Team Practices Group/Retrospectives/2017-01-24 DevSummit 2017 coaching clinic retrospective

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

Context

In January 2017, The Team Practices Group offered a "Coaching Clinic" at the Wikimedia Developer Summit. This document contains notes from a team retrospective held a couple weeks after the event. TPG members evaluated whether the clinic had met the goals that had been set for it, and tried to learn from the experience so any future clinics would be better.

These notes are close to a raw transcript, so they contain some team jargon and inside references.

Goals for the Coaching Clinic

For each goal: did we accomplish the goal?  Why or why not?  What should we have done differently?  If we didn’t accomplish it, should it be a goal if we do another one?

Increase accessibility and understanding of "who are we and what do we do"

• Max: I feel like we got more exposure, particularly with volunteers. I don’t know if it’s inherently clearer what we do, especially since we mostly only helped clarify issues for folks, but maybe.
  • GG +1 to yes to exposure and not sure about clarifying our role KS: +1 to this
  • NH +1
• KS: for 2 of my clients, a link to the intake form was like winning a prize, so that may speak to increased accessibility.
• JA: lots of people said, after talking, that they now understood what the Clinic was, but not a delta for understanding TPG.

Did we achieve this goal? Mixed votes, but none negative

Interesting experiment - is this something that we might consider doing more regularly (eg "TPG office hours")? Presence at other events eg hackathons?

• Max: It was fun but also exhausting. I don’t want to underestimate the added stress that Office Hours might bring.
• Max: I like the idea of doing it at other events. Among other things, I think it gives a clearer idea of why TPG is attending events like the Hackathon.
• GG: not sure that office hours would work, but I did like it and even as a rapid fire short & not in depth (what used to be called, “LIght Engagement”) interaction which I found energizing
• KS: I could see doing this again. I appreciated having 3 people signed up at all times, although with hindsight 2 might have been enough (1 host and 1 coach). It was surprising that extra TPGers tended to hang out there a lot, which I think was both helpful (supportive) and disruptive.
  • MB: I think part of the hanging out was due to schedule overload, where everyone was invited to everything.
  • KS: with a little more space this would not be a problem
  • GG: was nice to have TPGers listening in to a specific one
  • KL: might make us look less inviting (to have excess TPGers loitering)
• NH: I think it’d be worth to do it at other events, I’d be interested to find out how it works out at a hackathon, I can see how selling a process talk at a hacking event could be more challenging than it was at the Dev Summit. Perhaps, for a hackathon, we could think about adjusting the format (real-time-coaching-as-you-hack 🔥)?
• AR: While I only participated minimally, it seemed like people got good value out of it. Particularly at events where TPG participation is minimal, I think it would be really neat to keep doing this type of thing. Hackathons could be really cool to experiment with.
  • AR: would like to clarify what types of events specifically?

Should we do this more often, e.g. via office hours, at another event, etc?

• All agree.
• GG: events only, not office hours

Did we learn from this experiment?

• yes.

Interaction with developers and making connections

• Max: It was awesome chatting with volunteers, to get mutual exposure (see volunteer workflows) and give a good impression of TPG as a worthwhile team.
• GG: made some new connections. I deliberately suggested that my current or past customers speak with another TPGer to get diversity of TPG opinions.
• KS: Met some different people. I got exposed to some issues at the foundation that I hadn’t been aware of. It was good.
• NH: I really enjoyed casual conversations with people hanging out around the clinic, some of them weren’t ready to sign up but were willing to share stories about their daily struggles as we stood there. Obviously, not ideal but I’d like to believe that it helped them somehow. I was happy to see their perspective.

3 or 4 yes, 2-3 maybe, 1 abstain.  

KS: 50% of my connections were useful but not with developers.

JA: Most of my connections were with existing customers (e.g. Wes)

Learn about what topics this audience is interested with regard to team practices and collaboration

• Max: Not sure if this goes in this section, but I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and easily newcomers opened up about their (sometimes personal) issues.
• KS: I don’t feel like I got enough data points to really say what “this audience” is interested in.

Mostly Neutral to No, one neutral to pos.

GG: not enough data points.

KL: got some topics, not a cross-cutting survey (KS +1) NH +1

JA: no patterns in mine, and struggling to remember topics

GG: mostly communication theme

KL: some specific examples - transition to manager.

