Team Practices Group/Retrospectives/2017-03-02

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

ACTION! More conversation- NH to make a Tea Time topic

Next Facilitator: Natalia

What happened since last retro (2017-01-26):

• TPG-internal
  • TPG annual planning kickoff
  • Working toward new phab workstream tracking process
  • New TPG calendar norms
  • New TPG team calendar
  • Conversations about adding one (or more) TPGers to the team
  • Great email thread about empathy and compassion
• Product
  • Wes leaves
  • Toby becomes new interim boss
  • Grace worked on design of 2 New Readers affordability workshops and facilitated both of them
• WMF
  • Collab Jam
    • (and some tricky calendar juggling as a result)
  • Structured Data grant retro
  • Inching forward with Tech Debt initiative
  • Cross cultural communication talks moving forward
  • Draft WMF values announced
  • Movement strategy is progressing
  • Annual Planning
  • Product conversations/consultations happening
  • Other
    • Joel on leave
    • Kevin visited Arthur in cloudy, rainy AZ

Keep

• • MB: Working with on-site TPG’ers when facilitating events in the office
  • MB: Doing facilitation crash courses
    • +1 sharing the sum of our knowledge! NH
  • MB: Good conversations within the team when discussing adding new TPG’ers  GG [1]
  • MB: Pairing in general, especially on offsites
  • MB: ...on truckin’ when things like Collab Jam get hairy or vent-worthy
  • MB: Flexibility of meetings (cancelling or repurposing) when holidays and other events conflict
  • AR: Cowolfing

• • KS: Having email threads like the one on empathy
  • KS: Experimenting with new things (and having retros on them)
  • KS: Publishing notes on wiki when possible (rather than keeping them locked in gdocs) KL [1]
  • NH: Heartwarming discussions (empathy thread)
  • NH: Posting to TPG public mailing list  GG NH KS AR [4]
  • NH: Phab innovation
  • NH: Calendaring innovation
  • KL: Wolves helping wolves (collab jam, etc.)
  • GG: Talking about Phab….
  • GG: Pairing in interview-ish conversations
  • GG: Introducing more parts of the org to retrospecting- GG facilitated all or parts of retrospectives outside of a single product/tech team KL: org dev prezzos KL [1]

Stop

• GG: Sharing more than (up to) 3 main priorities in standup

Start

• MB: Figuring out a way to get feedback from TPG more quickly, on things such as TPG Engagement Tracking. Going way back, TPG has often taken a long time to get consensus on issues because of the way meetings are spread out, the delicate balance between #toomanymeetings and #consensusbuilding, etc, among other obstacles. MB KL GG ARKS [5]
• MB: Tracking more tasks? Or doing more work? Backlog and This-Week are suspiciously light. Why? MBKS [2]
  • Core issue perhaps being that TPG is as busy as ever but I can’t see what people are working on.
• KS: Find a way to track (or even share) appreciations in the moment, rather than weekly ARNH KS MB GG [5]

• NH: Promoting TPG brand (more) KLMBARNH [4]
• GG: Following purge guidelines for Tea Time topics. Surfacing dearth of topics might get us to breathe new life into Tea Time or question its value in its current form
• GG: Considering where a survey might be a more effective tool for gathering feedback than a retro
• GG: Review TPG mediawiki site for relevance of content  KS KLAR GG [4]

More conversation

• KS: Find a way to track (or even share) appreciations in the moment, rather than weekly ARNH KS MB GG [5]
  • IRC appreciation channel?
    • Enough channels for now
  • Namely (but is very public)
  • How to do a remote version of a physical in-person kudos box?
  • Google keep?
    • Advantages of keep over gdoc/gsheet?
  • KS: I think I’ll set up a daily reminder but make it fire at a “random” different time each day (to make it harder to ignore)
• MB: Figuring out a way to get feedback from TPG more quickly, on things such as TPG Engagement Tracking. Going way back, TPG has often taken a long time to get consensus on issues because of the way meetings are spread out, the delicate balance between #toomanymeetings and #consensusbuilding, etc, among other obstacles. MB KL GG ARKS [5]
  • Consider being bold; announcing “I’ll do X unless someone objects”
  • Consider reserving consensus for high-stakes decisions
  • When making a request, frame clearly what and when you are hoping to get
• NH: Promoting TPG brand (more) KLMBARNH [4]
  • ACTION! More conversation- NH to make a Tea Time topic
• GG:  Reviewing TPG mediawiki site for relevance of content   from our public wiki KS KLAR GG [4]

• NH: Posting to TPG public mailing list  GG NH KS AR [4]