Throughout your Agile life, seek to identify and learn where improvements can be made. Lessons are not captured and learned at the end of a project. It’s like passing your driving test and tentatively taking your first drive without an instructor. You’ll know what works and what you’re supposed to do, but over time you’ll tailor your driving skill and capabilities, learning new techniques. You’ll even pick up bad habits. Look for them, understand them, and find ways to improve.

There are many opportunities for identifying what does not work and applying remedies. The built-in approach to this in Agile is the retrospective. This is the primary tool for reflection and adjustment. At the end of every sprint, take time with the team to improve how work gets done, how quality is delivered, how efficiency can be maximized, how waste can be minimized and how capacity is increased. When you identify measures for improvement, don’t be tempted to fix all your problems right away. Identify the ones that will have most impact and can be implemented in the next sprint. Measure and observe. If it had the desired impact, lock it up, write it up into your ways of working and definitions of done. If it doesn’t work, think again. Any lessons learned that don’t get put into the upcoming sprint can be parked and prioritized for attention in the next sprint.

Tailor the process. Remove anything that does not work. Remove impediments. Your maturity as an Agile team will know no bounds if you let it.