Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
Derby, Esther and Diana Larsen
The Pragmatic Bookshelf, Raleigh, NC, 2006
One of the key events of an agile development process is the retrospective. This is the point at the end of a sprint or an iteration where the team looks back and what went well and what didn't go so great and decide what to do to make things better.
The first chapters explain the purpose of a retrospective, how to plan them and how to lead them. The authors do this by suggesting the following structure to a retrospective.
1. Set the Stage - get the group ready to talk.
2. Gather Data - discuss milestones and events
3. Generate Insights - talk about what happened. Sometimes the same event is viewed differently by different parties.
4. Decide What to Do - Based on the insights make some choices.
5. Close the Retrospective - Important for ensure energy doesn't dribble away. Decide how to document the experience and follow up.
The majority of the book presents specific activities to gather and process data during the retrospectives. There are several long and short activities for each stage.
I have found this book very useful in planning retrospectives.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Meeting Notes
One of the skills I found I was lacking after I became a product manager was maintaining and running a meeting. Unfortunately, this was not clear to me until after burning through a lot of good will.
To remedy that I decided to join Toastmasters, an organization where the members self organize to fulfill different roles in weekly meetings designed to improve the members' communication and leadership skills.
After three meetings, here are some things I learned or gleaned from others' activity.
1) If a meeting is important, touch base with the key players several days in advice to make sure the agenda is understood. If the meeting is not important, re-examine why you are meeting. Perhaps different parties have different needs. Coming to agreement about what the purpose of the meeting will help keep things on track.
2) Respect the time. Going over is disrespectful not only to the people in the meeting, but to the others that are waiting for the members of your meeting. Few people enjoy meetings, so ending on time after a productive session is appreciated by everyone.
3) Take notes. If there are action items, keep track of who is to do what. Follow up on those action items later in the day or week to make sure there were not any mis-communications.
If you get butterflies before talking in front of groups of 10, 20 or 200, here are 10 Tips for Public Speaking.
To remedy that I decided to join Toastmasters, an organization where the members self organize to fulfill different roles in weekly meetings designed to improve the members' communication and leadership skills.
After three meetings, here are some things I learned or gleaned from others' activity.
1) If a meeting is important, touch base with the key players several days in advice to make sure the agenda is understood. If the meeting is not important, re-examine why you are meeting. Perhaps different parties have different needs. Coming to agreement about what the purpose of the meeting will help keep things on track.
2) Respect the time. Going over is disrespectful not only to the people in the meeting, but to the others that are waiting for the members of your meeting. Few people enjoy meetings, so ending on time after a productive session is appreciated by everyone.
3) Take notes. If there are action items, keep track of who is to do what. Follow up on those action items later in the day or week to make sure there were not any mis-communications.
If you get butterflies before talking in front of groups of 10, 20 or 200, here are 10 Tips for Public Speaking.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Three C's
This is one of my guiding principles for work
Everything you do should serve one or more of the following groups
1) The company
2) The clients
3) The co-workers
1) The company
Generally, this means the work should serve to keep revenue coming in. After all, if the company doesn't make money, we don't get paid.
Make stuff that people will buy.
2) The clients
Generally, this means the work should serve the needs of the clients in the market.
If we were in the hotel business, that would mean making sure the guest enjoyed their stay.
If we were in the software business, that would mean creating cool things that allow them to work more efficiently or have more fun playing a game, etc.
Make stuff that people will use.
3) The co-workers
Generally, this means the work shouldn't make life more difficult for others to carry out their job.
Make stuff that can be supported.
Here is an example where these needs were a little at odds with each other when I was working at a hotel.
One of the guests was celebrating their anniversary and wanted their bedroom to be very romantic so he talked to the concierge and arranged to have rose petals strewn about the bed. He gave the concierge money for the flowers and a nice tip to get it all arranged while they were sightseeing. They come back after a nice dinner and its wonderful. They check out, pay their bill and everything hunky dory, right?
Well, an hour or two later, we get a call from housekeeping because rose petals are extremely difficult to pick up. You can't vacuum them and sweeping them is almost as frustrating. Because of the petals' concave form, they just stick to the floor.
You might think, so they just have to clean it up and move on. Well, each housekeeper gets a list of rooms they have to "turn,"
Depending on the property, about 30 minutes is allocated for each room, so for an eight hour shift, that's about 14 rooms, allowing for a 30 minute lunch and two 15 min. breaks. So when you get near to the end of your commitment and suddenly you find out that you got more than you bargained for, its a little frustrating.
I think this situation can sometimes be encountered with software programming. I won't bother you with such a detailed example, but it is like agreeing to do a small enhancement that turns out to take much more effort than first expected.
