We just finished our latest Advantage Technical Summit. We always have the team sit down together after these events and review how it went. We review the feedback we get from the attendees and review everything that we did looking for; the good, the bad and the ugly. Fortunately there is rarely any ugly.
This has always been a good practice and has provided us with a long running history of our technical summits which gives us something to look at when we begin planning for the next one.
The Army has a similar system called the After Action Review (AAR) which is done after most operations. Whether the operation was big or small soldiers are encouraged to spend a few minutes and evaluate what happened. The AAR consists of a leader asking a three simple questions.
- What went right?
- What went wrong?
- What can we improve for the next time?
Egos are checked at the door and rank does not matter during the AAR. This is to promote honest feedback and constructive criticism about the event. This shouldn't open the door to allow people to insult members of their team, although I have seen this happen. When used correctly the information gathered during the AAR can yield great improvements and serve as a "knowledge base" for new members and leaders in the unit.
So how does this type of thinking fall into the programming world. Just ask Joel Spolsky who used the five whys to help improve the uptime of their servers.
The five whys method involves asking why until the root cause of the problem is discovered. This can be a very useful tool when solving complex programming issues. By asking the right questions your investigations can be focused allowing the root problem to be revealed quicker. This process has been extensively used by Toyota motor company as a methodology to resolve problems. Wikipedia has a simple example of the process
My car will not start. (the problem)
- Why? - The battery is dead. (first why)
- Why? - The alternator is not functioning. (second why)
- Why? - The alternator belt has broken. (third why)
- Why? - The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and has never been replaced. (fourth why)
- Why? - I have not been maintaining my car according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, a root cause)
Regardless of what method you prefer taking some time to look back after a particular milestone will pay great dividends in the future. Having an historical reference to review before beginning a process could provide the valuable insight you need to make it the most successful process ever.
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