Agile Retrospectives, 2nd Edition

Influence Others

When the solution to a problem lies outside the team’s control, in many cases the best course of action is to attempt to influence those who can make a difference. The goal of influencing others is to educate and persuade that person or group to provide more resources or help enable the change.

When It’s Clear Whom to Influence

In some cases, it’s clear whom you will need to influence. You might know, for example, that your boss has the ability to move some meetings to provide your team with additional focus time. Or, you might realize that there are too many dependencies between your team and another with whom you have a close relationship.

In these situations, we recommend building out a Role Empathy Map (see the figure) that ...