The key in both cases, is to do a once over at the beginning to make sure there are no surprises, but to also allow some breathing room for emergencies or unexpected changes.
Everything you do should serve one or more of the following groups
1) The company
2) The clients
3) The co-workers
1) The company
Generally, this means the work should serve to keep revenue coming in. After all, if the company doesn't make money, we don't get paid.
Make stuff that people will buy.
2) The clients
Generally, this means the work should serve the needs of the clients in the market.
If we were in the hotel business, that would mean making sure the guest enjoyed their stay.
If we were in the software business, that would mean creating cool things that allow them to work more efficiently or have more fun playing a game, etc.
Make stuff that people will use.
3) The co-workers
Generally, this means the work shouldn't make life more difficult for others to carry out their job.
Make stuff that can be supported.
Here is an example where these needs were a little at odds with each other when I was working at a hotel.
One of the guests was celebrating their anniversary and wanted their bedroom to be very romantic so he talked to the concierge and arranged to have rose petals strewn about the bed. He gave the concierge money for the flowers and a nice tip to get it all arranged while they were sightseeing. They come back after a nice dinner and its wonderful. They check out, pay their bill and everything hunky dory, right?
Well, an hour or two later, we get a call from housekeeping because rose petals are extremely difficult to pick up. You can't vacuum them and sweeping them is almost as frustrating. Because of the petals' concave form, they just stick to the floor.
You might think, so they just have to clean it up and move on. Well, each housekeeper gets a list of rooms they have to "turn,"
Depending on the property, about 30 minutes is allocated for each room, so for an eight hour shift, that's about 14 rooms, allowing for a 30 minute lunch and two 15 min. breaks. So when you get near to the end of your commitment and suddenly you find out that you got more than you bargained for, its a little frustrating.
I think this situation can sometimes be encountered with software programming. I won't bother you with such a detailed example, but it is like agreeing to do a small enhancement that turns out to take much more effort than first expected.
The key in both cases, is to do a once over at the beginning to make sure there are no surprises, but to also allow some breathing room for emergencies or unexpected changes.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Your customers love you
They would love you more if you wouldn’t send so much email to them all them.
They would love you more if you sent them email that was more relevant to them.
They would love you more if you honor their request to receive no more emails.
As we know email marketing practices grew out of the direct marketing industry. Raise your hand if you have ever mailed a reply to a piece of junk mail you did not want. Most people throw it away or recycle it.
However with an email marketing message in his or her inbox, a person can reply back or click on a link and communicate with your company. They can reply with some suggestions for improvements in your product, customer inquiries. Yes, the amount of unsubscribe requests, bounce backs and non-actionable emails such as out of office auto responses and transient delivery notifications makes the task of finding those pearls a little daunting, but they are there.
With the growing popularity of sites like Yelp and review forums within e-commerce sites, your customers can communicate more effectively with you and your other customers.
Listen to your customers. They know what they want.
They would love you more if you sent them email that was more relevant to them.
They would love you more if you honor their request to receive no more emails.
As we know email marketing practices grew out of the direct marketing industry. Raise your hand if you have ever mailed a reply to a piece of junk mail you did not want. Most people throw it away or recycle it.
However with an email marketing message in his or her inbox, a person can reply back or click on a link and communicate with your company. They can reply with some suggestions for improvements in your product, customer inquiries. Yes, the amount of unsubscribe requests, bounce backs and non-actionable emails such as out of office auto responses and transient delivery notifications makes the task of finding those pearls a little daunting, but they are there.
With the growing popularity of sites like Yelp and review forums within e-commerce sites, your customers can communicate more effectively with you and your other customers.
Listen to your customers. They know what they want.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
So it begins...
Welcome to my web log.
A little self-introduction...
My name is David Johnson. I work at Yesmail in Portland, OR as a Product Manager.
I have experience in teaching and technical support so I draw upon those skills during the day as needed.
Living and visiting foreign countries also gave me a chance to build up my cross cultural communication skills, which are extremely useful in coordinating projects with different departments.
The purpose of this web log is to share some insights regarding product management, online software development and some email marketing.
If that’s your bag, baby... then come on board!
A little self-introduction...
My name is David Johnson. I work at Yesmail in Portland, OR as a Product Manager.
I have experience in teaching and technical support so I draw upon those skills during the day as needed.
Living and visiting foreign countries also gave me a chance to build up my cross cultural communication skills, which are extremely useful in coordinating projects with different departments.
The purpose of this web log is to share some insights regarding product management, online software development and some email marketing.
If that’s your bag, baby... then come on board!
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