[teampractices] Retrospectives: Getting deep and personal

Fri Jan 6 01:30:39 UTC 2017

Neat idea! Thanks for sharing.

On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 4:05 AM, Guillaume Lederrey <glederrey at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Thanks Kevin for the reminder!
>
> So here is a short description of the "Adjectives Game":
>
> First, note of warning, this game is probably getting deeper and more
> personal than most team are comfortable with, use with caution.
>
> 1) ask the participants to write a list of 10 adjectives that describe
> themselves, both positive and negative
> 2) each participant chooses one adjective in that list, writes it on a
> piece of paper and offers it to someone who shares this trait with him
> / her
> 3) discussion / question on the adjective you received
> 4) go to 2) and repeat as long as necessary
>
> Notes:
>
> * The idea is that as you only offer adjectives from your list, it
> defuses the hostility that can come from harsh critiques. If I give
> you "disorganised plutocrat", you can't feel too much offended as you
> know I think I share this trait with you.
> * Even in teams that are fairly opened to non standard exercises, this
> can be hard to actually execute. We are not used to do direct
> critiques in a work context.
> * We work together and we will continue to work together. This means
> that we need to preserve a work relationship, which makes it harder to
> do personal critiques. This game can turn into a "I'll only say nice
> things to make sure I don't offend anyone" (which might also be OK).
> * This game has a strong "AA meeting" feel to it.
> * All that being said, with the right team at the right moment it is
> an amazing way to address deep issues and make the team stronger.
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 10:54 PM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > Thank you indeed, Guillaume. I have added my interpretations of these to
> the
> > Planning Offsites page[1]. It's great to have more tools available! I
> look
> > forward to hearing about the "adjective game".
> >
> > [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Team_Practices_Group/
> Planning_offsites
> >
> >
> > Kevin Smith
> > Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 12:50 PM, Arthur Richards <
> arichards at wikimedia.org>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> These are awesome, Guillaume. Great suggestions - thank you for sharing!
> >>
> >> On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 3:16 AM Guillaume Lederrey
> >> <glederrey at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> A few additional thoughts (read brain dump, not much structure here):
> >>>
> >>> If we want to talk more about emotions, feelings and all those fuzzy
> >>> things (which I think we should, it isn't because it is fuzzy that it
> >>> isn't important!), we usually need to bring different kind of tools to
> >>> the table. Language tends to steer us into analytical thinking.
> >>> Language requires us to build structured thoughts and tend to not help
> >>> all that much to get us started into a deeper discussion of
> >>> interpersonal issues, or discussion about emotions. I know the "left
> >>> brain / right brain" is a gross over simplification of how our brain
> >>> work, but it is a useful metaphor here. Language activate our
> >>> metaphorical analytical left brain more than our metaphorical
> >>> emotional right brain.
> >>>
> >>> So we need tools to activate our right brain. I have a bunch of them,
> >>> but none is adapted to a distributed setting. Or at least not without
> >>> quite a bit of modification. Still a few idea, someone might know how
> >>> to adapt them:
> >>>
> >>> * photolanguage [1][2]: A classic that seems to be more documented in
> >>> French than English. By bringing pictures into the game, we activate a
> >>> different kind of thinking. In short, the instruction could be "In all
> >>> the pictures that are "here", find a picture that expresses something
> >>> that your team did well this past week". Discussion starts from the
> >>> pictures.
> >>> * positioning games: I can't find a link for that one, but the general
> >>> idea is: "please move along the wall here according to how you found
> >>> the last feature development went, if you think it was really crap,
> >>> move to the far left, if it was brilliant, move to the far right, if
> >>> it was just ok, move in the middle...". Having people physically move
> >>> around tend again to activate different ways of thinking. I have no
> >>> idea how to adapt this to a distributed / online retro...
> >>> * I have an unnamed variation of the rocket retrospective: find one
> >>> thing that went well, one thing that went bad. Write 2 words (max) on
