Team Practices Group

The Team Practices Group (TPG) was dissolved in 2017.

Team Practices Group

The TPG facilitates the use of practices that support team health. How to Engage with TPG.

Group:	Product
Team:	Arthur Richards (Sr. Agile Coach: Organizational Collaboration) Grace Gellerman (Agile Coach) Kevin Smith (Agile Coach) Joel Aufrecht (Agile Coach) Max Binder (Scrum Master) Natalia Harateh (Agile Specialist)
Management:	Kristen Lans (Director of Team Practices)
Since:	2014-07-01
Until:	2017

Team Mission Statement

The Team Practices Group believes that healthy teams reliably deliver customer value and innovative products. Through dedicated resourcing, coaching, and workshops at the Wikimedia Foundation, we facilitate the use of practices that support team health, with a strong emphasis on creating conditions of clarity, trust, and continuous improvement.

Team Values

People

• We value people as unique individuals. With humility, compassion, and empathy, we seek to empower one another.

Relationships

• We value and support collaboration, and believe that groups of people have the power to be more than the sum of their parts.

Learning

• We value learning, working iteratively, and responding to change.

Sustainability

• We value working in ways that support individual and team health, and which effectively use finite resources such as attention, time, and money.

Overview

The Team Practices Group (TPG) supports the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) teams in their continual improvement.

The TPG works with individuals and teams to facilitate their discovery and implementation of methodologies/approaches that work best for them, guided by the agile manifesto and agile principles.

The TPG supports WMF teams by offering the following services:

• Providing dedicated resourcing for a team's Scrum Master (or similar) role, depending on availability/resourcing of the TPG.
  • e.g. A team wants a dedicated Scrum Master but does not currently have anyone on their team who wants or is able to take on the role. They go to the TPG, and the TPG provides them with someone who can fulfill that role.
• Periodic or one-off collaborative engagements to facilitate process improvements for individuals and teams.
  • e.g. A team getting ready to kick off a big project wants help in reorganizing their team practices to use the Scrum framework. They request support from the TPG, and the TPG provides Scrum training to that team.
• Mentorship and support for people in the Scrum Master (or similar) role.
  • e.g. An existing Scrum Master (not provided by the TPG) is looking for ways to increase and improve their skills. A request is made for support from the TPG, and the TPG provides mentorship and resources.

Engagement with the TPG is entirely optional for WMF teams.

• Teams may elect to receive all, some, or none of the TPG services at any given time.
  • The TPG facilitates and cultivates healthy team practices, to the best of its resources, as teams request.

• The TPG aims to not be prescriptive nor dogmatic.
  • The TPG is agnostic in regards to specific methodologies (e.g. Scrum vs Kanban).

Fridays, some of us wear tropical attire.

The Team

Kristen

• Kristen Lans - Team Practices Director

Arthur

• Arthur Richards - Senior Agile Coach: Organizational Collaboration

• Grace Gellerman - Agile Coach (Wikimedia_Research including Design/Research)

Kevin

• Kevin Smith - Agile Coach (Discovery)

Joel

• Joel Aufrecht - Agile Coach (VisualEditor)

Max

• Max Binder - Scrum Master (Reading Web)

Natalia

• Natalia Harateh - Agile Specialist (Mobile Apps)

Our Work

Engagements

Goals from previous quarters

Essential Functions

1. Providing dedicated resourcing for a team's Scrum Master (or similar) role.
2. Ad-hoc team/individual process coaching.
3. Mentorship and support for people in the Scrum Master (or similar) role.
4. Team Health Checks
5. Scale Team Practices Group.
6. Other work that advances TPG goals but doesn't have a tidy goal.

Our Skills

TPG is able to perform various functions, like meeting facilitation or Scrummastering. When practical, we like to teach those skills to others, in order to increase capacity and empowerment throughout the organization. Here is a list of some of the skills that TPG can offer:

• Our skills

Initiatives

• Team Practices Group/FY2016Q3 Work Tracking
• Test Coverage initiative
• Engineering Product Process Proposal
• Evidence-Based Project Planning (Burnups, Maintenance Fraction, Forecasting)
• Light engagement survey

Practices Library

• Tips on how to do stuff, especially various kinds of meetings:
  • Best Practices Handbook
  • Meeting Best Practices (including remote staff)
  • Checklist and advice for planning Offsite meetings
  • Scrum Ceremonies
    • Scrum Standup
    • Scrum Sprint Planning Meeting
    • Scrum Estimation Meeting
    • Scrum Sprint Retrospective
  • Retrospectives
    • Team Practices Group/Retrospectives#Basic TPG Retro Process
    • Five Finger Retrospective
    • Method for getting people to share in high profile settings
    • Team Practices Group/5-category framework for thinking about feedback
    • Learning Matrix retrospective
    • https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/retro-tips-and-tricks
  • Workshop Planning
  • Measuring Types of Work
• Service Level Understanding
• Glossary
• Recommended Reading
• Useful Questions
• Phabricator tips
  • Phlogiston
  • Phragile
• WMF Processes Survey

Conferences and Collaborations with Communities Outside Wikimedia

• 2016
  • Agile Games West

Presentations

• Tech talk ("The state of Team Health across Wikimedia Engineering")
  • Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YfkxpJTuY4
• Tech talk ("Kanban: An alternative to Scrum?")
  • Recorded hangout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT8cUtMTGPI
  • Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1w51To_TUN5t8w5ay8rvRwDy56I9ac4Jbx9bZOCnDd4g/pub
• Tech Talk "A Hands-on Estimation Exercise"
  • Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-zLwTez46M
• "Developing Distributedly: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Remoties" - Presentation by Arthur Richards at the Global Scrum Gathering in Phoenix, AZ on 4 May 2015.
• WMF Engineering Process Proposal
• TPG Coaching Clinic@Dev Summit 2017
• Internal report on an experiment in task tracking and reporting in Phabricator

Team Documentation

• Proposal for formation of the Team Practices Group
• Meeting Notes

How we work

How to Engage with TPG

These procedures are customized for how TPG does its own work; see the Practices Library above for generic versions and templates.

• Creating, Managing, and Finishing Work in TPG
• Team Practices Group/Quarterly Planning
• TPG Team Norms
• Roles and Responsibilities of TPG team members
• Onboarding to TPG
• Health check survey
• Light Engagement Survey (Team Members only)
• TPG Tea Time
• Google Drive Management
• CSAT
• Agile Coaching Lifecycle
• Engagement model

How we have done

• TPG Retrospectives
• Quarterly Reviews
• FY2016Q3 Work tracking
• TPG team strategy process - FY2016
• Analysis of usage of public and private TPG mailing lists

Contact

• How to Engage with TPG
• IRC: #wikimedia-teampractices ^connect
• Join the mailing list (or view its archives)
  • Send email to that public list: teampractices@lists.wikimedia.org