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Running Excellent Retrospectives

Courtney Eckhardt

@hashoctothorpe (she/her)

Heroku, a Salesforce.com company

Lex Neva (he/him)

Talking for Humans

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Goals of this Tutorial

learn how to:

run a retrospective
create a good emotional space for a retrospective

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SAFE SPACE

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Schedule

11:00-11:15: Introduction to Facilitation

11:15-12:15: Skill session: Facilitation

12:15-12:30: Questions

12:30: Lunch

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tell me about you

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you have three jobs

facilitation
running a productive meeting
not screwing things up by making bad jokes

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environment

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/landscape-mountains-nature-clouds-1029/

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perceptual learning

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job 1:

facilitation

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tulista_-_Haworthia_minima_in_cultivation_2.jpg

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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/dog-labrador-black-and-white-sad-1126025/

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"you"

yeah, you! I'm talking to you! don't you just walk away!!

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"why"

why did you do that? why did you do it LIKE that?

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other things not to say to people

always
never
every time
should
just
only

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“why didn’t you just fix it the last time this happened?”

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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/maze-labyrinth-glendurgan-garden-511153/

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better things to say

how
what
what if
could we
what do you think about
what would you have wanted to know

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Miller's Law

"In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of"

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"the sky is green"

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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/aurora-borealis-night-818716/

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people don't do things for no reason

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let’s talk disasters

who doesn’t like a good disaster?

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Image credit: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR520Bridge/Photos/Damage.htm

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things are more likely to break when you are messing with them

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no one does things they think will blow up the world

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complex failures

“The loads that created significant leakage were the combined effects of all accumulations of water, including rain after the wind storm, longitudinal flow on the surface of the bridge, and pumping through Nov. 24, 1990. These loads caused static moments [...] that exceeded the threshold for leakage. [E]xisting cracks were open[ed] sufficiently to allow water to leak into the pontoon. Progressive and accelerating sinking began at this time.”

Dusenberry, D., Zarghamee, M., Liepins, A., Luft, R., and Kan, F. (1995). ”Failure of Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge, Seattle, Washington.” J. Perform. Constr. Facil., 9(1), 4–23.

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this was almost a good retrospective

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Conway’s Law

organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations --Melvin Conway, in 1968

http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html

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let's talk about running a meeting

aka "job 2"

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select a notetaker

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stay on time and on topic

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active listening

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tell your neighbor what you're doing at work that interests you

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who's talking? who isn't?

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let's talk about humor

job 3: not screwing this part up

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anything that makes anyone in the room feel even a little bit uncomfortable, even if they don't really notice or aren't willing to tell you

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some bad jokes

anything your parents say when they're mad or they think you haven't come home recently enough
anything you say back to them
anything a manager or other employee ever said to you that made you feel bad
anything you ever said to a coworker that made them laugh uncomfortably or wince
jokes about getting fired or firing people
politics
religion
current events

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things I shouldn't have to mention

race
gender
sexuality
fat jokes
jokes about disabilities
"crazy"
jokes about any one person or their decisions or their wisdom or their plans or their face

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you can probably make jokes about

murphy's law
entropy
the general terribleness of computers
the terribleness of getting paged
being utterly serious about silly things ("Las Vegas, colloquially known as "fabulous"")
MAYBE you can joke WITH a person about something they are proud of about themselves

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but Courtney, if I can't make jokes, how can I lighten the mood?

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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/danger-cliff-edge-sign-warning-851895/

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if you mess up

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you don't have to be witty

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“why didn’t you just fix it the last time this happened”

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"please don't make jokes like that in a retrospective"

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This is all you have to say if someone makes a bad joke.

during the retro is NOT the time to try to have a teachable moment or stage an intervention; you don't need to convince anyone of anything, you just need them to stop as quickly as possible so the group can move on

If their joke is something like "I fat-fingered it", where they are blaming themselves, you can say gently say "retrospectives are blameless, and that includes not blaming ourselves" or you can just ask they not make a joke like that in a retro.

Once you've gotten them to stop and the group has moved on, do NOT bring it up outside the retro! as far as you are concerned, the issue is addressed and done. If they come to you and ask why it was inappropriate, you can explain if you feel like you want to, or just reiterate that it's inappropriate for a retro.

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practice interrupting

@hashoctothorpe

as a facilitator, you'll need to learn how to interrupt individuals for the good of the group and the meeting

it's necessary when people start to rant, complain, blame, or get off topic

this can be super uncomfortable!

remind yourself that you can't achieve the goals of the retro if this goes unchecked

the best way to practice is to think about a time you experienced when someone needed to be interrupted and they weren't. Remember how unpleasant and frustrating the result was! Then imagine yourself saying "thanks, Lex, but we're really far afield and we need to come back to the point"

or "everyone working this incident did the best they could, and we're here to figure out what we need to know to help things go better next time"

or even "wait a minute please" to give yourself time to think

Do this gently but firmly- the person you are interrupting will probably even feel good about it in the end

billing incident story

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let's go make bigger, more interesting mistakes

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Thanks from Courtney:

Suzette Haden Elgin, for teaching me about language

Kathy Sierra, for teaching me about learning

John Allspaw, for teaching me about the pitfalls of "why"

And all of these people for helping me learn how to teach:

The Ally Skills Training, developed by the Ada Initiative and offered by Frame Shift Consulting

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Franklin Habit

Marc Mancuso

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Questions?

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Thanks for listening <3

Courtney Eckhardt @hashoctothorpe

Lex Neva