Appreciating Lessons Learned

Finally it's here! Our article about the 4ALL way of doing lessons learned sessions using a strength-based and participatory approach. You can read it in the latest issue of IEEE (vol. 27 no. 4, 2010):

Abstract:

"Although lessons-learned activities aid software process improvement, few IT industry organizations regularly and adequately conduct them. Recent studies explain why, identifying 19 barriers for conducting lessons learned. The Postmortem Evaluation theory proposes that organizations almost only focus on what went wrong. 4ALL, a new lessons-learned method based on the appreciative inquiry approach, aims to facilitate learning. It was developed and evaluated in close collaboration with Ericsson. Through attentive moderating and careful timing, the 4ALL method emphasizes the importance of balancing excellences and challenges. It radically increases the identification of excellences and how to learn from what went right, enhancing participants' pride, and significantly increasing the appreciation of lessons-learned workshops at Ericsson."

Appreciating Users

The Swedish company Netoptions has recently released their latest version of their product BizWizard, tools for digital marketing and communication by e-mail, mobile phone and the Internet. As part of the development and marketing, Apprino and Netoptions organised a user-workshop inspired by Appreciative Inquiry.

At the workshop, new features of the product were demonstrated. The users were then urged to answer the question "What did you like most about these new features?". Next they were encouraged to say if there was anything they liked that they wanted more of, or if there was something missing from the previous version. They were also encouraged to come up with new ideas for coming versions and to prioritise among them.

The workshop was a huge success for both users and developers. In order to more fully understand how such a workshop could be integrated in the system development process, Apprino and Netoptions teamed up again to do an "Agile Retrospective" on the workshop, following the concept introduced by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. They have combined the ideas behind agile software development with appreciative inquiry to a new way of doing Lessons Learned sessions. We focused especially on what worked well during planning and conducting the workshop, what could be improved next time, completely new ideas and who made special effort and deserved to be acknowledge for that.

The developers were really happy about the user-workshop, because they seldom talk to to customers directly. They could now see their reactions and hear about their thoughts immediately. It made them proud to hear the users comments on what they likes, and filled them with energy much needed to finish the last details before the release. They also liked the "Agile Retrospective" workshop, since it was rather short (less than 2 hours) but still generated lots of valuable information, why they are considering using it again.

Interested in learning more about Agile Retrospectives? Check out this brief and witty text, look at the informative and funny video or buy the book.

From dead to ILL

Right now we are writing an article describing our work with improving a Lessons Learned model by adding Appreciative Inquiry features. While researching for the article we came across some interesting work related to "post mortem evaluations" (thank you Diana Larsen for showing us the right direction!). In a recent article by Kasi, Keil, Mathiassen and Pedersen called "The Post Mortem Paradox: A Delphi Study of IT Specialist Perceptions" several barriers for conducting PMEs were identified.

We think we might have identified another one: the label "post mortem". Being constructivists we belive that "words create worlds" and therefore we would like to see another name. Right now the working title for our new concept is "Inspiring Lessons Learned" (ILL) although somehow we're not quite happy with that. Any suggestions?

Design Conversations

When Richard Boland held his closing speech at the Positive Design Conference he really put pressure on us, making us reflecting on to what extent us coming to Monterrey for this event really could make up for the money it had cost, the time we had to spend away from our families and for the tons of carbon dioxide we had generated by flying there. I definitely think that we achieved a good result, even from a sustainability perspective, with lots of new ideas for research and education. However, the most important result from my perspective was the interdisciplinary conversations and the academic bonding it resulted in.

So how do you design a conference that will lead to such conversations? I think it was a very good idea to have a mix of inspiring presentations and group work. The social events were also great, with lots of opportunities to talk and dance and explore the local culture. It was fun meeting all the IT researchers such as Lars Mathiassen, John Carroll, Nanette Napier, Lev Gonick, Michel Avital, Kalle Lyytinen, Geoff Walsham, Ken and Julie Kendall and Rajendra Singh but also having conversations with people from other fields such as Carlos Osorio and Diana Withney and many more.

I really think the conference was a great example of positive design, with respect to both process and outcome. I’m looking forward to the next conference in Korea 2010, especially after Professor Dong-Sung Cho’s presentation of the BEST Sustainability Report!

/Lena

Fantastic AI workshop

A few weeks ago, 2nd year students at the Software Engineering & Management program at the IT University in Gothenburg got the chance to try working with Appreciative Inquiry. The workshop was organized around the theme "How to energize project starts" and the students worked with identifying strengths from earlier projects to produce a checklist that can be used for future project starts. The students interviewed each other and discussed in groups and the experience was great - a friendly, positive environment in which motivation to improve was high!

As a moderator of the workshop, Lena Holmberg did a fantastic job and all students were very pleased with the experience. Personally, it struck me how well AI can be incorporated into the educational program and the different courses we offer our students. I see great potential in using the method for evaluating, reflecting, designing and improving our educational programs as well as the work within single courses.

Problems versus Strengths

Within industry we have seen that practitioners thrive in solving problems while they take strengths for granted. Strengths are indeed viewed as needed, but what's the joy of doing something well again compared to solve a problem...this is one of the challenges we need to work with to make sure industry can benefit from approaches like appreciative inquiry.

Northern Connections

We have been looking for people interested in the combination of software practice and appreciative inquiry all over the world. It turns out that we should have looked closer to home. Michel Avital, University of Amsterdam, pointed out that there are several researchers at Luleå University of Technology who have published several articles with this theme. We are glad to have made the acquaintance and are happy to share the references:

M. Holst and A. Ståhlbröst. “Needfinding through Narrative Inquiry in Systems Design”, Soliman, K., The 5th IBIMA International Conference on Internet & Information Technology in Modern Organizations, 13-15 Dec 2005, at Cairo, Egypt. 88-95,

A. Ståhlbröst and M. Holst, “Appreciating Needs for Innovative IT Design”. International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management 6 (4):37-46, 2006.

B. Bergvall-Kåreborn, “Creating a New Leverage Point for Information Systems Development”. In Avital, M., Boland. R., and Cooperrider, D. (eds). Advances in Appreciative Inquiry – Designing Information and Organisations with a Positive Lens. Elsevier (2007, In press)