I've learned not to go to the market when I'm hungry.
If I do, I buy too much.
When hungry, everything looks too tasty, and I'd buy more than I can possibly eat.
Agile teams often behave similarly in retrospectives, especially when beginning their agile journeys.
During a retrospective, team members identify so many promising opportunities for improvement that they decide to tackle every one of them.
These teams would be far better off improving at one, two, or maybe three items.
If team member's attempt to improve at more than that, their efforts will be too diffused.
On the other hand, and as much as I like focus, I don't want to go so far as to say a team needs to select a single improvement opportunity.
Many improvements a Team may attempt do not require time from every Team member every Sprint.
For example, the team may agree to focus on writing more and better automated unit tests.
Since unit test are generally written by the programmers on a team, this fantastic improvement won't require the attention of everyone on the Team.
That will leave room for a second improvement idea, especially if it's one that requires minimal effort from those already focused on their first.
Additionally, some improvements are worth keeping in mind for multiple sprints.
Writing better unit tests is again a good example.
Suppose the team achieves its goal of doing this.
That's great, but it doesn't mean the teams will do it again in the next sprint.
Some improvements take time to become ingrained as habits.
Writing better unit tests could then be something a team wants to retain focus on for multiple sprints.
I coach teams to maintain a continuous in their retrospectives.
The continuous contains items the team has improved at, but that aren't quite habits yet.
So writing better units tests, could be placed on the continuous after one or a few sprint, just to keep it visible a bit longer as a goal.
Once team members feel that writing better unit tests has become a habit they won't forget, it can be removed from the Continuous.
You don't want the continuous to bulge with items from long ago.
So pick one to three new improvement ideas.
The fewer the better, but up to 3 can also be okay.
Supplement this with a short list of things team member are continuing to improve at that aren't yet habits and so warrant a bit of visibility on a continuous.
By the way, I'm Mike Cohn.
I am a co-founder of the Scrum Alliance and Agile Alliance.
So that I may better help you, please consider leaving a comment about how your team is doing with its retrospectives.
How many items does the team pick to improve at?
Do they usually succeed at improving multiple things at the same time?
And since one of my own improvement goals is always to make videos you find helpful, let me know in the comments if there are topics you'd like me to cover.
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