Upstream

Step one link backward from whatever you're blaming and ask what feeds it: who supplies its inputs, sets its deadlines, hands off work to it. Bad or late inputs cause failures the actor itself could never have prevented.

Step one link backward from whatever you're blaming and ask what feeds it: who supplies its inputs, sets its deadlines, hands off work to it. Bad or late inputs cause failures the actor itself could never have prevented.

Example

On the slipping project, you trace the team's inputs and find the vendor's spec files land nine days into every two-week sprint. Their process was fine. They were starting each sprint already behind, and no amount of retrospective fixed that.