Improvements or complains – choose one

Sprint retrospective meeting is a time when all team members can share what they are happy about, what bothers them, what is worth being taken a deeper look at and what can be or already is problematic. It is a really good idea to practice doing those meetings even if you are not doing Scrum and have no Sprints at all.
You just have to agree for some period of time after which meeting will be provided.

Sprint retrospectives give you a possibility to blurt out everything what’s on your mind. Dedicated time makes it comfortable. You are not looking at your computer. You are not in a rush because of “another meeting is in five minutes”. It’s scheduled, it’s planned and this is time for your Team.

Yeah, not completely. And to be honest, when you are starting to think about those meetings in this way in the same moment you are starting to do malfunction retrospectives. Why is that?

the one who always helps…

There are people in your team, project, around you, who are recognized. They know a lot, they are doing a lot, they are always here whenever there is something to do, a problem to solve, need for help. Everyone knows how good, passionate and motivated they are. They are eager, they will do everything what they can to commit what they promised.
It’s good to have a such person in your team. Especially if the person is a team player with passion that can affect others. People will invest in themselves to reach such level, with the attitude such person will motivate them to grow.
However, there is also another side of the coin and as a leader you should remember about it.

Take one thing at a time

A while back I wrote that if you want to make improvements or fix something, you should start with the easiest thing, because it allows you to gain team's trust and increase confidence of team members. It will also prove them that it's OK to try and, in some cases, to fail.
Thanks to this you increase your and your team members’ chances to succeed with more complex and problematic issues in the future.

But there’s more things which can help you to achieve a success and increase quality of communication.

Do you have a time for thinking?

Some time ago one of friend of mine told me that he have a problem with people who doesn't want to take any responsibility. He told me that he continuously encourages them to share their opinions, make comments and even argue with him, but somehow he still fails.
We had a short, but constructive conversation this day. We formulate a few questions which would be helpful with finding a solution and we decide to get back to this topic in next week.

Unfortunately we had to reschedule it and we met again after two weeks.
I was prepared very well to the conversation and I eagerly waiting for what my friend will share with me.
It was pretty unexpected when I heard that he have had no time to thing about our questions.

I know that nowadays it's not so easy to find a free time which can be intended for thinking, but if we would think about solutions for our own problems is rather like an investment, not a waste of precious time.

It's worth to remember that is cheaper to prevent than react.

Daily (after stand-up) presentations

In my team we are always trying something new, we like to experiment with new ideas, we looking for new ways of learning something which is worth to be learned.
After one of our's retrospection we decided to do a presentations, at least once a week. We had presentations before, but we wanted to start with someting that would be organized in better way, would be regular.
We knew that each of us reads a lot, tries many new things on daily basis and it would be great to spread this knowledge and share it with teammates. We created even a list with our propositions of subjects for those presentations.

That was good idea and we were so eager to do so... but...

After a few weeks it turns out that not so much presentations were done. We had ideas (many of them was already listed), we had knowledge (each of us already knew something about some of the subjects on the list), but in most times, we couldn't convert our knowledge into a few slides of presentation. It was just too... hard? I believe, not, it was just too time consuming.
Yeah, what can I say, we are lazy, we like to learn, but to teach is a different story, if you want to teach you need to be prepared, it requires additional work on something that you already know. That leads to simple conclusion - if I can spend my time to learn something new or on creating presentation about something that I already know, choice is easy and obvious for most of us.

That's why our "presentations plan" died... but not completely.
We talked about the idea almost on each retrospection and many times on daily meetings. On the other hand, we shared a links with each other, we had short conversations in pairs or in bigger groups.
When I noticed all those facts I started to merge them into an one idea - daily (after stand up) presentations.

What it's all about?
After our stand-up meetings we started to do a short (not longer than 10 minutes) presentations. It can be anything, summary of a great article, short introduction to a new idea or tool, it just must be short and interesting.
We agreed that no presentation (I mean document or something similar) is required. Just whiteboard, presenter and all interested people.

Whether it is revealing? I think, not, but I believe that organizing somehow our short and random discussions (with various number of participators) improved spreading a knowledge. Removing necessary of creating a real presentation (documents) decreased our laziness and we are more likely to doing such a presentations even once a day (or even more if it won't take more than 10).

I believe that most of us want to learn, want to develop their skills almost all the time. Why don't try to do it together? It will be more efficient and you will increase a chance to learn something that you could even didn't know it exists.

make evolution, not revolution

I love changes and improvements, I always looking for new ways of doing thing faster, better, in more efficient way.

I know that would sound like a cliche, but if you're not going forward, you are going backward. It doesn't matter about what we are talking, is it job, learning, personal life, relationships or hobbies - we just need to get better. To be honest, I think it's natural and this is the way how human beings works - we get excited whenever we can try or learn something new, it's like journey to the unknown land. Who cares how many people already been there, know this and saw everything. Right now it's your turn.