Agile Retrospective: Agile Team Onboarding Case Study

Onboarding a New Agile Team: Building Good Habits from Day One

The Challenge: Forming, Storming, and Norming Under Pressure

NextGen Solutions created a new team from different departments with varying levels of Agile experience. The challenge was to mold them into a cohesive, effective team without a long and painful ‘storming’ phase.

The Process: Learning by Doing with a Guided Framework

• Step 1: Prepare for Retrospective: The Agile Coach used the ‘Concepts’ and ‘Case Study’ tabs as training material before the first retrospective, teaching the team the fundamentals.
• Step 2: Conduct the Retrospective: The coach planned a simple, foundational activity: ‘What Went Well / What Could Be Improved,’ removing ambiguity for the new team.
• Step 3: Analyze & Prioritize: He taught them how to use ‘Affinity Mapping’ (a technique explained in the ‘Concepts’ tab) to organize their ideas collaboratively.
• Step 4: Implement & Monitor: The team created their first simple action items, learning the importance of assigning owners and due dates from the start.
• Step 5: Get Final Report: The report from their first retrospective became a ‘team charter,’ documenting their initial agreements on how they would work together.

The Results: Accelerated Team Development

The structured nature of the planner provided the scaffolding the team needed. They adopted core Agile practices with over 95% consistency from the start. Management noted that they were operating at a level of maturity that typically takes other teams six months to achieve.