Kaizen ‘改善’
At Wolox, we work with one of the most successful agile methodologies worldwide: Scrum. If you asked me to describe this methodology in one word, it would be ‘Kaizen’, Japanese for continuous improvement at the workplace. Scrum is based on constant work cycles known as Sprints, which end with a retrospective meeting, considered by many (myself included) the most important part of the whole process. I invite you to learn how we work with retrospective meetings and what you can do daily to get the most out of it.
Find the problem instead of someone to blame
When trying to identify what went wrong we tend to make a very common mistake: Accusing others involved as solely responsible for the problem. This has a negative impact as it causes tension that wears out the team and ends up being more harmful than the problem itself.
It’s also worth noting that, in most cases, there is more than one person responsible. What matters is to identify accordingly what happened and also determine if that is the problem or if there is an underlying issue that is being ignored. In any case, the whole team is responsible, as everyone has worked together to overcome different perspectives and identify the root of the problem.
So, what now?
The retrospective meeting goal is that the team gets together and reflects, identifying the things that were not done correctly or as expected. Once all problems and their causes have been found, they can be included into a ‘Kaizen Backlog,’ a list that contains everything we want to improve for the next Sprint.
There’s no need to wait until the end
In most Scrum applications, the retrospective meeting is held at the end of the Sprint to analyze the development carried out with the whole team.
What happens when a problem arises a few days after starting the development cycle? Is it worth waiting until the Sprint ends, knowing that the problem may turn into something much more serious and may cause a tense environment if not tackled quickly?
In these cases, there is the option of having what we call ‘special retrospective meeting,’ an immediate action plan to solve large scale unforeseen problems.
See also: GNIP: The Social Fire Hose
Let’s not focus only on what’s wrong
If we only concentrate on changing the things that did not go as planned, we would solve every problem but, we would not progress forward.
As we mentioned at the beginning, Scrum methodology’s goal focuses on “Kaizen”, on generating continuous improvement. Therefore, even things done correctly can be improved.
If lately you have been doing 10 tasks per week, you should set out to make 12 tasks per week. Thus, the team will be beating increasingly higher poles.
There are several things you can do in the retrospective meeting and during the Sprint that can greatly benefit the cycle’s end result proposed by Scrum. But that’s a topic for another post. :)
And don’t forget:
Posted by Ignacio Rivera (ignacio.rivera@wolox.com.ar)
