Achievement wall
This post is part of 101 ideas for agile teams.
Context
Despite the fact that your team holds regular retrospectives and implements retrospective actions, your team has the feeling that they do not improve, or improve only very slowly.
Your team delivered over a dozen releases in the last couple of months, but they feel like standing still.
Action
Visualize all achievements (releases, met goals, improvements, …) on a wall in your team room, where every team member can see them at least once per work day.
For every action successfully implemented, for every release, for every met goal, write a sticky note and hang it to your achievement wall. Over time, the wall will fill up and give your team a better sense about how much was achieved over time.
Optionally, you can add a time line to your achievement wall. This helps visualizing changes over time.
Make improvements visible to everyone on the team.
Make sure your achievements stay on the wall: use super sticky notes, magnets, glue, …
What you gain
The team gains a better insight into their improvement speed.
Small improvements won’t be forgotten.
Hopefully, better team morale and motivation to keep going.
How to strengthen
The nicer you arrange your achievement wall, the better the effect.
If you have someone in your team who is good a visualizations, let him or her draw a nice visualization of the achievement. Or find a nice picture for the achievement.
Risks
Not enough wall space.
If in the beginning only a few achievements are on the wall and this is demotivating for your team, sit with your team and find achievements from the past to kick start the achievement wall.
Please help me improve this idea by providing feedback.
More ideas at 101 ideas for agile teams
Many thanks to bbv Software Services for making this blog post possible.
