Every Group Decides How and When to Reflect

I recommend all work groups retrospect on a regular cadence. The retrospectives helps the people learn about their process, their throughput, and their assumptions. The more a work group reflects, the more everyone can collect and review data so they understand how the group works and what they might choose to address next.

Consider this data in preparation for your retrospectives:

• Cycle time for what you produce. For customer support, this means cycle time for tickets over a day, week, and month. If your cycle time increases, look for the root cause. Cycle time increases can be due to almost anything: the product developers let too many defects escape, some support people are on vacation, or each person in the group has specialized information and some people are overloaded.

• Cumulative flow for your work group. The charts in ​Cumulative Flow Shows Where the Work Is​, show the state of work on a team’s board. When you have a board that reflects your work, you can see where the open work is.

• Incoming rate of work, closure rate of work, and remaining open work. For Customer Support, this data might refer to tickets. For HR, this data might be benefits investigation initiatives. Each group will measure different kinds of data. However, you can track what comes in, what you complete, and what remains open.

Use this data to decide what you might want to change.