During our November meeting of the Ottawa Scrum Users Group, I talked a bit about how retrospectives should be used to do more than just discover things that aren’t working well and ways to improve them. Often a team can identify problems but do not have the ability to make the changes to correct the problem for various organizational reasons.
The alternate approach is to instead concentrate on the bright spots. These are the things that are working well and overcoming challenges. If you can replicate the conditions and settings that produce these successes, then you may not need to address the things that are getting in your way.
The Ottawa Scrum Users Group recently held a Meetup on the topic of retrospectives. I presented a number of ideas (Powerpoint) that have led to our successful implementation of retrospectives at Embotics and discussed those in the context of some ideas from books on retrospectives and change.
Whenever we talk at these Meetups about adopting agile practices, my first response is that it all begins from the retrospectives. If an organization can examine how they are doing and find ways to make steady improvements, then they can greatly change how they work in positive and highly productive ways. There are simple ways to kickstart this process and then adapt locally as things begin to click.
