Professional Teams Hold Retrospectives, so Do You?
Is your Team a Professional Team or Just a Bunch of Amateurs?
Professional Teams hold Retrospectives, so why don’t your Teams? If your favorite Sports Pro Team holds Retrospectives or film session, why do you think so little of the Retro? Many organizations and just plain old managerial teams don’t hold Retrospectives. How do these teams ever expect to get better? Even Worst sometimes when I’m reviewing a new team, I hear with 5 minutes to go, “so let’s do our Retrospective”. These managers, scrum masters and teams have No clue on what it takes to become a Professional Organization.
Fall is American Football Session in the United States and everyone watches the Pros. These Professionals hold scheduled Retrospectives every week and they are called film sessions. They take it super serious. They decompose every position. What went Well? What went Bad? What can We Do to Get Better?
American Football
“On Sundays, we start by reviewing what we just did and figuring out what didn’t go well. And if we’re on the road, we can watch the game on the way home. Our games are so late, but if we ever played an early game, you could watch your game and still have time to watch someone else suffering through those late games.”
RICH RODRIGUEZ, ARIZONA HEAD COACH
https://www.sbnation.com/a/college-football-preview-2015/coaches-work-week
So does that sound familiar? The only thing different is that we don’t have cameras on us as we work coding and testing. We just have our brains and recall.
Holding Project lessons learned sessions is such a joke. A group of people outside the team usually try and remember what went well and what went bad over the entire project usually covering months, if not years. Who can remember that far back? Then they write it down and no one ever reads it. See Agile Manifesto item number 2 “Working software over comprehensive documentation”. I believe that lessons learned document falls into that list of comprehensive documentation. Retrospective should be held immediately after a Sprint, so the team can adapt for the next Sprint or game in the case of professional teams.
The Professional Team looks at everything but they concentrate on only a few things and work on them the next day in practice. Why do they do that you ask? Because every one of their opponents is breaking down film, so they can take advantage of what you do badly. You can’t fix everything at once, but you better fix one or two or your opponent will crush you. The same goes for your team. Find one or two things to do better on and practice them as a Sprint Backlog Item to work on and track.
This concept is not just an American Football, but it is a part of every sport.
Here is a Basketball quote:
Studying Yourself:
Analyzing and breaking down your own game is very important. It can separate a good player from a great player. It’s imperative to know what you’re really good at and where you need to strive to make improvements. Pay attention to things like your help defense, the release point of your shot, sprinting back on defense and things of that nature. When you get better at the little nuances of the game, you’ll be surprised of the major impact it makes.Why studying game film is important
DJALLEN23 11 DEC 2015 ARTICLES, X’S & O’S
http://basketballsocietyonline.com/why-studying-game-film-is-important
So I ask why is the Retrospective the first thing these “professional” IT development teams or managers want to cut from their weekly activities? It makes my brain hurt when I actually witness it as an Agile Coach or hear it from people who are “supposed to be” leaders. As a developer I would always want to do retrospectives. I should want to find ways to get more work done with less effort and go home at a decent time every day. You have to think long term and not short term if you want to last in the high pace IT world. Sometime I believe the IT Team becomes discouraged as they want to fix things out side their team and many process improvement ideas fail because people too afraid to ask or the paperwork is too mammoth to get a change through the system. And they get disheartened.
Football or American Soccer
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
Your players can use game film as a great form of self-improvement, or cut up highlights to envision how they want the game to go for themselves. Daniel Sturridge is a striker for Liverpool of the Premier League. He watches goals he’s scored in previous games to get in the right mood and to visualize how he wants the game to go.THE IMPORTANCE OF GAME FILM ON THE PITCH
COACHES AT ALL LEVELS ARE STUDYING VIDEO TO HELP THEM WIN
https://www.krossover.com/articles/importance-game-film-pitch/
So is your Development Team a bunch of amateurs or serious Professionals? Just to make you feel bad, when I was in High School and playing american football, guess what? We would watch film on our play either Sunday night or Monday. We always reviewed what went bad and what we needed to work on. I’m talking about 15 to 18 year old kids.
So do the kids know more about process improvement than us older and more “wise” adults?
Here is a Cricket quote:
Sachin Tendulkar says India captain Virat Kohli’s ability to identify his weak areas and determination to improve is “the best part about him”.
Tendulkar, the all-time highest run scorer in Test matches with 15,921 from 200 matches, hailed Kohli’s work ethic.
“I could (always) see the hunger and the fire in his eyes. The best part about him is that the moment he realises there are areas he needs to work on he is immediately back in the nets working on those things,” Tendulkar said of Kohli.
“A player can only move forward if he accepts – and it requires a lot to accept and admit: ‘Okay, these are the areas where I have not done well and I need to go out and change these things’,” Tendulkar was quoted as saying by ‘Sky Sports’.
India vs England: Virat Kohli’s ability to improve weaknesses sets him apart – Sachin Tendulkar
https://www.hindustantimes.com/cricket/india-vs-england-virat-kohli-s-ability-to-improve-weaknesses-sets-him-apart-sachin-tendulkar/story-AgSe9r9JI0wCFjpnoFKcGO.html
Scrum and Agile are just assembly of good ideas and practices that have gotten lost over the years. Sometimes we need a little kick in the pants to remind us of what works. And What Makes Us Better!
I bet there are plenty of teams making sure the Philadelphia Eagles can’t run the Philly Special on them.
Happy Scrumming,
Greg Mester
