Team Practices Group/Retrospectives/2015-03-26

Big events since the last retro (end of Jan)

 * Hiring Kevin
 * Joel by the end of the Q
 * Continuing increased demand for the TPG
 * eg Kevin getting sucked into architecture meetings
 * MW Core team split
 * VE as a priority
 * no more 160 point stories, thanks to Grace
 * Big increase health check surveys (12?)
 * First health check to truly non-technical team (community liaisons)
 * Rolled out generalized health check survey; from 3point scale to 5 point scale
 * reformation of goal setting and prioritization process for product/engineering
 * Arthur became priority platypus
 * mushroom foraging
 * reformed our phab board - one board to two; updated our process to something of weekly sprints
 * burndown thing got fixed in phab
 * new COO and new VP of discovery
 * Grace’s 1 month SoS trial seems to have lasted… 4 months
 * Mobile web team on descending curve of megateam phenom; mobile apps on the upswing of the curve
 * Maryana leaving
 * Anasuya leaving, Gayle leaving; changes in Community dept. and Luis becoming C-level there
 * new investment by the org in community-facing functions; mobile getting a community liaison
 * Toby becoming director of product in addition to his usual duties
 * TPG scaling; we had great planning meetings for the scaling; also noting the impact this will have on the admins
 * C2A; on time, on budget
 * Kristen bought an airstream!
 * Grace is getting close to finishing bathroom remodel

What’s been working well?

 * TPG scaling; we had great planning meetings for the scaling; also noting the impact this will have on the admins
 * TPG as a team works really well
 * Getting Grace in just a bit with the VE team
 * praise from Trevor!
 * keep hearing that the TPG has a great reputation in the org
 * weekly sprint thing seems to be working really well
 * pulling together the non-eng version of the health check; having the 1-hr session with multiple minds on it, great diversity of opinion
 * Kristen did a bang-up job with megamatrix for the Q2 health check
 * Analytics engineering moving to Kanban
 * Onboarding process and on boarding buddy seemed to work well; room for improvement but overall good
 * One goal to rule them all is working well for the teams we are supporting
 * Our structure works - our team, getting embedded elsewhere
 * Warming up to Phab - “you go to war with the army you have"
 * taking THC results to the muckety mucks, and doing something with it, e.g. working with the release engineering team; emgt discussing how to better organize to reduce interteam dependencies
 * Kevin and Grace attending Quim’s meeting - ECT was stoked!

What’s been weird?

 * Figuring out how to get Grace involved with the VE team
 * Existential crisis - what team am I on???!?!
 * Balancing the meeting schedules overall - meeting overload
 * Different teams doing different processes - feels like the right thing but can we really support one another?
 * Toby being overloaded
 * Toby and Grace’s divergent priorities around VE

Not working well?

 * Kevin’s personal organization was great for the first few weeks; but right now it sucks -
 * Challenging post-all hands to balance the excitement + work with the teams + work with the TPG
 * Last few months have been insane - packed; much more than previous quarters
 * Hard to take time off; to miss any rituals for the teams we support feels disruptive. Would be nice to be able to get more support/cross-team-coverage from within the TGP
 * may require more standardization, understanding each other’s conventions
 * Lack of PM for mediawiki core group
 * Free-floating anxiety in the org around shifting culture, changes at the top. insecurities rippling through the org
 * Rumors around org changes, even in prod/eng - like the impending innovation team etc
 * Stealth insertion of VP of discovery - parachuted in

Do more of/Action items

 * Pairing on our TPG tasks
 * TPG internal exchange program: during our weekly meeting, arrange for an exchange between two people, one meeting, etc.
 * Arthur to take on campaign of sustainability with the TPG, and to bubble up the insustainability to Terry