I’ve yet to find a team who thinks their ways of working are perfect. Where they have crafted a delivery approach which is so streamlined that waste is nonexistent. Where any change would decrease the team’s output or its quality.

For many teams hunting for the perfect ways of working doesn’t come naturally. The desire is often there though. You can see it every time a weakness or frustration is shared during a meeting or in online chat.

To reach improvement and fixes from frustration, a change of mindset is required. A progression from ‘this is broken’ or ‘this is a waste of my time’ to ‘we could try a new approach’ or ‘you know what might be better’.

The blocker to that progression depends on the team and their context, but it often comes down to one of two things.

Psychological safety. The ability to try things and fail without blame or judgement.

Time pressure. When a team are so busy, treading water is difficult enough without unforced change.

Where there is a need to improve ways of working, but the environment doesn’t allow it, it’s often best to start with the smallest achievable safe approach to introduce those improvements.

One of the simplest tools I use to allow a team to safely surface and create better ways of working is the 15 minute micro retrospective. Often seen as a backwards step from grand reviews at the end of each sprint, or after a project is complete.

Classic retrospectives are marmite to delivery teams. Either a team runs them, consistently acts on the findings and slowly improves their ways of working. Or a team runs them, will not consistently act on the findings, and see no value in them.

The difference is blindingly obvious. Taking action on what is revealed by retrospectives isn’t optional if you want to ensure regular improvement.

Partly because they’re so misunderstood, I can count on one hand the number of agency teams I’ve worked with who saw consistent improvement thanks to their retrospectives. The well known process of regularly reviewing a team’s ways of working is not always seen as a good use of time.

Those who learn retrospectives from a book will likely implement them as part of a delivery approach and expect some sort of ‘inspect and adapt’ magic, but it takes a little more work.

Teams create too many large actions

The classic retrospective format is an hour or more. All members of the delivery team are invited. Often clients or stakeholders are invited. A retrospective happens after every two week sprint, or increment.

The retrospective is often incredibly broad in its scope. Anything and everything can be discussed. The standard focus is on failure. It’s rare a retrospective focuses on things that went well, or successful approaches that could be encouraged.

And because so many people attend, and so much is up for discussion, the outputs are often broad potential changes. Days or weeks of work, each documented in a single bullet point.

Occasionally a small improvement might slip through the net and make a genuine difference, but it’s rare.

So actions are large, and there are many of them, and nobody takes ownership because they are already too busy and spinning too many plates.

Teams don’t progress the opportunities

Often it doesn’t matter what happens in a retrospective. The ideas and actions which come out of them — no matter how good — go in a backlog to rot.

There are two primary reasons for this.

Priorities

If an agency is busy, the changes can’t be prioritised above billable work. When an agency is quiet, ways of working matter less because the pressure to deliver isn’t there.

Scale

Classic retrospectives aren’t long enough to break down bigger potential improvements into well defined achievable steps. So the boulder size tasks — which are often complex or vague — aren’t appealing to take responsibility for.

If the changes which are agreed are large or complex, or require the buy-in of different areas of the business, they become a burden for the owner. An overhead which actually slows them further.

Teams disband before making progress

Agencies often create teams for a project, and once finished the team members move into other teams. Sometimes called fluid teaming, or dynamic teaming, this approach makes actions from retrospectives as part of a historic project feel less valuable.

Changes might have been really helpful in the context of the project, or with specific team membership, but once that’s gone, the changes don’t seem to fit into the context of the organisation, or the new projects so well.

The alternative

Assuming classic retrospectives don’t work for most agency teams, how can you foster a culture where ways of working are improved over time?

Micro retrospective

One option is the micro retrospective. A bitesize version of the retrospective format that agency teams roll their eyes at.

A 15 minute activity which only involves those invested in delivering the work. The PM/PO/BA and the delivery team members.

The aim is not to define broad changes to ways of working, but instead find a single achievable change they can commit to and can be measured.

Whether a change is achievable is often context specific, but to dig a little deeper, it should be able to be implemented inside the 15 minute session, or quickly afterwards.

Commitment is also non-negotiable. The action won’t be assigned an owner, so all present must agree on the change and commit to measure and trial it.

Although it may take a little longer when first being trialled, a practiced team member might lead a micro retrospective like this:

• 0-3 mins - Brainstorm frustrations and impediments
• 3-5 mins - Dot vote on the biggest frustration
• 5-8 mins - Brainstorm achievable ways to solve the winner
• 8-10 mins - Dot vote the best solution
• 10-12 mins - Agree a way to measure its impact
• 12-15 mins - Make the change to processes, docs, tools, or agree who will make it

Where possible, the change should be made before the micro retrospective ends. The measurement may take longer, but it should always have an owner to track it and report back.

Having as little as possible to do after the session is key to making it successful.

One achievable action

It’s worth stating again that we only want a single change. A small update to a process, or tool, or system.

If a change is large, or impacts multiple parts of the agency, or needs buy-in from stakeholders, or can’t be measured, it’s probably not a good choice.

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An example

A micro retrospective might run like this.

Five team members attend. The PM, a designer, two developers and a tester.

The brainstorm frustrations and list:

• Poor bug report details
• Everything is marked urgent
• Constant interruptions
• … and 2 others

They dot vote and ‘Everything is marked urgent’ wins.

They brainstorm solutions and list:

• Reduce tickets assigned to each priority category
• Require delivery team review before top priority ticket assignment
• Change priority categories to use meaningful names
• … and 2 others

They dot vote and ‘Reduce tickets assigned to each priority category’ wins.

They agree to measure it by baselining current assignment and reviewing each week to confirm a drop in perceived priority.

They quickly use their ticketing system to count current assignment, they update the ticket creation process to add new guidance, and the PM agrees to be mindful of the aim when updating or creating new tickets.

Benefits of micro retrospectives

Where micro retrospectives really shine is in helping stuck teams to realise genuine improvement in their ways of working.

If classic retrospectives are seen as a waste of time, or great initiatives are defined but are never implemented, the simplification may help get innovation moving again.

So quick to run that it’s often worth doing so every week while opportunities and frustrations are fresh in people’s minds.

One small change often ultimately beats a pile of large unachieable or badly defined opportunities for progress.

Small wins build confidence.

Getting started

• Keep it simple: pick one project or team, run a trial for 4-6 weeks.
• Encourage leaders not to overthink it — start small.
• Be clear that the hardest part is consistency, not complexity.

Team don’t need to wait for the perfect moment or the perfect format. Start with one micro retrospective, make one small change, and build from there.