Pushing Team Performance

Studies show that 92% of people that set New Year's goals never actually achieve them.

According to researchers Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, this is usually because we’re not setting specific or challenging enough goals. But, when we do set goals that are specific and challenging, it leads to higher performance 90 percent of the time.

If you look back on our Agile Series posts so far, you’ll see how setting up Sprint Planning can help you set up specific and challenging goals to work toward.

Sprint Review is a simple process to keep track of your team’s performance following a Sprint.

Sprint Review Overview

Ever feel like your site meetings go on forever while you’re reviewing work with contractors or clients? A Sprint Review is a shorter approach that stays laser focused on the results of your Sprint.

Here’s your checklist to set up a Sprint Review:

• Set a time: Put 45 minutes on the calendar at the end of the Sprint. Find a time that works for everyone, and keep it casual and fun. Maybe do it on Friday afternoon over a beer back at the office.
• Close the file: Spend 30 minutes discussing what was accomplished during the Sprint. This should be each person, trade, or function doing a read-out of the goals they set for themselves and how they did against them.
• Identify what’s left: Spend the next 15 minutes discussing and documenting what, if anything, is still outstanding that needs to be done. It is important to be specific, and to ensure that this feeds into the next Sprint Planning meeting.
  

It’s important that you make sure the meeting doesn’t become focused on a status update for the entire project. Instead, just focus on assessing whether or not your teams delivered what they needed to and how they’ll accomplish their goals in the next Sprint if they didn’t this time around.

Once implemented, the Sprint Review will help your team maintain accountability through the Sprint process and set itself up for success, even when goals aren’t achieved.

Read the final post in this series to learn how to continuously improve your team and your bottom line through Sprint Retrospectives.