursue our current trajectory. We miss opportunities to course correct.
Leading to:
- Waste & Rework
- Resentment & Frustration
- Missed opportunities
- A lack of learning
- Damage to the bottom line
So what are your options?
1. Start small
Start with just 20 minutes per two weeks. One question only;
"What is the most important thing for us to address about how we work?"
Identify one experiment you'll try next.
Rinse, repeat.
2. Micro-retros
Add a question to your daily meetings centred around improvement. Make it goal-focused.
"How could we improve the quality of our work?"
You don't need to wait for a retrospective to improve.
Or try one of my 30 min retros such as the "Most Wanted"
3. Marginal gains 1% improvements made regularly compounds and grow like interest.
Ask 'What small change could we make in the next few weeks that would improve us'?
Use the Marginal Gains Gauntlet to help slice larger things down into smaller pieces
