13.2 Team Retrospectives
Retrospective Summary and Discussion
- Retrospective Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nEkM_7Dj4bT21GJy0Ut3By76FZqCfLBmFQNVThmW2TY/edit#
- Team Retrospective Issue (13.2): #8418 (closed)
- Retrospective Summary Video (13.2): https://youtu.be/XdENBhVOSiw
- Retrospective Discussion Video (13.2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP9E7RbNSPw
Discussion Topics:
- What are your biggest challenges when it comes to cross-team collaboration (frontend and backend teams or across different groups/stages)? What things can we do to ensure better cross-team collaboration?
- Have you noticed your team working more synchronously? If so, why? What are the best actions we can take to ensure we work more async?
Please add your answers to the discussion document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nEkM_7Dj4bT21GJy0Ut3By76FZqCfLBmFQNVThmW2TY/edit#
New format
Based on feedback from the last retrospective, in 13.2, we'll be experimenting with a new format for our team retrospective.
Our main goals with this new format are:
- We want to keep the highlights / updates as they're useful for knowledge sharing.
- We want to make efficient use of everyone's time so that we're not reading verbatim.
- We want to encourage more discussion on the call.
- We want to ensure we're focusing on action items (improvement tasks).
Here's what the new format will look like:
- We'll be breaking the retrospective into two parts: Summary and Discussion.
- Summary: The summary will be a short video pre-recorded by the meeting host covering what went well / what went wrong / what can be improved. All teams will fill out the retrospective issue and doc as normal along with parts they'd like to highlight. A couple of days before the retrospective meeting, the meeting host will pre-record a presentation of all the highlights. This presentation video will be sent out before the retrospective meeting.
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Discussion: The discussion will be a 25 minute meeting which we aim to make more interactive. We'll be focusing on action items (improvement tasks) and discussion topics. For each retrospective, the meeting host will choose two discussion topics for the group to discuss. These topics are likely to stem from the retrospective summary and the host will try to choose topics that the majority of the group will find useful. The agenda of the meeting will be:
- Previous retrospective improvement tasks (5 minutes)
- Discussion topics (14 minutes, 2 topics at 7 minutes each)
- Improvements to track for next release (5 minutes)
- Wrap up (1 minute)
Timeline
- 24th: Meeting host opens the development retrospective issue.
- 24th - 31st: Engineering Managers complete the retrospective issue and add their notes and highlights to the Retrospective Summary section and Improvement Task sections in the retrospective document
- 31st: Meeting host closes the development retrospective issue.
- 4th: Meeting host records a short video presentation of the Retrospective Summary. The meeting host announces the video in #whats-happening-at-gitlab slack channel including the retrospective discussion topics.
- 6th: Retrospective Discussion meeting is held.
Steps for engineering managers on each team to do before the engineering-wide retrospective
- Please have a retrospective with your team following the guidelines outlined in the handbook.
- After the retrospective is complete, please choose a subset some of your most interesting learnings to share company-wide in the retro doc. Please try to group by topic rather than by team, as suggested in #3416 (closed).
- In this document, if the item would be of interest to a number of teams in engineering, please indicate that it should be highlighted by adding the text highlight at the beginning of the text. The meeting host will highlight this item when they create the pre-recorded retrospective summary presentation video.
- For items which have didn't go well, create an issue to address. In the case where a manager feels an issue can/should not be created, please include that in the what went wrong section.
- If there are action items in the document for your team from the previous retrospective please provide an update on them in the document. They will be verbalized during the meeting.
- Add a checkbox in the table below when your retrospective is done and when the document is updated.
Please do all of these steps at least one day before the engineering-wide retrospective.
Steps for engineering managers during the engineering-wide discussion retrospective Zoom session
- Read through the discussion topics in the retro doc and add any input. The discussion topics will be announced once the pre-recorded retrospective summary video is sent out.
- Be prepared to verbalize any improvement tasks for your team or discussion input. Note that the meeting organizer may add additional items to verbalize, so please review the document in advance of the meeting for any additions for your team.
- If you can't make the meeting and there is an item for you to verbalize, please ask someone else on your team to attend to do so.
cc: @fseifoddini @kencjohnston @jyavorska @david @ebrinkman @joshlambert @hilaqu
Edited by Jerome Z Ng