Templates

stand-ups

• These are very different depending on team. there are daily, weekly, ones that happen in 2 parts because of timezones.
• who: usually the whole team with UX and PM

• sample template is below - here is a blank etherpad you can copy to a new one with your team name - minus the wiki formatting.

______________________

Time: Day / Time

Location: include vidyo room and remote link and phone number for relevant countries (folks always seem to need to join from phone occasionally)

2 minutes on what have you been working on, what are you planning to work on,are you blocked?, & bring up topics for longer discussion at end of stand-up between folks interested

___________________________

DATE <Team Name> Stand-up

dev name: notes on what working on, reviews needed, blocked, bug numbers help but not 100% required

dev name: can have devs fill in or someone can take notes - either work. Folks fill in if they have updates but can't make the meeting.

PM name: just delete names of folks not at meeting - and add if someone wants to talk about a topic

eng manager name:

Discussion Topics:

• Topic brought up in meeting

• Topic thought of before and put here to hold

___________________________

Previous Stand-up DATE <Team Name> Stand-up

dev name:

dev name:

PM name:

eng manager name:

Discussion Topics:

• Topic brought up in meeting

• Topic thought of before and put here to hold

retrospectives

• Goal: Teams own their process and trying new experiments to make it fit better is part of that.
  • we learn from pain, retrospectives are supportive on feedback - not blame focused but solution focused
• Frequency: can be weekly or bi-weekly.
• Invitees: anyone that is significantly engaged in the day to day - PM, UX, Dev, Architects, cross-team partners.
• Flow: For the first 5 minutes of the meeting (or pre-meeting if teams chose) - have folks independently add information to the etherpad. This encourages participation from folks that might not talk as much. Then go through comments starting at the top (folks add to if new ideas come up). Example of a running Retrospective etherpad
  • Topics should be added throughout the week as they are thought of
  • People can bring up where they are struggling and should be encouraged to in order to brainstorm (ex: someone who REALLY hates a section of code - is there a way to make it less burdensome or a trade with someone for a different area).
• Length: start with 1/2 hour suggested - though if finding useful may extend

Etherpad Template for retrospectives

________________________

Date

• Review experiments from last week:
  • something new that was tried - ex: UX presenting ideas and dev doing demos at end of ___ meeting.

• Any proposed experiments:

• What did we do well?

• What have we learned?

• What can we do better?

• What puzzles us?

cross-team

Goal: With teams that there is heavy interdependence with, this time is to make sure we are on the same page. Frequency: weekly or bi-weekly, depending on frequency of interaction needed. Invitees: depends on who interacts from the teams - good to have the doers and managers. Length: 1/2 hour, but usually aim for starting on time and getting off. If there aren't any agenda items - cancel the meeting before it happens. Etherpad Template for crossteam meetings We meet in _________ vidyo room. Here is the remote access information <room url, telephone number for different areas>

Please add agenda items (if there are any) an hour before the meeting or we may cancel the meeting for that day. Thanks. Even if it's a simple "we need an update on deployment" - that is a fine topic to have a quick meeting on.

postmortems

• Goal: Step back and look at the whole project and what could have been improved. Be sure to include the good along with the areas of improvements.
• Frequency: These don't need to be after every release, but should be every quarter.
• Invitees: anyone that was interacted with significantly over the time period you are looking to review. (UX, QA, Dev, PM, other teams, Marketing). Because of the breadth of invitees, schedule 3-4 weeks out to get a good time. Create the etherpad in advance for folks to pre-populate or at least see the questions in advance.

Etherpad Template for postmortems

• Key Accomplishments
  • What went right?
  • What worked well?
  • What was found to be particularly useful?
  • Project highlight
    • • Lean from the Trenches (spotify videos)

• Key Problem Areas [List problem areas experienced throughout the project. Be specific.]
  • What went wrong?
  • What project processes didn’t work well?
  • What specific processes caused problems?
  • What were the effects of key problems areas (i.e. resources, schedule, coordination, timing, etc.)?
  • Technical challenges

• Risk Management [List project risks that have been mitigated and those that are still outstanding and need to be managed.]
  • Project risks that have been mitigated:
  • Outstanding project risks that need to be managed:
• Next steps: