If you work in a regular weekly iteration rhythm, it’s quite normal to think about starting the week with a planning session, and ending the week with a retrospective. I have a new idea for you, which my team have just happened upon, but which I rather like: Swap them around.
Instead of trying to reflect at the end of the week when you’re tired, leave it until Monday morning. You’ll be fresh, you’ll have had a chance to privately reflect on the last week over your weekend. Crucially, when you leave the meeting with new ideas about how to work, you’ll have a whole week ahead of you to try them out.
Instead of leaving work at the end of the week with no clear idea what you’ll be doing the next, get ahead of the game and make a plan before you leave on Friday. You’ll have prepared the ground for getting down to business almost straight away when you walk in on Monday morning, and I suspect this means you’ll enjoy a more relaxing weekend too.
I’ve never looked at things this way before, but now I do it makes perfect sense. Why not try it and let me know how it works for you?
Matt,
great post, and a great idea.
I’ve done that with teams, and it works perfectly well.
I especially like the fact that reflecting after planning usually gives you insights that come out of the planning (estimation) discussions that you would have missed otherwise or forgotten until the next week…
Nice to read your writing after the pairing in Ruby last week:-)
take care
Olaf