How to Create Effective Action Items

When creating action items, the main goal is to write them in a way that makes them as easy as possible to complete. Unclear actions can have negative effects, making it difficult to determine whether any progress has been made.

The Problem with Unclear Actions

In retrospectives, it is common to create actions that are hard to act upon. For example:

“Become better at programming.”

This is more of a goal or problem to work on rather than a specific action. It provides no indication of how it can be done, when it should be completed, or who is responsible for ensuring it gets done. Without an action-focused approach, following up and improving will be challenging.

Assigning Clear Ownership

A common mistake is creating action items without assigning a specific owner. Picture a scenario where the entire team is responsible for completing an action. When reviewing the task, individual team members may prioritize other tasks, thinking, “Someone else will probably take care of it.”

To prevent this, we recommend having only one accountable person for each action. Even if the entire team contributes, assigning a specific owner makes it much more likely that the action will be completed.

Distributing Action Items

Another factor to consider is how actions are distributed among team members. Often, the team leader or Scrum Master ends up responsible for nearly all the action items. If one person is overloaded with tasks, it becomes difficult to complete them all. Additionally, a single person may not have the expertise or bandwidth to solve all the identified issues.

Recommendation: Spread out action items across the entire team to ensure a joint effort.

The Importance of Deadlines

If you create an action without a deadline, when should it be prioritized and completed? Without a clear timeframe, action items often get postponed indefinitely.

Solution: Add a deadline. A deadline makes it more likely that those responsible will prioritize the action and complete it within the desired timeframe.

Solution Summary

When defining action items, take a few minutes to ensure they are valuable and actionable.

Tips for Creating Effective Action Items:

✔ Make them specific, achievable, and include a deadline.
✔ Assign one action owner who is responsible for completing the task.

A great method to ensure valuable actions is the SMART-goals framework:

By following these guidelines, you can create clear, actionable, and effective items that lead to real improvements.