Have we forgotten about reflecting?
Inspect and adapting are useless without reflection
My experience is that Scrum Teams spend most of their time in “delivery mode.” In the best case, we focus on meeting the Sprint Goal; in the worst case, we struggle to deliver the User Stories we “promised” by the end of the Sprint.
Then at the end of the Sprint, we spend one or two hours reflecting in a retrospective on what we could have done differently and how we can improve.
I believe most teams believe they are a great team if they spend most of their time in delivery mode. I think this doesn’t seem right.
In the Heart of Agile (HoA), Alistair Cockburn says we should Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect and Improve. He doesn’t say how much we should spend on each and maybe there is no good answer. In addition, there is no clear line between the four.
In Scrum, I experience we often focus our time on Collaborating and Delivering. And too little time on Reflect and Improve. During Sprints, we focus on turning ideas into value, i.e., to deliver.
“Sprints are the heartbeat of Scrum, where ideas are turned into value.” — Scrum Guide 2020
