Reflections on reflection in agile software development

This paper analyzes the reflections of an agile team, developing a large-scale project in an industry setting. The team uses an Iteration Summary Meeting practice, which includes four elements: The customer's summary, a formal presentation of the system, review of metrics and a reflection. The technique for the entire meeting and for the reflection element in particular is described, and empirical evidence is given to show that it is assessed as highly effective, achieving its intended goals, and increasing team satisfaction. Further, the proposed practice supports tracking past decisions. This practice is shown to be valuable to stabilizing a new project as well as a continuous improvement forum for a stable project. It also incurs a lower overhead than existing alternative reflection practices.