The conference room somehow seemed more brightly lit than it did on that fateful day in September when the business sponsors of the Sysops Squad were about to pull the plug on the entire support contract business line. People in the conference room were chatting with each other before the meeting started, creating an energy not seen in the conference room for a long, long time.
“Well,” said Bailey, the main business sponsor and head of the Sysops Squad ticketing application, “I suppose we should get things started. As you know, the purpose of this meeting is to discuss how the IT department was able to turn things around and repair what was nine months ago a train wreck.”
“We call that a retrospective,” said Addison. “And it’s really useful for discovering how to do things better in the future, and to also discuss things that seemed to work well.”
“So then, tell us, what worked really well? How did you turn this business line around from a technical standpoint?” asked Bailey.
“It really wasn’t one single thing,” said Austen, “but rather a combination of a lot of things. First of all, we in IT learned a valuable lesson about looking at the business drivers as a way to address problems and create solutions. Before, we always used to focus only on the technical aspects of a problem, and as a result never saw the big picture.”
“That was one part of it,” said Dana, “but one of the things that turned things around ...
