[teampractices] Retrospectives

[Steven Walling]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I really appreciate it.

I think I'll set up our first retrospective for after the holidays, and
probably try to do them every two sprints or something.


On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 5:04 PM, Katie Horn <khorn at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> If I may add a few personal observations to the stack...
>
> * The first few retrospectives you have, are going to be fascinatingly
> awkward. Particularly so for established teams.
> I've seen this happen several times, and heard tales of many more
> situations that fit the same pattern: If any of the participants don't feel
> like they have had an appropriate official venue in which to raise issues
> until you get to the "What didn't work" part of your first retrospective,
> the whole meeting will probably blow up. If I had to set up new retros
> again, rather than try to time-box it to something reasonable (which would
> end up shutting some people down) I'd give the first few retrospective
> meetings about 3x the calendar time I'd want to regularly spend once the
> situation settles into routine.
>
> * Keeping at it is probably the easiest way to make it better.
> Once the team gets used to having a retrospective, each individual's queue
> of things to raise as issues will eventually empty (or at least stabilize).
> This both shortens meetings (fewer issues to discuss), and ensures that all
> the issues that are brought up, are relatively fresh. Fresh issues are
> vastly preferable to stale ones: They will be relevant, and they won't have
> had time to fester and become, well, awkward.
>
> So basically, don't let the first few scare you off. It seems to me that
> it always takes a few, to get the whole team to a place in which
> retrospectives serve their intended function.
>  -Katie
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Arthur Richards <arichards at wikimedia.org>wrote:
>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 5:49 PM, Tomasz Finc <tfinc at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>> And if we haven't given you enough info. You can find all the notes
>>> from the Mobile Apps team retrospectives on our team page
>>>
>>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team
>>>
>>>
>> Oo oo! And the mobile web team:
>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_web/Team
>>
>> --
>> Arthur Richards
>> Software Engineer, Mobile
>> [[User:Awjrichards]]
>> IRC: awjr
>> +1-415-839-6885 x6687
>>
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>
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-- 
Steven Walling,
Product Manager
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
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