Thanks guys!
note: I'm a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner too. I'm not just a cog doing dev work.
We run these retros every 3 weeks which is our sprint time frame. I prefer 2 week sprints. Sprints can be 1-4 weeks long.
Agile is a lot of BS but it does have a few good things. I'm pretty sure dealers have a board of cars moving across the the wall. These our like our developer tickets. You move the car across the board for sales or for service.
So after the sprint, you run this 30 minute meeting. I keep a hard timer on it. I prefer 15 minutes but people need like 10 minutes to write up thoughts and thanks so the meeting is really 20 minutes of reading each note and getting clarification on the the do betters. You are NOT trying to solve anything in this meeting. Just getting things out in the open. The follow up can be a review of what is still outstanding or an update on that when that "training" is going to happen.
Out side of these retros, I am a strong believer in daily scrum meetings (stand ups). 15 minute max. I'm serious! Nobody wants it to be longer. We have 6-7 people in our meetings and we can get done in 6 minutes sometimes. If any extend conversation is needed, I make it voluntary for others to stay or bail.
Each person answers the question: My target today is ____________ .
It's to let others know what you are working on and I'm sure corporate uses this to shame the low producers into keeping active.
I can't remember the book ... maybe it was the Master Mind by Napolean Hill or something like that which had a an example of facotry workers who wrote in chalk their output for their shift. The second shift came in an beat the prior shifts achievement.
Leader boards are nice but saying and hearing it makes it more real.
My target today is to call 5 customers from the crm, send out 3 birthday cards, and sell 1 car today.
Or
My target today is to up sell 5 customers spark plugs.
The scrum master normally runs these meetings, but it can be anybody on the team. They keep an eye on the time, shut people up who love to talk, and ask people what their target / goal for the day. 15 minutes. Some teams have a flag or something to call out the people who blabber on and on. We also call these Stand ups because people used to stand up during them. Nobody is allowed to sit. It helps to finish the meeting on time.
Anyways, just more cross over ideas that might help.
it's all about communication.
