Retrospective as a way to get better
May 19th, 2009
Retrospective is one of the most ignorable practices from agile processes. Why people don’t use retrospective? Mostly they don’t see the value yet they see difficulties that it causes.
No doubt any practice which provides no value should be cancelled. But some practices provide long-term value which some people don’t take into consideration.
Some obvious goals of retrospective:
- Gather feedback
- Improve situation using gathered data
Unfortunately it is not so easy. Main problems are:
- Insincere atmosphere prevents useful and thorough feedback, in such team (or even entire organization) retrospective can transform into “witch hunting”.
- Team members don’t take into account long-term benefits of retrospective, they look only for short-term ones, and stop conducting retrospective very quickly (or even don’t start)
- Improperly organized retrospective without clear goals produces no real results, it’s a waste of time
There are several important hidden advantages which outweigh potential problems:
- Such meeting can make the atmosphere more open, because people get used to give and get feedback
- As soon as project team see that process can be tailored to them company-wide standards meet less resistance (although any standard which usefulness can’t be explained to a team will meet resistance)
- It can help to improve company-wide processes
- It helps to react to changes
This article doesn’t cover organization strategy in part of reflection and improvement. It is mostly about how to conduct useful retrospectives. It includes:
- Benefits from different point of views
- How to conduct
- Tools for retrospective
- Company-wide retrospective
Categories: Agile Development, Project management