Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Breakthrough

To get into the habit of continuously improving, add an “inter-release” improvement iteration. Earlier I covered some of the reasons teams give for not embracing continuous improvement, many of which are carryovers from waterfall days. An inter-release improvement iteration is a simple technique to begin to build a culture of continuous improvement in your organization, especially if there’s been reluctance or a lack of enthusiasm for it in the past.

The improvement actions taken during a release will often focus on alleviating immediate pain points and perhaps on gaining some small “wins.” The focus of this technique is setting apart some time in between releases—the length of one iteration. Calling this time an iteration should ...