We all have our least favorite phrases or questions that come up in day to day coaching.  One of mine goes along these lines: “No one has complained about this, so why change?

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How many of us complained about not having a PC on our desk before HP created one and Apple popularized it?

How many of us complained about not having a mouse and a point-and-click interface before Xerox PARC invented it and Apple popularized it?

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Making changes that address complaints or known problems certainly makes sense.  But doesn’t it also make sense to make changes that simply improve the ability to deliver, even if there isn’t an obvious problem to solve?

For just one example, I have worked with teams who used a big visible task board to track progress on their stories, but the board was so confusing that it didn’t add much value.  Simplifying it and making it more readable generally helped to improve the clarity of each story status and the progress of the sprint, and I would notice people starting to have discussions around the board.  Conversations improved, collaboration increased, and the team performance often went up as a result.  Yet, no one had ever complained about the board.

When a team retrospects, they often focus on the things that didn’t go well over the past sprint.  For instance, they might devote a few collective hours of time to solving a very specific problem that was raised; e.g. “I didn’t have the login credentials necessary to access this particular database that I needed to consult to find out some information for my story.”  But, instead they could have spent time figuring out how to collaborate better on identifying business requirements – an activity not driven by any complaints or problems, but one which could generate significant benefits in terms of velocity or delivering value.

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How many of us complained about not having a web interface on top of the Internet before Mosaic?

How many of us complained about not having a smart phone before IBM created one and Apple popularized it?

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Marcus Buckingham, leader of the strengths movement , notes that a person’s “greatest room for growth” is not one of their weaknesses but their strengths.  Might not this also apply to agile teams?

What if, instead of always focusing our retrospectives on fixing the things that are broken, we sometimes take a critical look at things we already do well, but could get so much incremental value out of doing even better?

Investing in cross training, for example, has to potential to be one of those practices that can generate huge improvements in team productivity, even for a team with already broad skill sets.  A team could become so efficient at being cross functional that they never would find tasks blocked due to the lack of an available person with the right skills or knowledge.  Tasks and stories will flow even better and overall team productivity can only go up.  The same might be said for building foundational principles like commitment and empowerment.

Continuous improvement isn’t about fixing problems.  It is about inspecting everything that you do, good and bad, making decisions about where change can make the most impact, and validating your decisions.