| Course | MGT 647 Project Management Integration Framework |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 7 |
| Paper type | MBA continuous improvement paper |
| Length | About 1,043 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Aspen University |
| Program | Master of Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MGT 647 Module 7
Retrospectives That Change Something: Building a Continuous Improvement Culture at Lakeshore Mutual
Student Name
Master of Business Administration, Aspen University
MGT 647: Project Management Integration Framework
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Retrospectives That Change Something: Building a Continuous Improvement Culture at Lakeshore Mutual
Every two weeks, each of Lakeshore Mutual's six Agile teams in the claims and policy journeys holds a retrospective. The meetings are friendly and the whiteboards fill with ideas. But a review of three months of retrospective notes found 112 improvement actions agreed and only 19 completed. Several actions appeared again and again. Team members have begun to call the retrospective "the complaints meeting." This paper explains why improvement has stalled and plans how to build a culture in which it continues.
Improvement as a Capability
Bessant and Caffyn (1997) argued that continuous improvement, the involvement of many people in frequent, incremental innovation, is not a program to be launched but a capability that organizations develop over time. They described a progression of levels: from occasional, unstructured problem solving; to structured improvement with formal tools and training; to goal-oriented improvement linked to strategy; to proactive improvement in which groups set their own direction; and finally to full learning capability. At each level, specific routines must become habits, such as getting the improvement habit, focusing improvement on goals, spreading it across boundaries and learning from it.
Lakeshore sits between the first and second levels. Teams have a structure, the retrospective, but the routine of carrying actions through is not established, and improvement is not linked to the company's goals for claims or policy service.
Why Improvement Stalls Under Pressure
Repenning and Sterman (2001) used system dynamics to explain a puzzle: organizations that know how to improve often fail to sustain improvement. Faced with a gap between desired and actual performance, managers can close it by having people work harder, which gives quick results, or by having them work smarter through improvement, which takes time before it pays. Working harder reduces the time available for improvement, so capability erodes, performance falls further and pressure to work harder grows. They called this a capability trap and argued that managers often blame workers for poor results that the system produces.
The retrospective notes show the trap at Lakeshore. The incomplete actions were not rejected; they were postponed whenever a sprint was busy, which was most sprints. Improvement work had no protected time and lost every contest with delivery.
Conditions for Team Learning
Edmondson (1999) examined dozens of teams inside one office furniture maker and gave a name to something teams either have or lack: psychological safety, the members' common sense that admitting a doubt or a slip will not cost them standing. Teams scoring high on that belief did more of the things learning requires, from requesting feedback and passing on information to admitting mistakes and asking colleagues for help, and those learning habits in turn tracked better team results. Coaching from the team's leader and support from the surrounding organization helped build that belief.
Retrospectives depend on that safety. At Lakeshore, team members admit that the most important problems, such as a senior engineer who rewrites others' code without discussion, are not raised in retrospectives. Improvement limited to safe topics will not reach the problems that matter.
Improvement Routines
| Routine | Who runs it | Behavior it builds |
|---|---|---|
| Retrospective chooses one action, not several | Scrum Master | Finishing improvement work |
| Action tracked as an item on the sprint board | Team | Treating improvement as real work |
| Ten percent of sprint capacity protected | Product owner and team | Improvement survives pressure |
| Monthly cross-team improvement review | Community of practice leads | Spreading what works |
| Quarterly innovation day | Journey product managers | Exploring new ideas, not only fixes |
| Leaders share their own mistakes at reviews | Product managers and executives | Psychological safety |
Innovation as Well as Improvement
Improvement fixes how teams work; innovation asks what else they could build. Once a quarter, each journey holds an innovation day on which team members work in small groups on ideas of their choosing, such as using photo analysis to estimate minor auto damage, and present results to the product managers. Promising ideas enter the product backlog as experiments.
Making Retrospectives Safer
Several changes aim at the safety Edmondson described. Scrum Masters will rotate facilitation across teams for one retrospective a quarter, so an outside facilitator can raise patterns a team avoids. Retrospectives will begin with data, such as cycle times and defects from the sprint, rather than opinions, which makes it easier to discuss problems without blaming people. Team members may submit topics anonymously before the meeting. And the Scrum Master will hold a private conversation with anyone whose behavior is repeatedly raised, rather than leaving the team to confront it in the room.
Moving Up a Level
Bessant and Caffyn's model also points to the next step. Once teams finish their own actions reliably, improvement should be linked to the journey's goals, such as reducing the time to settle a claim. Each journey's quarterly planning day will choose one improvement theme tied to a customer measure, and teams will choose retrospective actions that serve it when they can. This moves Lakeshore from structured to goal-oriented improvement.
Leaders' Part
Repenning and Sterman's analysis implies that the trap is broken by leaders, not teams. The chief information officer will tell product owners that the ten percent improvement capacity is not to be borrowed for delivery, will ask about completed improvement actions at quarterly reviews and will report a mistake of their own at the first cross-team review.
