Remote teams - following up on retrospectives

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Bonnie Aumann

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Jun 25, 2021, 1:25:34 PM6/25/21
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Hey all, 

For folks who have found working remote pleasant, I have a puzzle. There are several teams I'm working with that have trouble following up on action items from retrospectives. From what I have observed, it is not out of lack of interest, but instead looks like a visibility problem about how work is organized. Like if there was a wall they would “see” those things. 

I'm curious if you have found something that worked to make tracking small improvements more visible in remote teams (or if there's something else you see in my example)

Concrete Example
We have a working group for our incident response process. There is a micro-retro at the end of each hour-long meeting to find small ways to improve how the group works together.

A couple weeks ago they set out to improve these 3 things
1. Increase the number of new attendees (by making the calendar invitation more friendly)
2. Increase the number of people in attendance period (by adding the slack reminders)
3. Reduce the friction that happens when people jumped to the wrong week of notes (by changing the color of the template)

They agreed to a 3 week experiment, collecting information each week like # of attendees and whether people still went to the wrong place in the notes. We're 2 weeks in and no notes have been taken.

Context:
 - They have 2 group meetings -- a brief standup on Monday, and an hour-long discussion / planning / working meeting on Thursday. There is a single Confluence page with all the meeting notes to make async better.
- They have a jira board for things that take >30min that does get used, e.g. producing Incident Commander training
- They have a group leader, who often facilitates the meeting
- They are willing to try things


Cheers from Boston, 

Charlie Poole

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Jun 25, 2021, 1:44:44 PM6/25/21
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It seems to me that the best way to follow up on this is through a(nother) retrospective! Perhaps it should be stand-alone, dealing only with the questions: "You decided to do X but it didn't happen... what can you do about his right now? In the future?"

This suggestion comes from a particular bias / belief of mine... that the best coaching/facilitation/helping is that which does the least. It may not be a commercially viable approach. :-)

Charlie

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Allen Holub

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Jun 25, 2021, 1:57:39 PM6/25/21
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Hi Bonnie, I guess I’m wondering whether there was actually a concrete plan in place or if the team had just agreed that they were going to do something. Also, why three things instead of one? I’ve always had the best luck working on one thing at a time. I also wonder about the suitability of Jira for this sort of thing. Jira can easily turn into an informational black hole. It’s too easy to ignore stuff. Have you experimented around with anything more whiteboard like (e.g. Miro.com) and encouraging everybody to keep it displayed 100% of the time, maybe on a dedicated monitor?

Also, I agree with Charlie that a retro is in order, perhaps exploring why no notes were taken and how to remedy that,

-Allen

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Allen Holub  ◇  @allenholub   ◇  +1 (510) 859-3620


On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 10:25 AM Bonnie Aumann <bon...@bonniea.com> wrote:
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Yves Hanoulle

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Jun 25, 2021, 1:59:23 PM6/25/21
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I usually ask them to do the follow up during the standup. This is work just like anything else, why not use the regular team checkin to also talk about that part of the work?
That is the same both for online and offline teams

Sent from YPhone3b 

On 25 Jun 2021, at 19:44, Charlie Poole <nuni...@gmail.com> wrote:



Rob Myers

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Jun 25, 2021, 2:34:00 PM6/25/21
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So many questions and suggestions bouncing around my skull right now, Bonnie!

I guess the bottom-line is based on my observations of my clients: People won’t volunteer for “extra” work unless they are confident that they can get the “planned” stuff done, too; and that their efforts are really going to be valuable to the team.

So perhaps if they can rank retrospective experiments along with the business requests and defect repairs on the board?

(Caveat: I’ve no idea what “Incident Commander” is, so I assumed that’s a domain-specific term, and not critical to understanding your concerns.)

Hope all is well with you!

Rob



 
Rob Myers
Founder, Principal Instructor, & Coach
Twitter: @agilecoach



George Dinwiddie

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Jun 25, 2021, 2:49:09 PM6/25/21
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Bonnie,

In what ways does the team share information about other things,
particularly sharing small bits of information frequently? Do they
collaborate or coordinate their work?

- George

On 6/25/21 1:25 PM, Bonnie Aumann wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> For folks who have found working remote pleasant, I have a puzzle. There
> are several teams I'm working with that have trouble following up on
> action items from retrospectives. From what I have observed, it is not
> out of lack of interest, but instead looks like a visibility problem
> about how work is organized. Like if there was a wall they would “see”
> those things.
>
> I'm curious if you have found something that worked to make tracking
> small improvements more visible in remote teams (or if there's something
> else you see in my example)
>
> *Concrete Example*
> We have a working group for our incident response process. There is a
> micro-retro
> <https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/supercharge-your-retrospectives-with-tripe/>
> at the end of each hour-long meeting to find small ways to improve how
> the group works together.
>
> A couple weeks ago they set out to improve these 3 things
> 1. Increase the number of new attendees (by making the calendar
> invitation more friendly)
> 2. Increase the number of people in attendance period (by adding the
> slack reminders)
> 3. Reduce the friction that happens when people jumped to the wrong week
> of notes (by changing the color of the template)
>
> They agreed to a 3 week experiment, collecting information each week
> like # of attendees and whether people still went to the wrong place in
> the notes. We're 2 weeks in and no notes have been taken.
>
> Context:
>  - They have 2 group meetings -- a brief standup on Monday, and an
> hour-long discussion / planning / working meeting on Thursday. There is
> a single Confluence page with all the meeting notes to make async better.
> - They have a jira board for things that take >30min that does get used,
> e.g. producing Incident Commander training
> - They have a group leader, who often facilitates the meeting
> - They are willing to try things
>
>
> Cheers from Boston,
>
> Bonnie
>
> --
>
> Bonnie \\ Aumann
> https://about.me/bonniea
> <https://about.me/bonniea?promo=email_sig&utm_source=product&utm_medium=email_sig&utm_campaign=edit_panel&utm_content=plaintext>
> twitter: @bonniea <https://twitter.com/bonniea>
> https://my.pronoun.is/they <http://my.pronoun.is/they>
>
> --
>
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* George Dinwiddie * http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
Software Development http://www.idiacomputing.com
Consultant and Coach https://pragprog.com/titles/gdestimate/
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Mark Levison

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Jun 25, 2021, 3:23:33 PM6/25/21
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Bonnie - it's to see a face from the times when humans gathered together in conferences. You've already received good answers from smart people who type way faster than I, including some good questions.

I will stick to boring stuff.

I make retro improvements the first item planned for in the next Sprint Planning.
I invite the team to give the action items their own swim lane in the Sprint Backlog: https://agilepainrelief.com/blog/the-humble-sprint-backlog.html
Like Yves I asked the team about them during Daily Scrum.
I bring them up in the next retro and ask what they learned.
I get them to think of improvements as experiments etc.

Last summer I went so over board on this I wrote eBook: https://agilepainrelief.com/guide-to-effective-agile-retrospectives - its not as good as books written by other people but it sells 100% less. I don't imagine you will learn from directly, sometimes however this can be the source of outside authority team members need to nudge them into action.

Cheers
Mark


Jon Kern

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Jun 25, 2021, 8:29:03 PM6/25/21
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Are these three “actions” going to result in some awesomeness? 

Does the lack of action indicate that nobody gives a shit? Or are they are too busy doing business as usual to do any improvements?

I might add a todo: provide free popcorn and ice cream to all attendees

Would it help to establish some team norms?
  • make meetings meaningful again
  • allow “voting” with their feet by opting not to attend meetings
  • cancel meetings with no value / attendees
  • only write down actions if >= one person says they would be willing to do it, else, forget about it...
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