In the last month, the world has changed quickly, unexpectedly, and irrevocably. Unfortunately, we’ve become all too familiar with the coronavirus pandemic that has taken over the globe. No one predicted the extent to which this virus would impact our businesses, communities, and economy.
This unprecedented event has left businesses in all sorts of industries facing struggles that they never anticipated. With social distancing in full swing, humans have to rely on technology more than ever to get their needs met. This has revealed gaps and exposed struggles in the technology infrastructure for several businesses.
Was your business prepared to take on the coronavirus pandemic and its resulting challenges? Whether you’ve hardly felt the impact, or your organization will remain forever changed, it’s important to take this time to evaluate your position and determine what you’ll need to be successful in an unknown future.
Agile Isn’t Just for Building Software
At Geneca, we use the agile methodology to build unique software for our clients. However, it doesn’t just stop there. We find the building blocks of Agile to be useful throughout our entire organization. Some key components of Agile are especially useful in times like these.
In order to ensure we’re working effectively throughout the course of a project, we gather the development team and business stakeholders to complete a retrospective at the conclusion of each iteration. A critical component of Agile is that we ensure positive forward movement by asking teams to reflect on their work and take actions to get better.
The swift changes that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to companies around the world mark a good time for businesses to stop, reflect, and determine what’s necessary to be better. Whether you build software every day or struggled to connect to your video conference calls last week, here are the steps you can take to conduct an agile retrospective of your own business.
How To Complete an Effective Agile Retrospective
An agile retrospective is shaped by posing a few distinct questions to the right group of people. You’ll want to consider the following:
- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- What should we take a look at?
- What will we commit to improve?
While you’ll find a variety of productive questions for discussion during a retrospective, these will allow your team to do a few important things. In terms of the current crisis, it’s easy to get bogged down in related negativity. However, be easy on yourself – no one was 100% prepared. It’s imperative that you reflect on the things your business did well. Perhaps it was rolling out new technology last year that allowed an easy transition to a remote workforce. Maybe consistent performance tuning and enhanced ordering capabilities made it simple for your business to handle increased capacity.
Celebrate those that made it happen. Perhaps you weren’t ready at all, but your excellent teams stepped up to go above and beyond their duties and provide clients with steady, undisturbed products or services. Whatever it might be, note the things that went right while everything else went wrong. Recognize those positive things and understand how you can keep it going. How can you make sure your technology can keep up with the changing landscape? How can you make sure that your employees feel safe and appreciated for their sacrifices?
Odds are good that you will find many things that didn’t go well. Was the transition to remote work a disorganized scramble? Is your traditional reliance on paper holding you back from efficiently managing operations at this time? Have you been forced to lay off workers? Acknowledge those losses – unfortunately, they’re a reality for many businesses on this new frontier.
It’s how we move forward and evolve that matters now. Which of these things will you take a closer look at? Do you understand how you got here? Discuss how it might have been avoided, and how it might be avoided in the future. Be open and resist the urge to be defensive. What might have been the right choice a few months ago may no longer be the best option. Work together to determine how to shape the future, understanding that it will change greatly as a result of these recent events.
You can’t tackle everything at this point. Consider the low hanging fruit – which changes will have the biggest impact with the least amount of effort? Weigh the possibilities and determine what makes the most sense to target for now. In Agile software development, we conduct a retrospective after each iteration, which is a typically just a few weeks’ time. Introducing retrospectives into your business should be ongoing, so you don’t have to leave anything undone – you can get to it later, one piece at a time.
Now, get your team to commit. Discuss how every member of the group can contribute to your new goals and the actions expected from each person. Understand how those actions and behaviors fit into the big picture. Ask your team to commit to these changes and check in regularly. When every team member is aligned, understands expectations, and feels like a part of the bigger picture, they’re more likely to keep up their side of the deal and take necessary steps to make lasting change.
Avoid These Retrospective Drawbacks
Seems easy enough, right? Exactly! An agile retrospective is worth it to get you back on the path to success, whatever that looks like for you right now. However, it’s also easy to veer off course, or waste time conducting a retrospective without yielding the desired results. Here is what to look out for to make sure you’re staying on the right track.
Don’t take offense
The idea of a retrospective is to be honest and uncover ways the team can be better. Getting defensive is a quick way to stunt the discussion. Try your best to even the playing field. Create an environment of trust so that teammates aren’t afraid to speak up and even admit their own mistakes.
Don’t place blame
That being said, you don’t want to place blame. There’s no point – align and move forward together, as a team. Don’t let your retrospective turn into a whine fest. You want the discussion to be productive and are aiming to unveil concrete action items.
Don’t forget to assign a facilitator
It’s easy to let the discussion run away with the team if it’s not properly facilitated. A facilitator will keep participants on task, create the right environment for an open conversation, manage the allotted time, and ensure you meet the goals of the session.
Don’t blow it off
This is one of those things that’s not worth doing unless it’s done right. It’s in your best interest to prioritize your retrospective. Set aside time (at least 1 full hour), invite the right people, show up on time, and pay close attention.
Don’t have too many action items
The output of an agile retrospective will be a decision on improvements to make a list of action items to get you there. Be careful that you don’t overdo it. Choose 1 or 2 things to improve and save the rest. Based on those choices, you can assign actionable tasks to each member of the team to move toward your goals. You want the team to leave feeling positive and empowered, so don’t overwhelm them with too much to do at the start.
Why an Agile Retrospective is Helpful Now
Even if you don’t typically run an agile software development team, this technique is a beneficial, structured way to regroup and reassess – something many of us need to do in order to cope with the changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether you conduct a retrospective as a manager for a small team, or as a CEO for the leadership team, it will help to better equip you with the knowledge and attitude necessary to overcome these latest challenges.
An agile retrospective is an overt opportunity to improve performance. Use your retrospective as your checkpoint – see where you were, where you stand now, and where you will go. This is an important step in moving forward with purpose. It serves to rally the team and empower them to go forth and make a difference. It enables you to flip the switch on your team, moving them from reactive to proactive.
The next step? Send out that Zoom invite and get started! For more details on how to prepare, check out this retrospective playbook. Stay safe!