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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?
Copyright © 2010, 3P Vantage, Inc. All rights reserved.
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