Techniques to Improve Future Performance
Sprint Retrospectives and Introspection
The future depends on what we do in the present.
Mahatma Gandhi
If we fail to learn from our past, our future will be more of the same. Similar approaches will yield familiar results. If you want to intentionally develop, then you will need to start learning whats worked well in the past & what can be improved.
The Agile Sprint Retrospective
Those of you familiar with Agile, specifically, the Scrum framework will know that work is organised into 2–4 weeks timeframe called ‘Sprints’. Before a ‘Sprint’, there will be actionable issues (work items) within a ‘Backlog’. The Backlog is where known tasks are captured and are available to pull into sprints when it is the appropriate time in the project. Within the process of a sprint planning session, appropriate items/tasks that reside in the backlog are moved to the sprint, if they should be worked on within the next sprint timeframe.
Before the sprint planning session happens, there is a valuable continuous improvement opportunity, this is called the Sprint Retrospective. The Scrum Guide states that the purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness. A sprint retrospective…