Judging Progress
The share of retrospective actions completed is the main measure, with a target of seventy percent within two sprints. A short survey on psychological safety each quarter and the number of innovation day ideas entering the backlog complete the picture. Over a longer horizon, the test is whether customer measures improve: if teams finish their improvement actions but claim settlement times and policy change errors stay flat, the actions are aimed at the wrong problems, and the journey themes need rethinking. Results are shared openly at the monthly cross-team review, including the teams that are struggling, so that help flows to them rather than blame.
Conclusion
Bessant and Caffyn show that improvement is a capability built through routines, Repenning and Sterman explain why it collapses without protected time, and Edmondson shows that learning needs safety. Together they turn the retrospective from a complaints meeting into a source of change.
References
Bessant, J., & Caffyn, S. (1997). High-involvement innovation through continuous improvement. International Journal of Technology Management, 14(1), 7-28. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJTM.1997.001705
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Repenning, N. P., & Sterman, J. D. (2001). Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened: Creating and sustaining process improvement. California Management Review, 43(4), 64-88. https://doi.org/10.2307/41166101
MGT 647 Module 7 instructions, in plain terms
Continuous improvement and innovation culture is the Module 7 subject in Aspen's MGT 647, and students are usually asked to explain how such a culture is built and to plan it for an organization. The Module 7 page in your course sets the requirements; this example continues the composite insurer. Diagnose the current state of improvement. Explain how improvement capability develops. Explain why improvement efforts fail. Address the team conditions that support learning. Design routines and protect time for them. Include innovation as well as improvement. Say how progress will be judged, citing research in APA 7 form. Show what the next level of improvement capability would look like for the organization.
How the MGT 647 Module 7 example is put together
A review of three months of retrospective notes found 112 improvement actions agreed and 19 completed. Bessant and Caffyn's International Journal of Technology Management article described levels of continuous improvement capability and the routines that develop at each. Repenning and Sterman's California Management Review article used system dynamics to show how pressure to meet targets traps organizations in a cycle of working harder rather than smarter. Edmondson's study of teams at a manufacturer showed that when colleagues trusted they would not be punished for speaking, they did more of the asking, checking and admitting that learning requires, and those teams performed better. The routines table includes limiting retrospectives to one action, tracking that action on the sprint board, a monthly cross-team improvement review and an innovation day each quarter. Ten percent of each sprint's capacity is protected for improvement work.
Where the marks sit in the MGT 647 Module 7 rubric
Improvement culture papers earn credit when they diagnose why improvement has stalled and design routines that address the causes. This example measures the problem, uses Bessant and Caffyn to place Lakeshore on a path of capability, explains the stall through Repenning and Sterman's working-harder trap and draws on Edmondson for the conditions of team learning. The routines table connects each practice to a behavior, and the protected capacity directly counters the trap. Innovation is included as a distinct routine rather than assumed. The plan also shows how teams will move toward improvement linked to customer goals, which is the next stage in Bessant and Caffyn's model and a sign of a plan that looks beyond the immediate fix.
MGT 647 Module 7 help: mistakes that cost marks
Culture papers often describe the desired culture in general terms without explaining how it will be built. Name routines, who runs them and what behavior each builds. Another weakness is ignoring why improvement work stops when pressure rises; plan to protect time for it. Address psychological safety through leader behavior, not slogans. Measure improvement actions completed, not only those agreed. Include innovation as well as fixing problems. Finally, say how leaders will show that improvement work is valued. Make retrospectives safer by starting from data and offering anonymous topics, since the most important problems are often the hardest to name.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Aspen University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
More MGT 647 and Master of Business Administration sample papers
- MGT 647 Module 1: Agile Values and Fit
- MGT 647 Module 2: Scrum
- MGT 647 Module 3: Kanban and Flow
- MGT 647 Module 4: Shared Leadership
- MGT 647 Module 5: Distributed Decisions
- MGT 647 Module 6: Scaling Agile
- MGT 647 Module 8: Agile Transformation Plan
- MGT 514 Module 6: Stress and Personal Problems at Work
- MGT 530 Module 1: Leadership and Its Major Theories
- MGT 645 Module 2: Stakeholder Engagement
- MGT 500 Module 8: Current Issues and an Integrated Management Plan
MGT 647 Module 7 questions, answered
What does MGT 647 Module 7 usually ask for?
Aspen's MGT 647 makes continuous improvement and innovation culture the Module 7 subject, so an MBA paper planning how to build that culture is typical. Read your classroom prompt.
Why do improvement programs fail?
Repenning and Sterman showed that under pressure managers push people to work harder, crowding out the improvement work that would raise capacity, which deepens the pressure.
How does continuous improvement capability develop?
Bessant and Caffyn described it as developing in stages, from occasional problem solving to systematic, organization-wide improvement and learning.
Where can I find a free MGT 647 Module 7 sample paper?
The example above plans a continuous improvement and innovation culture for an insurer's Agile teams.
Why does psychological safety matter for improvement?
Edmondson showed that teams whose members feel free to speak up do more of the questioning and error talk that improvement runs on.