I’ve done these or seen others do these below. What are things you’ve done and how has it been useful? How big is your team?
Weekly leads meeting (at a product team level): product, design, and engineering leads meet to discuss top priorities that week, such as sprint, roadmap, teaming/culture.
Async end of week progress updates (multi team): each team lead posts key accomplishments, risks, next steps in a wiki at end of week for entire company/team to read.
Post-sprint PR-release style shareout: a fun, easy to read breakdown of what was launched with graphics/screenshots so the full company knows what was launched.
Monthly or quarterly team demos: larger audience demo for entire company vs stakeholder/team sprint demos. A chance to show and tell for a broader audience.
I try to send a short positive message to my team through chat when I wrap up my week, on Friday afternoon. I attempt to thank and spotlight people that went that extra mile that week. I hope that my team members feel their efforts don’t go unnoticed and feel seen.
Team on Team meetings (For instance Growth meets with Core Experience once a month)
No agenda other than:
“Tell each other what we are up to”
There’s a huge difference between “do you guys need anything from us ?” vs. “We tell you what we do and you tell us whether you can support or are interested”
30 minutes. The entire team in a big mosh pit. Unstructured and great, gives you more alignment than any written feedback.
I just wanted to let you know that I am very proud of you as a team. I think I spoke to almost all of you this week and you never seize to amaze me with what you are able to deliver. People might call us project [insert funny name that suggests we are too slow] because they don’t have [feature] yet. But don’t let that discourage you: I see all the efforts that go into the little incremental improvements you guys bring every single day. I hope I can wow you in return by bring a very scoped down plan for the coming period to you.
I don’t know whether my response fits this inquiry however I think having an entire discussion with the group on scrum approach rather than simply beginning to work involved. I chipped away at an organization where we were left with practically no PM for quite a long time, and the CEO/Director would then lead the gatherings, we had a cycle investigator who might do the assignments the board and effect examination. He took some time off and I did the examination work. At the point when he returned, we both would then play out the examination, him being even more a customer situated examiner and I would deal with the group given the prerequisites. Nonetheless, I would in any case fo the dev work. So we got a PM, Project Manager , Product Manager style and she would need to begin meeting in a casual manner and I had the inclination that that gathering was excessive, notwithstanding having questions that she would respond to in those gatherings, I generally had an inclination that the gatherings were hurting the work process. I didn’t have a proper foundation on scrum and that hurt our correspondence since I thought I just needed to convey the item. Presently I know the system and I lament those occasions since I wouldn’t pay attention to my PM since I was exceptionally difficult reasoning just specialized abilities made a difference (that was even an exhortation I got from another dev) and perhaps that is the reason I got terminated at that point. At the point when I functioned as a Business investigator I could see that occurrence, as I would set home bases and the devs would say that was superfluous work, yet I really worked a ton by perusing every one of the agreements, setting organizations rules and getting what partners required, planning cycles and stuff. Assuming I consider previous experience I would have that discussion and clarify what a PO, PM does and why it’s fundamental for the group.
I think that’s great feedback – PM/PO is done differently everywhere as well as how scrum teams are run, so a norming session on how we should run things is key to drive alignment and clear expectations.
And thanks for sharing your story and background. I think we’ve all been there on stubbornness before so good news is you’ve learned and now you’re helping others!
At the end of every session I lead, I ask if the meeting was helpful, and for one or two people to summarize what was gained from the meeting. Almost a mini five minute retrospective for everyone, and then ask for anything I can do differently to help make the meetings we have more tolerable, focus driven, etc. Basically, rather than waiting for some arbitrary retrospective, I’m building in feedback mechanisms to build psychological safety continuously, so that when we get to big retrospectives, I have a good library of feedback already, AND I have established a baseline for folks to be open and candid in sharing already.
We have 3 teams working on the same product, every morning before standups we get together and do a daily trivia quiz from the local news site. It’s a multiple choice quiz, if there’s any doubt on the answers it goes to a vote. It’s a fun team building exercise because you get to learn about peoples area of interest or expertise. And after that we do a quick “cross-team sharesies”.