GG: debriefed with other TPGers regarding his session

Practice our coaching skills

• Max: A crash course in What’s Most Important to Discuss, cuz you only get 15 min. Specifically, a reminder that often coaching is about asking questions rather than providing answers. #Guidance
• GG: it was a good exercise in reading situation and adopting coaching stance on the fly and even transitioning stance mid-interaction
• KS: It was interesting (and a bit frustrating) to be limited to clarifying the problem(s) and identifying next steps. I also had the chance to practice a “don’t sell yourself short—you have taken some great first steps”.
• Natalia: It was definitely frustrating not to be able to offer a straightforward solution right away - I Iearned to accept that providing what I think would be a solution to someone else’s problems is not necessarily what they need, as more likely than not, it’s not the solution they’d be willing to accept for one reason or another, sometimes simply because it’s not theirs. As the clinic’s client, I loved Joel’s ‘only questions’ approach. It gave me full ownership of all the ideas that Joel helped me arrive at. As a coach, I’d want to use that approach.
• AR: yes.

All yes (but KS: mostly yes)

KS: was coaching skills, but was not what I do day-to-day.  Wasn’t practicing what I do day-to-day.

GG: was practicing skills I’d like to use more.

A nice way to be of service for this event

• KS: I didn’t experience any volunteer engagement, and saw little of it. I think we would have been of more service at all-hands. But that would have been more difficult since we were all expected to participate fully in the all-hands events.

Almost all yes, two neutral-mixed.

MB: At the hackathon in Israel, they said they regretted not asking TPG help facil e.g. demos; that’s an alternative way for TPG to be of service.

Lays the groundwork for possible future community explorations/collaborations

• Max: Totes.
• KS: Not really. I did have a nice chat on the bus with someone from WMDE, where talking about the coaching clinic led to a conversation about their scrum implementation.

Completely mixed, from yes to no.

• MB: worked with a couple of volunteers, one was trying to figure out workflow nirvana by working with 90% of teams at foundation.  Other was trying to do his own offsite.  Got me excited for the future of collaborating.  JA: explicit followup?  MB: no, but pointed them to intake form and offered to adapt to community.
• KL: one piece of rationale was to make some connections with volunteer community.

Other Worked Well

• Max: Floating TPG’ers and filling in for one another and swapping roles, as needed.
• GG: Joel was a good host and was sensitive to potential concerns of fellow-TPGers
  • +1 from KS
  • +1 NH
  • What specifically:
    • Carnival barking (to actively recruit people)
    • Being aware of possible complications with matchups and giving coaches a [safe way to say no, showing empathy informed by knowledge of priors for that particular coach]
• KS: Great group effort putting the event together (thanks to those who did the bulk of the work!)
• AR: cool to see connections outside of the group of people we normally interact with, particularly cool to see discussions with WMDE
• KL: I think it looked professional and was professionally executed - kudos pack
• I think we could replicate this again with less overhead, now that we’ve done it once.

Not Working Well (including Confusing)

• Better space
  • Max: I’d like a bigger space, or more privacy with convos to encourage conversations to flow as well as cut down on noise.
  • KS: The space was a bit crowded, and I felt like we were in the way of passing traffic.
• Advertising
  • GG: the flier took a long time to complete, though future fliers could potentially benefit from groundwork laid in this 1.0.  
  • GG: We made no promise of confidentiality which I think is something to consider at future instances.
    • +1 confidentiality NH
  • KS: We didn’t announce it at the first day open mic, which might have helped
    • +1 NH
  • KS: And my improvised announcement day 2 probably wasn’t as compelling as it could have been
• AR scheduling issues and travel issues made it so i couldn’t be involved anywhere near as much as I wanted to be
• Tough to get feedback :-(
  • NH: feedback box instead of post-it board.
  • Agreement
  • MB: more privacy options for both the talk and the feedback.
  • KS: or at least the privacy could be clearer. For the sessions, could be strictly confidential, just TPG, just foundation. For the feedback, could be confidential to TPG, fully public, anonymized, fully public as written.

Discussion

Should we do it again? Under what conditions?

What would we do differently if we did it again?

What else should we do with this document:

• GG: do a read-through to add context where necessary before it is forgotten
• JA: Should we post this?
  • GG will create a phab task for redacting and posting these notes.
• KL: Managed to sneak a coaching clinic question into the survey.
• KL: should we do a write-up for a blog post?
  • JA: Yes.  KS +1.
  • JA will create the Phab task.
  • GG: maybe we should do this again and have two data points before we blog about it.
  • KL: maybe cool if somebody cruised our page
  • JA: does anybody read our stuff?  KL: I mean a WMF blog post with comms support.
• Should we do a coaching clinic at Hackathon in May in Vienna?

New action items

• Post notes on mediawiki (GG Phab task) DONE: Phab:T156175

• Make WMF blog post (JA Phab task) DONE: Phab:T156183
• Added Vienna Coaching Clinic Q to staff meeting. DONE