Replying to LO27428 --
"Marilyn Darling" <darlingm@nortelnetworks.com> wrote:
> If anyone knows of organizations in the corporate or non-profit sector who
> are finding success using AARs, we'd love to hear about them.
I used my home-grown version of an AAR when I was a software quality
manager and then R&D productivity manager at HP some years back, and I
found them highly effective.
It started when I became software quality manager. I didn't want to go
tell all the software engineers how to do their jobs; I could guess up
front what the reaction would have been. So I started picking a project
team and volunteering to do a project retrospective (AAR). They were
quite willing to talk about their experiences in a facilitated session,
especially if someone else would write up the summary.
The first one only seemed to gain me more of their trust. By the second
or third with one project team, after they saw the same issues come up
repeatedly, they got a bit of energy around that and decided to work on
those issues. I volunteered to help them work by taking data, summarizing
it, and feeding it back weekly. After they did this, they really did
begin to get noticeably better. After a few cycles, I remember a project
manager from another project team reading one of the reports and
complaining they must have fudged the truth, for no project went that
smoothly. :-)
I have no idea if they've continued this practice. You can see a
high-level description of what I did/do at
http://facilitatedsystems.com/retro.html.
Bill
--Bill Harris 3217 102nd Place SE Facilitated Systems Everett, WA 98208 USA http://facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 337-5541
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