Leadership

Get involved in Mircro - Macro Missions.

By this stage, the team should already have a healthy backlog of improvement items coming from:

• T-shaping activities

• Roles & Responsibilities Builder

• Bottlenecks in the SDLC

• Retrospectives

• Organisation-wide initiatives

• Leadership proposals

The challenge now is not finding more improvements—it’s prioritising and executing the right ones.

Running retrospectives to constantly generate new ideas is less valuable if the existing backlog is already full.

Instead, we recommend adjusting the cadence of retrospectives to a 2:1, 3:1, or even 4:1 ratio:

• 2, 3, or 4 sessions focused on selecting and progressing existing backlog items

• 1 session dedicated to discovering new improvement opportunities

This approach ensures bottlenecks are addressed, T-shaping activities have time to embed, and improvements are implemented rather than endlessly discussed.

Role of Leadership

Leaders should actively participate in retrospectives—not just as observers, but as contributors.

Pick improvement items for yourself, help refine priorities, and bring in larger organisational initiatives that the team can realistically own.

Link to Micro–Macro Missions

Every improvement item, whether team-driven or leadership-driven, should be structured as a Micro–Macro Mission:

• Macro Mission: The high-level improvement goal (e.g., “Reduce dependency on external QA for regression testing”).

• Micro Missions: Specific, actionable steps owned by individuals to progress toward the macro goal.

This keeps initiatives visible, measurable, and executable—ensuring both leadership and the team work from the same playbook.