Back in the good ol' Waterfall days, some of my projects had “post-mortems”. The project team would get together for a couple of hours of “lessons learnt” after several months' worth of project work.

(I still find the term, “post-mortem”, amusing to say the least, since no death was involved. But at least nobody ever used “autopsy” :-))

The post-mortem exercise has many faults, not the least of which being the dominance of the project manager in the forming of said lessons learnt. It was also too little, too late: The project team would disband and the lessons filed away.

I really like that Scrum, APM and other methods build in frequent reflection, not just in the end. Every iteration, the team takes an hour out of their busy schedule to truly reflect on the past in order to improve the future.

By making reflection a frequent activity, the team makes it a habit, something natural. Even if you engage in no other “inspect and adapt” activity, effective iteration retrospectives are among the top determinants of deriving value from Agile.

(By the way, if you don't hold regular retrospectives, don't expect much from your Agile implementation.)

Unfortunately, all too often reflection falls victim to busywork. Occasionally, there will be some outside pressure and team members will feel torn: Pause work to improve their process and teamwork, or crank out another story point that could really make a difference?

When you're contemplating attending a retrospective, does your mind sometimes wander to other meetings, actions, deliverables you could turn out? Would it be fair to say that the higher up you are, the greater the temptation, the harder the trade-off?

I was reminded of this last week, having invited PMs and ScrumMasters to transform their effectiveness with my weekly mentorship program, “Cross Your Personal Agile Chasm”. One of my readers wrote to me: “I like everything about it, but freeing up the time to truly get value is going to be difficult.”

I fully recognize that such is the person's reality. It might be yours as well. It's certainly mine too, as a service professional and small business owner. There is always something important and/or urgent to do.

If your team practises Agile, it has that built-in mechanism for reflection. Unfortunately, there's no such framework for individuals. It gets harder for team members, who always have yet another valuable story in the queue.

If you identify gaps in your knowledge and practice, when do you pay attention to them?

I believe self-development takes great commitment and the incorporation of slack in your schedule. It's not something you "just get to" as with the rest of the stuff on your personal backlog.

You need to spend the time closing conscious gaps (what you know that you don't know) as well as unconscious gaps (discovering what you don't know that you don't know).

That's one reason I love group programs of any kind. Their structure fosters accountability and helps me recognize my gaps. My favourites are community conferences (not just lectures) and live training events. Beyond suppling information and data, the frequent peer interaction is motivating, mind-opening and exhilarating.

In closing, ponder these reflection questions:
... Could you use a personal commitment to growth?
... What would it take?
... How could you do that?