Team Practices Group/Retrospectives/2015-10-22

Action items from last time

 * TPG members to document and share amount of time spent on Team Health Check (see bottom of Overall Results doc and Rethink meeting agenda - https://docs.google.com/document/d/162ZMqt6W4I9q0mIImsRb1VTZKhbsNEvtEuIH39tEfrw/edit [ALL]
 * Arthur will set up a meeting to talk about overwhelmingedness [DONE]
 * Arthur will explore a TPG meeting in SF in mid-Nov [DONE]

Significant events since last time

 * Discovery offsite
 * Reading Web offsite
 * Kicked off possible phabricator use cases (potential upstream change requests)
 * Discovered true nature of “Sprint-Extension” relative to upstream
 * TML: Sprint Extension is independent from upstream Phabricator and is not supported much or at all by anyone
 * 2 fixes might have WMF solutions. 3 others are still potentials for upstream
 * 4 x 90 minute Strategery meetings (+ much homework)
 * Strategic problem decided
 * Possibilities generated and narrowed
 * Cascades drafting
 * Multiple WMF initiatives around process change and design (Wes, SPDPP, Rachel, others)
 * Discovery vertical leadership changes
 * Completed VE <-> DR and VE <-> RelEng SLUs (Service Level Understandings)
 * TPG cancelled Team Health Checks for 2015Q2
 * Quarterly review
 * Phlogiston launched burnups for ~4 teams
 * Ongoing Comm Tech engagement (Kevin is helping them with retros, agile workshops, and now some kanban/scrum/sprint coaching)--relatively shallow engagement.
 * Maintenance Fraction data is trickling in slowly
 * VE Launch team and decision making changed
 * VE Launch plan changed (launch to IPs won’t happen until 2016)
 * Conversations around overwhelmingedness
 * Failed attempt at organizing last-minute IRL meeting for TPG
 * Renewed attempt to meet in December
 * SPDPP progress
 * Goal setting & goal setting redux
 * Community Engagement started doing MPL
 * Engineering updated the MPL for this quarter
 * CSAT survey

Worked well/keep doing?

 * WMF Phab admins are highly responsive and helpful
 * Level of maturity in thinking around TPG strategy process
 * Strategy process is making me think too hard← works well? (yes, in the sense that chemo that doesn’t make you sick probably isn’t working)
 * Facilitation, learning, and changing on the fly of strategy process
 * TPG meetings seem to work well (grooming, review/planning/staff, tea time, retros)
 * +1
 * Some great offsite experiences (Reading Web, Discovery)
 * Dropping THC this quarter helped a lot +1+1+1 (did I already +1?)
 * Overwhelmedness discussions were really helpful
 * Great thinking and conversations around updating quarterly goals
 * Comm Tech engagement (by Kevin) seems like high benefit for the cost
 * TPG CSAT survey; having data from it for quarterly review was huge help
 * +the support received from Edward +1+1+1

Has not worked well/stop doing?

 * Dropping THC also was one fewer window into individual team health +
 * Not sure what the THC plan is yet
 * We skipped some tea-times
 * Not a lot of [informal] TPG team-time
 * TPG retros still feel a little too infrequent -1 +
 * Kevin didn’t budget any time for post-offsite documentation (it will take ~8 hrs)
 * Still feeling a bit overwhelmed, but catching up (KS) ++
 * DS scaling back promises/tasks (this might also be a positive?)
 * Still no SOP for Epics in the TPG board ++
 * Strategy stuff is going slowly...probably by necessity, but can be frustrating ++++++
 * Strategy taking a loooot of time [hours per week] +1 +1
 * SPDPP still feels vague and distant (like a meteor heading toward us that we can’t see) +++
 * Efforts within TPG feel a bit siloed/isolated ++++
 * +1
 * 1 Riot, 1 Ranger (however, see brutal history of Texas Rangers)
 * Still feeling disconnect between management groups

Action items for next time

 * Strategy stuff is going slowly...probably by necessity, but can be frustrating ++++++
 * Strategy taking a loooot of time [hours per week] +1 +1
 * Next steps: continue these points on the timeline email thread
 * option 1: can we time-box any of these steps?
 * Could we prune more aggressively/incrementally?
 * sub-grouping
 * SPDPP still feels vague and distant (like a meteor heading toward us that we can’t see) +++
 * Next steps: Joel will write something up
 * Efforts within TPG feel a bit siloed/isolated ++++
 * +1
 * Next steps:
 * SPDPP update will help.
 * Over communicate all TPG projects (focus on FYI and tl;dr how this will impact you) [ALL]