A Retrospective Question

Every four weeks, after you’ve completed your Sprint Review, you conduct a Sprint Retrospective. In this exercise, you take an honest look at HOW you performed in the last Sprint, verses accounting for what you accomplished. Did you use your time well, or squander it on TV and social media? Did you prioritize appropriately? If you didn’t accomplish something, could you accomplish it in the next Sprint by changing something in the way you approach it?

And there is another very important question to ask. Did I grow as a person in this last Sprint? While we certainly want to accomplish things and check off boxes on our backlog, personal growth is the end result of all of this. Sometimes we need to grow into the person who can live his or her dreams. The items on our backlog may be larger than we are, and that’s okay, as long as you can see progress toward becoming who you need to be.

Thoreau said it this way

If you have built castles in the air,

your work need not be lost;

that is where they should be.

Now put the foundation under them.