Being Your Own Forcing Function
A fascinating thread is becoming evident in many of my discussions with the penalists for the forthcoming Rally events in Denver, LA and NYC. I have de facto become a forcing function for panelists to take a good look at their Agile journey, to think deeper on the experience and to come to grips with difficult lessons. As I am careful not to interject my own thoughts in these pre-panel discussions, my forcing function effect is primarily a Google Calendar invite creating quality time for a vice president and some members of his staff to think aloud on their experience.
Suggestion: No matter how many Agile retrospectives you have already conducted, set a short meeting with your staff to brainstorm on your Agile experience in entirety. The action item from this meeting is creating a 10 minute presentation which summarizes your experience in a way that will be meaningful to other Agilists and executives. Once you got the presentation ready, post it in one public forum or another and solicit feedback.
It might sound naive, but I believe you will be nicely rewarded by being your own forcing function for this kind of reflection. It is that simple.
The Agile Executive 
Israel, I love this idea of setting a goal for the adoption retrospective: be prepared with a 10-minute presentation on where you are, where you have come from, where you intend to go. It clearly sets the goal of the meeting. And, it ensures that your employees will gain insights from your retrospective. I admit that I run many retrospectives for varieties of topics and timeboxes. I have not been invited to help an executive team explore in retrospecting their agile adoption. Thank you for encouraging others to do this. I think it can become an invaluable tool to a perservering effort, one that doesn’t slowly die on the vine due to lack of retrospective and futurspective watering!
Jean Tabaka
March 2, 2009 at 7:46 pm
I am starting to wonder whether I will shock the panelists in the forthcoming Rally events in Denver, LA and NYC. I am very careful not to “taint” the pre-panel discussions with my own convictions. But, I have no doubt I will revert to my own passionate self when we actually hold the panels on March 18, March 26 and April 2….
Israel Gat
March 2, 2009 at 9:37 pm