Agile teams: Reflective debate and shared understanding

This research proposes a method referred to as a sense-making workshop which, by its design, facilitates theses and antitheses to be proposed by workshop participants (Agile team members) around their individual understanding (truth function) of the factors affecting their Agile project or iteration. Furthermore, the teams shared understanding will be formulated (by the workshop facilitator) which will allow reflective debate to take place around the individual and shared representations of these factors. Through this reflective debate amongst the workshop participants a synthesis/consensus will be reached through creative conflict; focusing on differing assumptions that exist amongst the team members and creating new perceptions of their Agile project or iteration. This is valuable due to the fact that developers can yield to other opinions, as developers have a low tolerance of conflict; therefore, the creative conflict created by the workshop can help the Agile developers to overcome their tendency to give in so as to avoid arguments. To achieve this workshop outcome, the steps of the novel method are proposed in this paper. These sections illustrate the means by which a shared understanding of successes and failures can be achieved from a group of individuals' perceptions of the factors at play in an Agile project or iteration. Reflection workshops use brainstorming to generate ideas, however, it is argued herein that this is not the most effective method of conducting project reviews, and that alternate views can be suppressed in a "rush to judgement". Therefore, through reflective sense-making, the members of an Agile team can better conduct project reviews or post-mortems.