How to useTIMWOOD in Sprint Retrospective:

Thanks for the blog and article Mr Anand Pandey sir. My Thoughts on TIMWOOD Retrospective below: TIMWOOD is a Lean principle used to identify and reduce the seven types of waste. It stands for Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, and Defects.Applying TIMWOOD during a sprint retrospective can help the team identify inefficiencies and improve processes. Here’s an example of how TIMWOOD can be applied in a retrospective:

1.??????Transportation: Observation: Team members spend time transferring knowledge between two separate tools (e.g., from a task management tool like Jira to a separate testing tool ALM). Action Item: Integrate tools or eliminate duplicate documentation or switching to reduce the manual effort.

2.??????Inventory: Observation: User Stories or Defects pile up in the "Ready for Testing" column because the testers are overwhelmed. Action Item: Adjust WIP limits or reallocate resources to balance workload. (Assign a senior developer with a bit of automation testing knowledge to test few of the scripts)

3.??????Motion: Observation: Developers frequently switch between multiple environments to fetch data, leading to unnecessary delays. Action Item: Automate environment setup to save time and reduce errors.

4.??????Waiting: Observation: Team members are blocked due to delayed code reviews. Action Item: Established SLAs for code reviews or designate reviewers during sprint planning to avoid bottlenecks.

5.??????Overproduction: Observation: Developers create extra features not requested by the Product Owner, assuming they might be needed in the future. Action Item: Reinforce focus on delivering only what is part of the sprint goal and DOR (Definition of Ready).

6.??????Overprocessing: Observation: The team spends too much time creating highly detailed documentation that stakeholders do not use. Action Item: Go with minimum documentation techniques as per 4 Agile values and validate the required level of detail with stakeholders.

7.??????Defects: Observation: Defects are found in stories that were marked as "Done" in the previous sprint. Action Item: Strengthen DOD (Definition of Done) to include better testing and peer reviews before marking tasks as complete.

An example:The numbers in the below table denote the team’s feedback count for each type of smiley under the respective TIMWOOD category.

Key Insights:

• The team is happiest with Overproduction, reflecting good adherence to MVP principles.
• The biggest pain points are Waiting and Inventory, indicating delays and bottlenecks.

Action Plan:

1. Transportation: Streamline handoff processes by setting up a shared Kanban board for better visibility.
2. Inventory: Introduce WIP limits to prevent backlog in "Ready for Testing."
3. Waiting: Collaborate with the vendor to set up a Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for faster approvals.