Lunedi

I used to take yoga lessons. The routine was almost the same every class. I loved the way my whole body felt after following it, so I decided to go over it every morning. After some months I managed to easily bend and reach the floor with my hands without feeling miserable. I was more than satisfied with my flexibility and strength. So I relaxed. Relaxing meant skipping yoga routines.

Exercising every morning effectively took time and that precious time could be used for more productive goals, such as watching TV, spending more time in bed or reading the newspaper. Skipping lead to suppressing, and suppression led to forgetting.

Yesterday I woke up with horrendous back pain. Yoga sounded like an interesting alternative. Thus I started my routine and I could hardly reach my ankles with my hands. There’s no such thing as perennial fitness. You only remains in shape if you exercise. If you don’t, you simple weaken you condition.

Curiously enough the same happens to process. If you don’t work on it regularly (say doing retrospectives quite often), process loses effectiveness. Teams think that by skipping retrospectives process will remain as good as it is today. Desirable, but just not true. Exercise your process by doing retrospectives and productivity will remain constant or even get better with time. Skip them and productivity muscles will silently stiffen. Forget about them and the team will one day be unable to get up from bed.