Ben Linders Advies

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Sustainable Improvement through

Retrospectives

SEPG Europe, november 15, 2013

Ben Linders Advies

Ben Linders Advies

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On the agenda today …

• Improvement buy in from “the workforce”

• Agile Retrospectives: Effective improvement

• Your role as improvement manager

Ben Linders Advies

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Quality & Defect Prevention

Agile & Lean Coaching

Process Improvement

Organizational Development

CMMI / People-CMM Assessor

veranderproject.nl Enterprise Agile Agile People & Organization WorkImprovers

Who is Ben Linders?

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Better Process Improvement

• Business Results

Focused Improvements

Learn to Improve

• Model is a tool, not solution

Apply-Measure-Learn-Adapt

• Empowered Professionals

Continuous Agile & Lean Change

Uncovering Better Ways to do Process Improvement

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Retrospectives

Why: To help teams to solve problems and improve themselves!

Learning from doing

Reflect, adapt and improve

Focus upon

• Team

• Self steering

• Collaboration

• Value

Why Agile Retrospectives

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Prime Directive

“Regardless of what we discover,

we understand and truly believe

that everyone did the best job

they could, given what they knew

at the time, their skills and

abilities, the resources available,

and the situation at hand.”

Norm Kerth

www.retrospectives.com/

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Ben Linders Advies

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Retrospective Exercises

• Asking questions

• One-word retrospective

• Root Cause Analysis

• Timeline

• Flow and Energy

• Asking Why?

• Strenghts (Solution Focused)

• Perfection game

• Action priorities

• Retrospective of Retrospectives

Pocket Book on Agile Retrospectives

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Examples

The Sprint that failed

• Trust and Empowerment

• Teamwork

The team that wasn’t a team yet

• Getting to know each other

• Skills & Open Culture

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Adopting Retrospectives

• Purpose

• Capable Facilitators

• Do and Learn

Focus on

• Mindset & Culture

• Listen to Resistance

How to Adopt Agile Retrospectives

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Workforce Buy-In

• Actions by the team, for the team

• Empowerment

• Sustainable

• Use of Strenghts

• Involve Product Owners

• No handovers

• Lead your own improvement journey

Retrospective Benefits

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Leading Retrospectives

Roles

• Facilitator – Servant Leader

• Coach – Support Change

• Manager – Arrange for Change

All roles are needed

Play the game

Action is in the interaction

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Business Value Retrospectives

• Empower teams

• Understanding iso Blame

• Few Vital Actions

• Get to the Root Causes

• Follow Up on Actions

• Vary Retrospective Exercises

Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives

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Valuable Agile Retrospectives

Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives

A Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises

By Luis Gonçalves & Ben Linders

Soon to be released on:

• InfoQ

• Leanpub

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Sustainable Improvement

What have you learned:

• How to get buy in for improvements from “the workforce”

• What makes Agile Retrospectives effective for continuous

improvement

• How does Agile and Retrospectives change your role as

improvement manager

More information:

• Retrospectives.eu

• Agile Retrospective Resource Wiki

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Contact

Ben Linders Senior Consultant info@BenLinders.com

@BenLinders

www.linkedin.com/in/benlinders

www.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies

www.benlinders.com

Veranderproject De Menselijke Maat in Veranderen

www.veranderproject.nl

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Background Information

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Becoming Agile and Lean

Ask yourself:

• How Agile are you?

• Where do you want to become

more Agile, and why?

• What can you do next?

Journey to Become Agile and Lean

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Assessing yourself

• Readiness

• Agile / Scrum Practices

• Culture & Mindset

• Agile Fluency

• Roadmaps for Adoption

• Maturity

Agile Self-Assessment

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Agile Process Improvement

Expected benefits:

• Collaboration PI team and

stakeholders

• Deployment (over defining)

processes

• Adopt to changes

• Incrementaly, ROI

• Learn to work Agile

Process Improvement: The

Agile Way

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Golden Rules for PI

• Dare to share, Early & frequently

• The result depends on team – Not individuals

• The one who starts something is not

necessarily the one to finish it

• The one’s working on a task are the right

people

• You may critique anything, but never criticize

anyone

Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement

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Agile using the People CMM

Implementing Agile with the People-CMM

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Resistance to Agile?

• Talk with them

• Listen what they have to say

• Take them seriously

• Ask why and how

Resistance = Information!

Dealing with Resistance

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Articles on Agile and CMMI

• CMMI V1.3: Agile

• Scrum Project Management Practices Support the CMMI

• CMMI Roadmaps: Improving IT for the Business

• CMMI V1.3 Process Areas

• CMMI or Agile: Why not embrace both!

• Implementing Agile with the People CMM

• Uncovering Better Ways to do Process Improvement

• Quality Software with Agile Teams

• What Drives Quality?

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Articles on Effective Agile

• Becoming Agile and Lean

• Succes Factors for Using Scrum and Getting Benefits

• Process Improvement: The Agile Way

• Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement

• How to deal with Resistance when Implementing Agile

• Managing Projects with Agile Teams

• Agile Project Management

• Establishing and Maintaining Stable Teams

• Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives

• Sharing Knowledge is Power

• Are your Professionals Empowered?