We use timeouts and a couple of different retrospectives to drive improvement. Stop-the-line events like Pomodoro timeouts and Pomodoro retrospectives happen spontaneously within the team to solve problems immediately and produce small continual improvements. We also use a monthly retrospective for the product stream to reflect on how it's working and conceive bigger, more strategic improvements.
Pomodoro timeout
One of our norms is that anyone can call a timeout. The team calls timeouts frequently, usually more than 1 a day; they seldom last 25 minutes and if they need longer they just run another Pomodoro. People huddle in the bullpen, sometimes around a whiteboard, to discuss something within the remit of the team and collectively decide what to do. Whether the purpose is to discuss a technical issue and define a set of spikes to prove the way forward, explore options to get around an obstacle, or investigate a process issue, the timeout often creates opportunities to make improvements.
On-demand Pomodoro retrospective
When something extraordinary happens the team runs a Pomodoro retrospective in 25 minutes, as soon as possible after the event, to find the root cause and agree 1 specific and clearly defined action that can be taken immediately to prevent it reoccurring. We like to use the 5-whys technique but we also use other activities (within the format - brainstorming, affinity mapping, dot voting, decide what to do) depending on what had happened. The retrospective is always done standing up to keep people focused and energetic. Most of the time the retrospective concentrates on events that the team could have controlled or avoided. However, sometimes it investigates problems in the product stream that were outside the team but nevertheless impacted them, in which case appropriate people from the stream also participate.
Monthly retrospective
Once a month the facilitator runs a structured retrospective for the product stream (that involves setting the stage, gathering data, generating insights, and deciding what to do, close). Everyone in the team attends, including the technical mentor, as does the business sponsor, product owner, team leaders from the business users plus a handful of their staff, and other people from the various business disciplines within the stream. The purpose of this retrospective is to step back and look at the big picture, including any external factors that have affected the stream, and identify any trends. We challenge how we currently work and try to get beyond the obvious to discover transforming ideas that would make the product stream more effective.
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