Team Practices Group/Retrospectives/2015-03-26

Big events since the last retro (end of Jan)

Hiring Kevin
Joel by the end of the Q
Continuing increased demand for the TPG
- eg Kevin getting sucked into architecture meetings
MW Core team split
VE as a priority
- no more 160 point stories, thanks to Grace
Big increase health check surveys (12?)
First health check to truly non-technical team (community liaisons)
Rolled out generalized health check survey; from 3point scale to 5 point scale
reformation of goal setting and prioritization process for product/engineering
- Arthur became priority platypus
mushroom foraging
reformed our phab board - one board to two; updated our process to something of weekly sprints
burndown thing got fixed in phab
new COO and new VP of discovery
Grace’s 1 month SoS trial seems to have lasted… 4 months
Mobile web team on descending curve of megateam phenom; mobile apps on the upswing of the curve
Maryana leaving
Anasuya leaving, Gayle leaving; changes in Community dept. and Luis becoming C-level there
- new investment by the org in community-facing functions; mobile getting a community liaison
Toby becoming director of product in addition to his usual duties
TPG scaling; we had great planning meetings for the scaling; also noting the impact this will have on the admins
C2A; on time, on budget
Kristen bought an airstream!
Grace is getting close to finishing bathroom remodel

TPG scaling; we had great planning meetings for the scaling; also noting the impact this will have on the admins
TPG as a team works really well
Getting Grace in just a bit with the VE team
- praise from Trevor!
keep hearing that the TPG has a great reputation in the org
weekly sprint thing seems to be working really well
pulling together the non-eng version of the health check; having the 1-hr session with multiple minds on it, great diversity of opinion
Kristen did a bang-up job with megamatrix for the Q2 health check
Analytics engineering moving to Kanban
Onboarding process and on boarding buddy seemed to work well; room for improvement but overall good
One goal to rule them all is working well for the teams we are supporting
Our structure works - our team, getting embedded elsewhere
Warming up to Phab - “you go to war with the army you have"
taking THC results to the muckety mucks, and doing something with it, e.g. working with the release engineering team; emgt discussing how to better organize to reduce interteam dependencies
Kevin and Grace attending Quim’s meeting - ECT was stoked!

Figuring out how to get Grace involved with the VE team
Existential crisis - what team am I on???!?!
Balancing the meeting schedules overall - meeting overload
Different teams doing different processes - feels like the right thing but can we really support one another?
Toby being overloaded
Toby and Grace’s divergent priorities around VE

Kevin’s personal organization was great for the first few weeks; but right now it sucks -
Challenging post-all hands to balance the excitement + work with the teams + work with the TPG
Last few months have been insane - packed; much more than previous quarters
Hard to take time off; to miss any rituals for the teams we support feels disruptive. Would be nice to be able to get more support/cross-team-coverage from within the TGP
- may require more standardization, understanding each other’s conventions
Lack of PM for mediawiki core group
Free-floating anxiety in the org around shifting culture, changes at the top. insecurities rippling through the org
Rumors around org changes, even in prod/eng - like the impending innovation team etc
Stealth insertion of VP of discovery - parachuted in

Pairing on our TPG tasks
TPG internal exchange program: during our weekly meeting, arrange for an exchange between two people, one meeting, etc.
Arthur to take on campaign of sustainability with the TPG, and to bubble up the insustainability to Terry