Symptoms of this can include the following:
- Agile teams do not effectively implement actions identified in the Retrospective (documented within Retrospective.Guru).
- Agile teams are not making the time investment necessary to understand the results of the Agile assessments (done within Monetical.Agile) and to choose the most effective corrective measures.
A factor that may compound this challenging situation is that Agile expertise or knowledge is no longer accessible, for example because the original consulting agents have departed.
The challenge for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Change Agents becomes “how to secure time for reflection and actioning outcomes from the Retrospective”. The Monetical answer to this challenge is to use four powerful levers. These combine to provide an unrivalled source of support and guidance for Agile teams and organisations faced with challenging time constraints.
Embed knowledge from UK Subject Matter Experts and Thought Leaders
Firstly, Monetical recognised it was necessary to integrate best practices and their context-sensitive recommendations from a wide range of disciplines. It therefore partnered with a number of UK Subject Matter Experts and Thought Leaders (see www.monetical.com/about) to build the codified knowledge and Corrective Measures from as early as 2010 onwards.
Provide the very latest thinking on a topic
Secondly, it is important to have up-to-date knowledge. When performance challenges are identified, Monetical.Agile associates relevant Corrective Measures from the codified library of knowledge to each assessment item. This knowledge is constantly updated because every user of Monetical.Online contributes and rates the effectiveness of Corrective Measures in a particular context (see Figure above). The outcome is codified and anonymised knowledge that is continuously being revised and tested.
Promote Best Practice through a culture of transparency and open dialog
Thirdly, another subtle but important lever to improve the Agile feedback loop is that every member of the Agile organisation is empowered to contribute towards best practices within Monetical. Everyone has a voice, and this transparency creates a culture of open dialog across organisational structures and processes. The importance of an open organisational culture is well documented in many Harvard Business Case studies.
Tackle multiple improvements
Finally, Monetical is aware that some Agile teams limit themselves to implement only one change from a single Retrospective session. Monetical believes that actions from the Retrospective need to have high priority because they reflect an organisations' agility, and that there should be no excuses for ignoring such actions. By tackling Retrospective actions early, the effort and time needed to tackle these actions later is dramatically reduced. The appropriateness and value of recommended Corrective Measures is higher when they are used sooner to when the problem is first identified. This is because the nature of the issue may change over time. Teams can improve the organisations’ Agile capability and maturity by tackling multiple improvements nearer to the time they are identified. An Agile team with such a focus, develops an Agile feedback loop that becomes a key lever improving agility across the organization.