1 Year Retrospective
It has been a little over a year since I launched this blog, and approximately 6 months since my last blog retrospective. I have been reflecting in the interim, but have not taken any time to specifically reflect and adjust.
In the last six months I have kicked off a new style of post called Red Flags. I also have made an effort to have some type of image, preferably relevant, for every post. I also have finished out the initial Back to the Basics post series talking about the value pairs from the Agile Manifesto.
The article count is up to 56. The weekly posting has been mostly maintained with short breaks for vacation, family, or illness. The popular posts haven’t changed much. Traffic has died down to what I can only assume are normal levels from the surge that accompanied Agile is not Scrum.
The goal of learning through sharing is still being met. The goal of a larger community is not really being met, at least not here. It seems most of the larger community discussion takes place on LinkedIN. The goal of growing in the larger Agile community is not being met.
Learning through processing and sharing will continue to be something I do here. This is also a place for me to focus writing on a specific topic. I am trying hard to become a better writer. The best way to that is to write, so here is one place I can do that.
A larger community here will either happen or not. If it does happen I have a gut feel that it will be something that happens over the course of a year but is not something I really notice happening until it has happened. Upon reflection I can see that the goal of growing in the Agile community cannot be met from this blog, so that goal is going to change. It is still a goal professionally, but not a goal of the blog any longer.
Our transition to Agile at work is something that has been put on hold for an indeterminate time. If it does come back it will need to be approached as a new effort. We will be able to use what we learned as input, but we cannot assume the direction we were heading would still be the right one. Some of what we have learned is incorporated, and some has been dropped. There is still an interest in being more agile from upper management giving me hope that it will not be an abandoned goal. It is comforting to note that the problem wasn’t a failure on our teams part, but market realities impacting the industry as a whole. (I’m being purposefully obtuse here for what should be obvious reasons.)
My action items from before didn’t pan out. The truth is that it is entirely my fault as well. I did not make the time to try to find guest authors, or do any guest authoring on other sites. Sure, I have reasons, but that’s beside the point. That action item is moving forward.
I am also moving to bi-weekly postings. This is to better align with my goals of creating training for things such as the PMI-ACP exam, estimation, Agile values, and whatever else I can share that others will find valuable. It will also support me taking time to correct the missed action item from before.
That is my retrospective for this cycle. For this blog I don’t see value in shortening my cycle time, so I guess I’ll revisit this in the spring.
