I'm glad you mentioned the before-times and COVID, since those are both great examples of how excellent we are in forgetting the past. Especially things that are dissonant with the present we desire now.
As a father of three, I know exactly how that feels. The drag of constantly shifting between three proje... I mean, kids, takes its toll after a while, and getting back into sports (running for me) requires a lot of discipline.
Losing the weight gained led me to do a lot of reading and realize that the body can resist too simple approaches. "Eat less - workout more" is not working out the way most would expect when the body changes its base metabolic rate and limits the gains.
This led me to the question: Does the same happen to teams that just try the "limit work - push harder" approach? Does the organization adapt, and improvements get offset after a while?
I like doing a “retro-of-retros” every 6 months or so. I go over all the retros, and collect any actions items we didn’t do, and any points we raised more than once.
Then we decide what’s worth pushing forward, and why. It’s always an interesting meeting :)
Why wait a year? My rule for retrospectives is that every action needs to be complete within a week. The action, though, often is "create a weekly reminder for X" or "include Y in the end-of-sprint demo agenda" so the results are ongoing and not just a "time capsule".
I'm glad you mentioned the before-times and COVID, since those are both great examples of how excellent we are in forgetting the past. Especially things that are dissonant with the present we desire now.
On a related point, the power of "pre-mortems" is that it taps into the longitudinal nature of how products, teams and organizations evolve. For anyone interested, an essay I wrote on this idea of prospective hindsight: https://open.substack.com/pub/waqaswrites/p/seeking-perspective-through-prospective?r=jhccc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
As a father of three, I know exactly how that feels. The drag of constantly shifting between three proje... I mean, kids, takes its toll after a while, and getting back into sports (running for me) requires a lot of discipline.
Losing the weight gained led me to do a lot of reading and realize that the body can resist too simple approaches. "Eat less - workout more" is not working out the way most would expect when the body changes its base metabolic rate and limits the gains.
This led me to the question: Does the same happen to teams that just try the "limit work - push harder" approach? Does the organization adapt, and improvements get offset after a while?
I like doing a “retro-of-retros” every 6 months or so. I go over all the retros, and collect any actions items we didn’t do, and any points we raised more than once.
Then we decide what’s worth pushing forward, and why. It’s always an interesting meeting :)
Why wait a year? My rule for retrospectives is that every action needs to be complete within a week. The action, though, often is "create a weekly reminder for X" or "include Y in the end-of-sprint demo agenda" so the results are ongoing and not just a "time capsule".