Team Practices Group/Retrospectives/2015-07-22

TPG Retrospective 2015-07-22

Previous retrospective was 2015-07-01 (3 wks ago)

=Review status of previous action items=


 * Feel like we don't have time to talk about TPG stuff
 * Action: Kevin to enter into backlog (DONE)
 * Further action postponed by wikimania, but ideas have been kicked around, and will be implemented "soon"
 * No further group action required
 * Epics v Goals v Quarterly planning
 * Action: Joel & Max enter item in Phab to collect user requirements
 * Carry over
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T105243
 * 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
 * David has added many tasks and is in progress.
 * 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
 * no further retro action planned

=What has happened since last Retro (2015-07-01)=
 * Wikimania!
 * Hackathon different than what Kevin anticipated
 * not small teams focused on specific projects
 * indivs working on their own
 * unfocussed
 * cool stuff showed off in showcase
 * less of a party and more of a conference
 * good talks
 * social events were poorly coordinated
 * going to Wikimania could generate work for TPG
 * our proposed talks were rejected
 * THCs started crankin'
 * observed different levels of engagement at different teams
 * Google Docs are getting less interaction than etherpads (2 of 3 THCs observed)
 * so many chat channels, lots of uncoordinated chatting
 * wide disparity of sharing / Diversity of sharing levels between participants
 * Should we do a retro of the THC? (I think we will)
 * we will :)
 * No signs that we need a mid-THC course correction
 * Quarterly Review
 * Infrastructure was enlightening
 * Managers appreciate the new streamlined format
 * the Advancement review had interesting notes about goals. (80% of goals is a good target to hit--goals that push you are good). The expectation is not clear or well distributed.
 * (Potentially) Interesting Team Work
 * Backlog Analysis: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vGDe0FYb2e0B1FZIoAWaOSElxmd1dwt1py9_qpPCjC4/edit#slide=id.p
 * Phragile development
 * David starting to coalesce Phabricator needs/pain points
 * I AM AN AGILE COACH (ALL CAPS!!)
 * We started doing Tea Time
 * Struggling to find the groove
 * conflict with Wikimania and other schedule issues
 * Performance reviews, comp adjustments
 * Promotion email fatigue
 * "Cool and valuable experience"
 * Managers seemed to handle it well
 * Sync up with Andre
 * TODO: schedule a second Andre chat

=Not so goods=
 * no room scheduled for this meeting today
 * Phab+
 * Phabricator is really not user friendly
 * Phabricator lacks documentation... period
 * Phragile continues to be a frustrating project (responsible but no authority)+
 * still waiting to find out if we have any money/leverage to get changes+
 * Grace working with Joel less
 * Not everyone has offline IRC buffering++
 * TODO: Joel to invite Kristen to IRCCloud (and we should confirm that IRC scrollback/attention is an SOP/expectation for TPG)
 * Tea Time++
 * tea time- would prefer agenda ahead of time and could it be optional attendance?
 * tea time on Fri- only day I usually take off
 * people late for Andre tea time meeting
 * Discussion: should tea time have an agenda, or is this antithetical to the spirit of tea time?
 * having an agenda might make it more appealing that discussing ad-hoc topics
 * having an agenda could make clearer what it is
 * Still stuck a little bit in deep conceptual issues about work planning and tracking+
 * David is unsure where to find conversation. Lots of information in multiple channels +++
 * overlapping discussions and overlapping Venn circles of who and different technologies (email, IRC, flow, talk page)
 * Not clear where the tip of the conversation is
 * Kristen: don't have a problem with this, not sure why
 * Kevin: org-wide problem; can't imagine a total solution
 * root causes?
 * tools are problematic
 * team hasn't fully gelled in habits/shared assumptions
 * maybe we don't fully understand what our team is actually doing (as a team). what is our mandate, what is our balance of priorities?
 * ambiguity in our Vision -> Mission -> strategy -> tactics?
 * not at Vision level, but below that
 * balance of individual team members working with teams / areas of interest vs TPG function as a whole team
 * TPG people helping other TPGers as "peer review" on each other's specific areas
 * TPG people doing TPG-level work
 * coming up with best practices for WMF and disseminating them
 * TPG-focused work (THCs, what else?)
 * open questions at the vision/mission/strategy level
 * when (if ever) should TPG speak as a single voice?
 * best practices for speaking authoritatively
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA3dzBrXYtc
 * one consequence: feeling unproductive, divorced from "real work"
 * Scope creep on RelEng task writeup++
 * THC scheduling - much rescheduling, next week is THC ClusterF$*k
 * Wikimania/vacation drag+
 * VE wants out of Scrum of Scrums, doesn't find it usefulhaha, Reading team just asked for more VE presence at SoS Haha! Ed showed up today just to listen in++
 * TODO: Joel and Grace to follow up. Kristen can provide examples of inter-team communications that reading things would have gone better.
 * Ops dependencies are still slowing Discovery (although it seems better than in the past)
 * Arthur jetlagged and distracted

=Goods=
 * We have significantly improved the phabricator search and dashboard documentation
 * Intra-TPG collab:+
 * Kevin in Mex with Grace, muchas gracias!
 * Grace working with Kristen more
 * Grace chatting with David more- proximity FTW!
 * Making headway on Reading strategy process+
 * Turned the corner on Burnup charting tools and am now fairly productive at doing new kinds of analysis
 * Moved from Master -> Coach
 * THC guidelines seem to be working+
 * 2 x TPGERS in vertical (KL/Max)++
 * "having two TPG people assigned to teams in the same vertical (Reading) has provided some benefits"
 * Editing team was able to push back on Lila's Wikimania demo request+

="Interesting"=
 * Some teams are moving Scrum->Kanban, but Discovery is moving Kanban->Scrum <- Kanbum?+

=retro retro notes=
 * we could try digging into good/not-so-good while doing the "what happened since" list
 * Variability from retro to retro is arguably a good thing--keeps things fresh
 * is there a way to spend less time on (uncontroversial) information sharing and more on identifying gaps and conflicts?