Reflection and Retrospective
Adapting requires both a certain mindset and a set of skills. If we are to be adaptable, then we must be willing to seriously and critically evaluate our performance as individual contributors and as teams. Effective teams cover four key subject areas in their retrospectives: product from both the customer’s perspective and a technical quality perspective; process, as in how well the processes and practices being used by the team are working; team, as in how well the group is working as a high-performance team; and project, as in how the project is progressing according to plan. Feedback in each of these areas—at the end of each iteration and at the end of the project—leads to adaptations that improve performance. The “how to” of retrospectives and reflection is covered in Chapter 10, “The Adapt and Close Phases.”