Retrospectives facilitate continuous improvement, and are all about inspecting and adapting. They give you and your team a regular pause to reflect on what’s working, what’s not, and what can be improved. Retrospectives aren’t just a “nice-to-have”—they’re a must for any team that wants to save time and boost productivity.

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But what happens if you pair retrospectives with other practices?

Continuous integration is, without doubt THE Foundation technical practice and conceptually I think it's one of the single most important ingredients of any high-performing team even outside the world of tech. It ensures that every small change made by team members works with the rest of the project—validating everything through automated tests.

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The Power Duo: Retrospectives & Continuous Integration

Retrospectives and Continuous Integration (CI) are the perfect pairing for high-performing teams. Individually, they’re effective, but together, they’re unstoppable. In my experience, combining these two practices can mean the difference between a project that stalls and one that soars.

Retrospectives focus on inspecting and adapting, offering your team regular opportunities to reflect on what’s working, what’s not, and how to improve. Continuous integration, meanwhile, ensures that every small change made by the team integrates seamlessly with the rest of the project, all validated by automated tests. It’s like a safety net that prevents your project from veering off course.

Imagine this: You’re knee-deep in a project, moving fast, but things start to bog down. Builds are taking longer, issues keep popping up, and it feels like you’re wading through molasses. What’s the solution? The magic of retrospectives, combined with continuous integration (CI), might just be your saving grace.

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Real-World Example: Saving 300+ Hours with Simple Improvements

Let’s share a story that highlights just how impactful these practices can be when used in combination. During a 22-week project, one of my teams tracked the success and duration of CI builds over 11 two-week sprints. Here’s what we learned:

• Sprint 1: The CI build chart was full of red spikes—indicating unstable, failing builds. In our retrospective, we identified this as a major issue. We decided to invest time in stabilising the builds.
• Sprint 2: The result? A significant drop in red spikes. Much more blue success - a great visual feedback loop. The builds were mostly successful, but we noticed another issue: build times were creeping up, sometimes hitting 15-16 minutes.
• Sprint 3: We tackled the build time problem in our next retrospective. The team focused on optimising the CI process, leading to faster builds and minimal instability for the rest of the project.

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Now, let’s talk numbers. Imagine if we hadn’t addressed these issues early on. Each build could’ve added up to 13 extra minutes, and with thousands of builds during the project, that’s a time drain of over 300 hours. But because we caught and fixed the problems during our retrospectives, we saved all that time—and then some.

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The Ripple Effect of Continuous Improvement

What’s really fascinating is the ripple effect of these small improvements. By regularly reflecting and adjusting our approach, we didn’t just fix immediate problems—we set the stage for smoother, faster progress throughout the entire project.

And that’s the beauty of retrospectives. They might seem like a simple exercise, but when used effectively, they can lead to massive time savings and a much more efficient workflow.

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How Are You Leveraging Retrospectives?

If you’re not already incorporating retrospectives into your workflow, now’s the time to start. And if you are, take it a step further—what other data can you bring into your retrospectives? What small improvements can you make that might lead to huge gains down the line?

We’d love to hear your stories. Have you quantified the impact of retrospectives on your projects? How have you seen these practices ripple out to create even bigger results? Get in touch - we’d love to chat!