Set goals using SMART criteria

A common mistake for beginner agile project teams is to not the devote the sufficient attention and severity to retrospective meetings. Retrospective meetings will often assume a very relaxed vibe, such as a small office get-together. When this happens, team members will typically chit chat about irrelevant topics to the project or just discuss unimportant project matters. Retrospective meetings should come with a bit of relief but still be very productive with a disciplined agenda. The true goal of retrospective meetings is to identify challenges and highlight opportunities.

During retrospective meetings team members will collaborate to generate action items. These actions items are aimed to help improve the process. After creation of the necessary action items, teams will begin to set goals that will result in project improvements. While setting these goals team members should try to not think too abstractly and instead focus on smaller, more achievable tasks. Peter Drucker, a management guru, helped design the acronym SMART. SMART provides criteria to help assist agile teams develop efficient and meaningful goals.

When team members each develop their action items, each item should be tested against the SMART criteria. There are five essential questions that the SMART criteria really ask about, “Is the item specific? Is it measurable? Is it achievable? Is it relevant to the project? Is it time-boxed to something possibly achieved in a sprint?” If action items can generate a yes to all five of these questions then that action item will more than likely produce improvement for the project.

One of the most frequent errors when creating action items is allowing the item to lack in specificity. Possibly the agile team is having issues with ‘challenge X’ and they want to create an action item labeled ‘improve team X’. Having a broad scope such as ‘improve team X’ might be sufficient enough for a team discussion, however for an action item it does not provide enough direction or context. A big help can be to try and include the ‘how’ in the title of the action item. A label like ‘improve team X through workshops Y and Z’ paints a much clearer picture of what results to expect from the action item.

There are many aspects about retrospective meetings that can be overlooked and its important for agile teams to make the most out of these meetings. Retrospective meetings provide an opportunity for teams to generate and tweaks action items and goals that help drive the product towards a successful completion. SMART is a technique that assists teams in helping assure that their action items and goals are short and effective. Goals should start and end in the same sprint, they should not drag on through multiple sprints.

Work Cited:

"Agile at Work: Set Goals Using SMART Criteria." https://www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Set-goals-using-SMART-criteria/175961/468248-4.html. Accessed 4 Dec. 2017.

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