Retrospectives : Why they Matter

Change

A concept that encompasses life in its entirety. People often say that the only thing constant in life is ‘change’ and yet more often than not we refuse to cognitively embrace it and crave for the opposite. Come to think of it, ‘change’ defines and drives the nature of life and keeps its existence relevant.

My first exposure to agile was about it being an agent that recognized and encouraged change. When I first learnt about ‘agile’ as a set of values and principles, I was quite inexperienced in the business world and hence I could not draw fair comparisons with its peers to assess its legitimacy or effectiveness. However, after making conscious attempts to understand its basic fundamentals and practicing the same in a few projects, I was sold on its agenda. I’ve been coaching teams in the agile space for more than a few years now and the one aspect of it that often seems to be undervalued is ‘Retrospectives‘.

Retrospective (from Latin retrospectare, “look back”) means to take a look back at events that already have taken place. In the context of a business or technology project, quite simply defined, it is a meeting attended by a team at the end of a time-box to discuss what was successful about the venture and/or time period, what could be improved, and how to incorporate the successes and improvements in the future. The reasons why such a discussion is valuable are manifold. To list a few, timely feedback from team members on their current planning and execution methods could detect potential impediments and inefficiencies thereby pre-empting focus on mitigation strategies or workarounds for the same. Also, retrospectives give the team an opportunity to frequently inspect and adapt their behavior and reaction to the current state of the process and hence device ways to improve coordination and collaboration among team members.

The agile Retrospective

In general, agile advocates a rapid value model for software delivery that provides shippable/potentially shippable increments frequently and consistently by following a cadence of breaking down work items into smaller chunks that are regularly prioritized, relatively sized and documented in a format (i.e.: Epics/User Stories) that succinctly describes the user/customer’s persona, its functionality and benefit. A major advantage of following such a model is the opportunity to constantly inspect and adapt plans and methods of executions to improve efficiency and quality. Hence the need for an effective ‘Retrospective‘.

The structure of a retrospective discussion is usually dimensioned around reflection on three basic questions –

• What did we do well?
• What did we do wrong?
• What could be improved?

However, the above mentioned questions are a mere guide to open a conversation and it is imperative to encourage team members to think out of the box when possible. The following is one such approach that lends itself to such thinking.

Maze of Uncertainty

Strategy: Team collaboration and coordination (Eg: personality conflicts, team fungibility, capacity planning)

Goal: Interaction model with extended team in the organization (Eg: escalation mechanisms, enterprise wide transparency, executive/senior leadership buy in)

Influence: Operating model with 3rd party or external entities.

Locale: Competitive market conditions, workforce attrition.

Dissecting the Maze

Every project’s journey begins at the outer most region of the Maze. The project starts with an idea inspired by its reality, to fill a certain demand or at times discover a potential for demand in the future. Extensive variability in this region of the Maze allow for very little command on the constantly evolving ‘Locale‘. Hence it is important for organizations/teams to recognize this churn and manage end user/customer expectations accordingly. “Respond to Change over following a plan” (Agile Manifesto) is an integral principle in this environment as it advocates making realistic plans and reviewing them regularly to incorporate an organization’s reaction to change and recalibrate the future course of action.

Working with external entities can often prove challenging for organizations due to disparate operating models between them. Thus, “Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation” (Agile Manifesto) proves to be an integral principle in the region of ‘Influence‘ as it encourages organizations and individuals to involve the end user/customer/external entities earlier on in the process of strategy and implementation to avoid surprises down the road, minimize technical debt, sunk costs over time and deliver on a consistent cadence.

Beyond this region, is the circle of ‘Goal‘ that every organization strives to meet to enhance predictability and achieve a sustainable pace for product delivery. The focus in this area is to ensure that the teams are equipped with the appropriate amount of generalized specialists needed to execute the work. They should be empowered to self-organize, self-direct and have support from the organization’s extended team through a dynamic that promotes prompt visibility and transparency to showcase progress and resolve impediments in a timely fashion. The principle “Working Software over comprehensive documentation” (Agile Manifesto) helps boost such a dynamic in organizations as it fosters a symbiotic relationship between the consumer and manufacturer (or rather Business users/customers and IT teams).

The inner most circle of the maze lays emphasis on aspects of a project that govern its tactical or rather operational behavior. “Individuals and Interactions over process and tools” (Agile Manifesto) aptly describe the underlying theme of this area. An effective team is one that recognizes the need for ‘Strategy‘ with regards to its self-organization and team management to build a high performing and motivated workforce that delivers a robust product under budget and on schedule regularly.

Conclusion

The above described method is just one of many techniques that can be used to dissect the life of a project. The bottom line is that individuals and organizations should be encouraged to frequently retrospect on methods, behavior and culture and ponder creatively about the various factors and variables that exist in their reality which they must overcome or workaround to build a better product for the customer. When in doubt one must look to basics. However, one of the basics must always be ‘Continues Innovation‘. As Morris Kline once said, “The most fertile source of insight is hindsight”.