Reflection

This is Part 5 - the final part of the series

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3    Part 4     Part 5

Well this timing worked out just perfectly. A new year is here; time for reflection which is the last topic in this series on what it takes to improve performance of individuals and teams.

In the previous parts of this series I've used sports and music to evaluate lessons learned on improving  performance. Continuing with that theme, reflection occurs as a natural part of the process of learning. Reflection is also a natural part of agile development and agile coaching. In fact it is the primary way we improve our performance. Inspect and adapt.

A good coach regularly watches and provides feedback to help individuals and teams become better. And sometimes a coach decides to not say or do anything. I will say this, when coaching there are times when I just "let if burn."  By that I mean, I have a team that wants to try something, which I'm pretty sure won't work out. However,  the team is insistent in trying it, so I let them try it. I "let it burn" so they can learn from their decisions. The key here is that it's only going to burn for a week or two or sometimes three. I give the freedom for the team to fail, knowing that it won't destroy the project in the process.

Reflection is about conducting retrospectives throughout the process. You can do this for iterations, releases, across projects and just about anything you want to improve. Do a search on agile retrospective to find plenty of resources describing the process.

Another underutilized approach to augment retrospectives is to foster communities of practice. These communities are available to share information, provide solutions to common problems, and they are there to support individuals and teams.

Inspect & adapt to improve.