Team Practices Group/Retrospectives/2015-07-01

TPG June Retrospective 1 July 2015

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

 * 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:

 * 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

 * 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:

 * 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):

 * 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