Back-to-School for Teams: Relearning the Basics of Agile Execution

By September, many Agile teams have sprinted through countless standups, retros, and releases. But just like students who forget the fundamentals over summer break, even high-performing teams can develop bad habits or skip essential steps. Q3 is a perfect time to go “back to school” and refresh the basics — ensuring a strong, disciplined push into the final quarter of the year.

Here’s your syllabus for a successful Agile comeback.

Remember: the standup exists to coordinate the day’s work and keep the sprint on track, not to impress a manager with progress.

When’s the last time your team looked at its DoD? If you’re shipping work without testing, documentation, or peer review, your “done” might actually be “half-baked.”

The refresher:

• Audit your DoD against quality standards.

• Ensure everyone understands it — especially new hires.

• Include non-functional criteria like performance, security, and accessibility.

• The DoD should be the gatekeeper that ensures value, not a box-checking exercise.

It’s tempting to treat sprints as mini “to-do” buckets — but this turns them into unfocused task dumps.

If your retros have become “meh” sessions where nothing changes, you’re wasting a golden improvement opportunity.

The refresher:

• Rotate facilitation to keep perspectives fresh.

• Pick 1–2 actionable items per retro and track them to completion.

• Use creative formats (Start-Stop-Continue, Sailboat, 4Ls) to keep engagement high.

• The retro is your safety valve for team frustrations and your fuel for continuous improvement.

Teams often execute in a bubble, leaving stakeholders guessing about progress and value delivery.

Just like students who sharpen their pencils and crack open fresh notebooks in September, Agile teams can use this season to reset their execution habits. Relearn the basics now, and Q4 will feel less like a grind and more like a winning streak.