The Business Value of Retrospectives

Agile practices strongly recommend that you focus on how you can adapt and improve work processes. That is why Agile teams run frequent retrospectives to continuously improve.

In this post we will show you three reasons why retrospectives add great value. And to make it crystal clear, retrospectives are not constrained to only provide value to IT-companies or those who run Agile practices.

It will help any team or organization who wants to evolve.

1. Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement, often referred to as Kaizen, is at the core of retrospectives. The purpose is to identify opportunities to improve and to reduce wasted time.

Big changes can often feel frightening for employees, and is challenging for an organization to conduct in a good manner. Continuous improvement focuses on small changes that will have a large impact long-term.

Consistently making small changes for the better is important because it reduces the fear of change and increases the speed of improvement.

2. Knowledge Sharing and Learning

Sometimes individuals possess knowledge that is beneficial for the rest of the group, but it can be difficult to access or share that information. This affects performance for any team or organization. It can also foster distrust among team members, harm collaboration and consume unnecessary time.

Knowledge sharing and learning in teams are key aspects of retrospectives. When you conduct a retrospective it ensures that every team member understand your situation, what information you are seeking and what struggles you are facing. By knowing this, the other members can contribute with their knowledge and wisdom to help you.

Retrospectives support social interactions in the workplace which leads to a rise in trust and collaborative problem solving.

3. Innovation

Companies who want to become better at creating value need to focus on how they can innovate in order to evolve. A key element for successful businesses is being able to bring forth new ideas to keep operations, services and products fresh. The ones that find new opportunities are often awarded with great competitive advantage, new revenue streams and happy customers.

Some of the best ideas and innovations emerge from the employees. This can be internal changes or sparking a brand-new product/service.

The challenge is often the lack of a proper arena to generate, present and discuss new ideas. That is where the retrospective comes in handy. It is a natural place where everyone feel safe to contribute with their insights and ideas.

By spending just a couple of hours a month, a group of people can find new and better solutions to their challenges and discuss new ideas. Often the team is able to implement their new ideas themselves, which will boost their efficiency and strengthen the organizations ability to innovate.

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