Week 47, 2022—Issue #231
Continuous Improvement for Teams: Premortems, Retrospectives, and Feedforwards
Three popular practices to help teams continuously improve the way they work.
We live in a world of constant and continuous change and teams should continuously improve how they work to remain relevant.
Here are three popular practices to do just that:
1. Premortems
Imagine your upcoming project has failed. Why did it fail and what can you do now to avoid that from happening?
As the name suggests, premortems happen before an upcoming project or iteration starts. It involves a team coming together to visualize a worst-case scenario, identifying the possible stumbling blocks, and prioritizing some preventive steps. Created by research psychologist Gary Klein, the method bears a resemblance to the process of “thinking backward” created by Buffet and Munger now popularized by Bezos and Amazon. There’s a connection to Tim Ferris’ fear-setting method as well. You can make it part of your continuous improvement process by regularly doing premortems for upcoming iterations.
For more, see Performing a Project Premortem in HBR.
2. Retrospectives
Look back at your past iteration. Did you deliver to expectations? If not, what do you need to do differently going forward?
The retrospective is a ceremony found in the Agile method Scrum. It’s a form of After-Action Review (AAR) used by the US military. It involves a team coming together to compare intended versus actual outcomes of a project or iteration. As both names suggest, retrospectives and AARs are reactive, taking place after action. In an Agile setting, this typically calls for the team to identify good things that the team should keep doing, as well as the not-so-good things that need to be improved. Crucially, this latter part includes scheduling said improvements into the upcoming iteration.
For more, see Atlassian’s Team Playbook.
3. Feedforwards
How well are you collaborating as a team? What do you want to improve and how can each team member contribute?
The feedforward method was created by executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. It involves the team coming together to answer two questions: “How well are we doing in terms of working as a team?” and “How well do we need to be doing to achieve our goals?”. Having answered these questions collaboratively, the team is then asked to give each other suggestions: “How might each person help close whatever gap exists between the actual and desired collaboration?” The goal is two-fold: (1) to identify positive behavioral traits, and (2) to encourage individual accountability. Feedback about the past is not allowed.
For more, see Goldsmith’s Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback.
Goldsmith has written numerous books. The most popular is arguably “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There — How Successful People Become Even More Successful” which, as that title suggests, is all continuous improvement. In it, he writes:
“If you want to succeed at goal setting, you have to face the reality of the effort and the payoff before you begin. Realize that the ‘quick fix’ and the ‘easy solution’ may not provide the ‘lasting fix’ and the ‘meaningful solution.’ Lasting goal achievement requires lots of time, hard work, personal sacrifice, ongoing effort, and dedication to a process that is maintained over years. And even if you can pull that off, the rewards may not be all that you expect.”
Improving is hard but continuous practice can help make it less so. Which practice doesn’t really matter. What does matter is continuity over time.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time: Make it matter.
/Andreas
How can we build better organizations? That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer for the past 10 years. Each week, I share some of what I’ve learned in a weekly newsletter called WorkMatters. Subscription is free. Back-issues are published to Medium after three months.
