Spreading the Retrospective Gospel

Of late, I've been involved with a lot of Retrospectives at work: probably an average of two per week, between the ones I've been asked to facilitate and the ones I've been participating in. I'm still seeing a wide range of results, in terms of what comes out of each Retrospective by way of Action Plans or Deciding What To Do. Some teams identify what I think are significant areas of improvement, while others cherrypick the easiest things to deal with rather than the ones that might give them the biggest bang for their buck. Also, most groups still seem to regard Retrospectives as a compliance activity they're forced to do every so often, rather than an opportunity to improve themselves which might not otherwise be presented to them. Both of those (admittedly, related) problems seem like ones that need to be addressed, if we're to ever succeed as an Agile organization.

Possibly this goes back to the way Agile was brought into our company. Rather than it being a grass roots movement that started small in one team, proved successful and spread to other areas, it was decided upon as a strategic direction by management and foisted on everyone else (to put it bluntly). Having a group of enthusiastic Explorers make the move to Agile - the preferred method - suggests that they'd probably buy into the idea behind Retrospectives as part of the package, whereas being told you're Going Agile has naturally pre-disposed some folks to a heightened level of disenchantment. Or, to put it another way, many of those involved are still trying to cling to as much of their old way of working as they possibly can, and that mindset isn't terribly conducive to the whole inspect & adapt approach.

But we are where we are. So I guess it's time for me to add to my list of 2007 Agile Manager To Do's. Help people experience Retrospectives that are as effective as we can make them, and they'll either drink the Kool-Aid or they won't.