Team Practices Group/Retrospectives/2015-07-01

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

TPG June Retrospective 1 July 2015

Action Items(from May- June 5 mtg): edit

Action! Joel is goign to put together a survey to captue what each of our teams is doing [JOEL] status: started

Action Items from June: edit

  • Feel like we don't have time to talk about TPG stuff
    • Action: Kevin to enter into backlog (DONE)
  • Epics v Goals v Quarterly planning
    • Action: Joel & Max enter item in Phab to collect user requirements
  • who owns phabricator internally and how do we coordinate communication to upstream?
    • Action: Arthur to point David to owner of who to work with upstream, David to enter Phab item to fix wikis
  • Documentation seems more as a collab space of where to solidify ideas and process rather than documentation
    • +1 to scattered and incomplete documentation Issues of pub & private documentation still unresolved Action: TPG to model good behavior

Not So Good: edit

  • Joel trying to get basic data about performance of his team- frustrating not to have it yet
  • David found Maniphest lacking lots of functionality 
  • Health check process is behind schedule
  • June a maelstrom
    • quarterly planning, post reorg shuffle, supporting lots of people changing roles... feels like survival mode, not much reflection 
  • VE impaired by getting only 1 hour of Lila time in last three months, while she has major demands on the team
  • Senior leadership vaccuum, cascading downward, negatively impacting work at every level of the org
  • Feel like we don't have time to talk about TPG stuff
  • FR-tech still feels like there are too many locations for tracking goals 
  • Goal-setting process for Q1 generally confusing, communication, deadlines,ownership, documentation
  • Phragile project frustrating given that we are accountable for it but we are not in control of it, not doing it
  • Documentation seems more as a collab space of where to solidify ideas and process rather than documentation
    • +1 to scattered and incomplete documentation
    • Issues of pub & private documentation still unresolved
  • We have not yet decided how to decide ... things
  • Phab's navigation challenges are pushing people to other tools (Google docs)
    • +1's to phab pain
    • We are adjusting our processes to accommodate phab's limits, rather than getting phab to do our bidding

Good edit

    • Offsite :)
      • +1
    • Strine has enjoyed his arrival and ramp up
    • KanbanBoardGame.com for experiential understanding of kanban
    • Transitioning Max into his role
    • Pair-documentation meetings (Max/Kristen)
    • Working with Joel on VE on behalf of research and ux research has been awesome! also with Kristen and Kevin
    • hat-tip to Joel who guest-starred at a meeting on backlog design (heterogeneous v heierarchical)
    • Grace pairing separately with Kristen and Kevin on THCs
    • General increase in one-on-one communication within the team
    • #SynergisticWorkEngine™
    • Working through my mixed feelings with Kevin about the public list
    • Kanban talk and dress-rehearsal with the mobile team (links getting passed around!)
    • Team-supported problem solving with Joel
    • We all have eachother's backs, like when Grace spilled water on her laptop
    • Intra-team trolling ("Joelling")
    • Challenges with on-boarding, but also full of cammraderie
    • David and Max are onboard and still here :)
    • SOPs are helpful in establishing shared understanding
    • Shared ownership over facilitation function
    • t-shirt design iterations
    • Basic infrastructure generally works: Email, hangouts, having emough meeting rooms, etc.
    • Remote culture
    • Leap-second party!
    • Grace has successfully brainwashed the analytics engineering team Analytics team getting into process-stuff and taking ownership of it

Puzzlement/mixed emotion: edit

    • tracking velocity - how can we do it better and consistently?
    • How does TPG deal with external (other team) support requests
      • “Small favor” that takes a few min or hours
      • Direct team support (scrum master, etc)
      • Self management vs team/Arthurial approval
    • who owns phabricator internally and how do we coordinate communication to upstream?
    • Epics v Goals v Quarterly planning
    • Adding things to wiki
      • When to be bold, and when to make it part of the workboard in order to loop in all of TPG?
    • Retros frequent enough for TPG?
      • Bringing up a few of things that seem long ago

Action items from last time (May retro): edit

    • Action! Joel is goign to put together a survey to captue what each of our teams is doing [JOEL]
      • status: started
    • Action! Start a thread about how to use our mailing lists [Kevin]
      • DONE- took us to the next step
    • Action! Weekly 1 hour long meeting, agenda to be coordinated [Arthur]
      • DONE- Tea Time
    • Fuzzy and Huge Action! Clarify requirements around Phabricator - add this to the backlog [Joel]
      • status: abandoned