Tag: scrum retrospective

When slowing a team down increased delivery

One of the most important agile lessons I have learned is that speed does not always come from going faster.

Sometimes it comes from slowing the system down.

I saw this in a Scrum team that was struggling to finish work. On paper, we looked reasonably disciplined. We were following Scrum well enough. We had two-week sprints, like other teams in the organisation. But our delivery told a different story.

When I checked the Jira data, our cycle time for backlog items ranged from one day to 35 days.

That meant some work was taking up to seven weeks to get through the system.

For a team working in two-week sprints, that was a warning sign.

Continue reading When slowing a team down increased delivery

The Retrospective is the system’s self-consciousness

Autumn leaves arranged in a gradual colour transition on dark ground, symbolising reflection, change and natural cycles.
Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

Many teams treat the Retrospective as optional.
Something to squeeze in at the end of a sprint, or rush through when time is tight.

But the Retrospective plays a far deeper role.

The Retrospective is the system’s self-consciousness.

In biological and philosophical terms, it is the moment of meta-awareness – the team reflecting not just on the work, but on how it works. This is where culture evolves, habits change and resilience begins to form.

A team that rushes retros is like a brain that never dreams.
It keeps functioning for a while, but it loses the ability to integrate experience. Patterns go unexamined. Tension accumulates. Cognitive load builds quietly in the background.

Retrospectives are not about fixing everything.
They are about making sense of what just happened.

When teams give themselves time to reflect, they don’t just improve their process.
They grow their capacity to learn.