Agile Retrospective: Healthcare IT Case Study

Improving a Healthcare Tech Team’s Product Quality Through Consistent Follow-up

The Challenge: Action Items Lost in the Void

MediCare Solutions’ team often identified excellent ideas for improving quality, but these ideas were noted in a document and quickly forgotten amidst the pressure of the next sprint, leading to the same quality issues cropping up repeatedly.

The Process: Making Accountability Visible and Consistent

• Step 1: Prepare for Retrospective: The team started by reviewing the action items from the *previous* retrospective’s report, creating an immediate accountability loop.
• Step 2: Conduct the Retrospective: The session was focused on a single theme: ‘Quality’. They planned activities to specifically discuss code review and testing practices.
• Step 3: Analyze & Prioritize: Ideas were gathered and prioritized. A key insight was that their code review checklist was outdated and inconsistently used.
• Step 4: Implement & Monitor: This step was their turning point. The task ‘Update and enforce new code review checklist’ was added to the ‘Task Plan’ with an owner. They also defined a ‘Governance Process’ to review adherence in every daily stand-up.
• Step 5: Get Final Report: The final report, with its clear task plan and governance model, was archived. It became the reference point for their new quality standard.

The Results: Quality Becomes Everyone’s Job

The visible and consistent tracking in Step 4 created a culture of accountability. The team achieved an 80% adherence rate to their new code review process within two months. This directly contributed to a 35% reduction in bugs reported by users and a 20% increase in patient data accuracy.