The Downsides of Recency Bias in Agile Retrospectives
Do you find that your retrospectives vary from week to week? Do you sometimes feel that the team is doing very well and happy one week and then everyone is grumpy the next? If so, then there may be too much recency bias present in your team’s retrospectives..
Let’s talk about the value of agile retrospectives and a problem called recency bias. It can affect our team’s vision and process improvement efforts. Let’s dive into the potential issues:
- 🔭 Limited Perspective: Narrow View.
When we only focus on recent events, we miss out on important insights from earlier stages of the project. It’s essential to look beyond the recent events and consider long-term trends and recurring issues. - 🌳 Temporary Troubles vs. Root Problems:
Recency bias may lead us to prioritise short-term concerns over deeper, underlying problems. While it’s crucial to address immediate issues, we must also tackle the root causes for sustainable growth. - 🕐 Learning from the Past:
Don’t Forget! Agile retrospectives help us learn and improve. But if we only focus on recent experiences, we overlook valuable lessons from both successes and failures in the past. We should avoid repeating mistakes and build upon past achievements. - 🗒 Incomplete Assessments:
To fully understand how we work, we need to look at everything, not just what happened recently. Decisions and actions from earlier stages can still be important and have consequences later on. So, let’s analyse those too. - 🏆 Sacrificing the Vision:
Short-Term Fixation Focusing too much on recent events can make us lose sight of our long-term goals and strategic vision. Agile retrospectives should align our practices with our overall objectives. We must avoid getting caught up in short-term wins that hinder our long-term progress.
What do I do to help avoid this?
The reality here, is that it’s unavoidable and sometimes necessary for the team. If there’s burning issues the team are facing, this is their forum to discuss and improve.
By focusing on the teams goals and getting them to think forward about any potential obstacles, pitfalls and double down on things that will get us there sooner. It changes the mindset of everything broken vs these things work well for us, how can we do more of it?
Every 3 retros, I change the format to focus more the bigger picture, rather than the standard formats e.g. start, stop, continue. This is where I find the sailboat retro format helps provide the structure for broader process improvements.
How?
I love this format, yes it’s a bit cheesy 🧀. It gets the team thinking about where we’re going 🗺, what’s slowing them down ⚓️ and what risks 🔥 do we face getting there.
1. The Goal 🥅
What is the final destination for the team? What is their goal or vision? This is where they are heading to and what represents their version of success.
2. The Wind 🌬
What is pushing the team forward towards their vision? What is driving them towards the goal? Are they well resourced or motivated by a common goal.
3. The Anchor ⚓️
What would slow the team down, or bring them to a complete stop? What would create drag and reduce velocity? It may be a dependency or policy. It could be a lack of process or one that is too complex.
4. The Rocks 🏔
What does the team have to watch out for? There may be communication gaps, or technical risk that could unhinge the team. Understanding what the risks are early can help the team think of ways to navigate around them.
5. The Sun ☀️
What is making the team feel positive? What are the good things that can come out of this? These may be things that they look forward to! 😍
Bonus points, if you can get the team to start thinking about this the day before the retrospective. This will allow people to step back and get into the headspace needed to think more holistically.
When is recency bias a good thing?
Recency bias can sometimes still be beneficial for a team. It can bring the team together around recent shared experiences and provide a forum for immediate change.
For example, it can be useful when you’re currently in the middle of a project or larger deliverable and there are issues that need to be resolved or acted on quickly. It can also be helpful when reviewing a project or functionality after launch.
Keep in mind, that you’re making a conscious decision of including recency bias into the discussion and when discussing actions, then do make sure you consider the bigger picture when it comes to process changes and improves, by making sure they don’t take you further away from your team's goals.
The Conclusion
To overcome the negative effects of recency bias in agile retrospectives, we need to strike a balance. Consider both recent experiences and historical context. Encourage diverse perspectives, analyse all relevant data, and foster a culture of continuous learning.
By doing so, we can make meaningful and sustainable process improvements while avoiding the pitfalls of recency bias. Keep improving and stay focused on our goals!
Thank you for reading!