> >>> 2 pieces of paper (one piece with what went well, one with what went
> >>> wrong). Pass one piece to your left neighbour, the other to your
> >>> right. The person receiving the piece of paper must imagine what that
> >>> thing was based on the 2 words. While not as radical as the 2 other
> >>> examples, this tend to stimulate imagination more. Variants can be
> >>> that the person receiving the paper must present a solution /
> >>> improvement to the problematic thing, or a way to generalize what went
> >>> well. We can add constraint such as "the solution must be implemented
> >>> by the person proposing it", ... The more constraints, the more we
> >>> need to think outside of the box.
> >>>
> >>> I might add the "adjective game" in a follow up.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9thode_Photolangage
> >>> [2] http://www.picturetelling.ch/e/method/
> >>> [3] http://tastycupcakes.org/2014/06/the-rocket-retrospective/
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 8:44 PM, Arthur Richards <
> arichards at wikimedia.org>
> >>> wrote:
> >>> > +1 to Strine's thoughts. Very similarly and in line with David said
> >>> > about
> >>> > getting a team to name emotions that occurred around mechanical
> >>> > feedback
> >>> > (I'm removing the 'factual' part that David originally included
> because
> >>> > emotions are facts too!), I've also had success combining the "mad,
> >>> > sad,
> >>> > glad" format with the "timeline" format (also in the Esther Derby
> book,
> >>> > which worked really nicely for a more engineering-centric group. The
> >>> > timeline portion helped lay everything out in a logical, event-based
> >>> > (feeling-free) manner; but then layering the "mad, sad, glad" piece
> on
> >>> > top
> >>> > of that helped reveal how folks were feeling about various events
> that
> >>> > happened, which spurred deeper conversation.
> >>> >
> >>> > On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 10:31 AM David Strine <dstrine at wikimedia.org>
> >>> > wrote:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> The book "Agile Retrospectives" by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
> has a
> >>> >> section on managing group dynamics and a description of the "Mad,
> Sad,
> >>> >> Glad"
> >>> >> format. I also found an online example here [1].
> >>> >>
> >>> >> I've found that if you get a team to name emotions that occurred
> >>> >> around
> >>> >> the mechanical/factual feedback you can get a glimpse into the
> >>> >> interpersonal
> >>> >> issues. The emotional statements open the door for you to dig deeper
> >>> >> ask
> >>> >> pointed questions.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> [1]
> >>> >> https://www.retrium.com/resources/techniques/mad-sad-glad
> >>> >>
> >>> >> On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 9:58 AM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org>
> >>> >> wrote:
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> Hi all,
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> I'm looking for advice about how to structure retrospectives to
> >>> >>> encourage
> >>> >>> more feedback about interpersonal issues. I believe the teams I
> work
> >>> >>> with
> >>> >>> feel the retros are a "safe space", but the vast majority of the
> >>> >>> issues that
> >>> >>> come up are mechanical, not personal.
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> Of course, it's possible that there really aren't that many
> >>> >>> interpersonal
> >>> >>> issues on these teams. (They do seem to be more emotionally healthy
> >>> >>> and
> >>> >>> mature than many teams I have interacted with.) But I don't want to
> >>> >>> take any
> >>> >>> chances. And I don't have a ton of experience running retros, so
> I'm
> >>> >>> hoping
> >>> >>> those of you with more experience can provide some pointers.
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> Thanks!
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> Kevin Smith
> >>> >>> Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>> >>> teampractices at lists.wikimedia.org
> >>> >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/teampractices
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>
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> >>> >
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> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Guillaume Lederrey
> >>> Operations Engineer, Discovery
> >>> Wikimedia Foundation
> >>> UTC+2 / CEST
> >>>
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> >>
> >>
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>
>
> --
> Guillaume Lederrey
> Operations Engineer, Discovery
> Wikimedia Foundation
> UTC+2 / CEST
>
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