{"id":3479,"date":"2011-02-23T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T16:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/?p=3479"},"modified":"2012-01-24T08:15:02","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T16:15:02","slug":"wrap-up-meetings-provide-feedback-that-teams-need-to-improve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/2011\/02\/23\/wrap-up-meetings-provide-feedback-that-teams-need-to-improve\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrap-up meetings provide feedback that teams need to improve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(originally posted on <a href=\"http:\/\/tech.myemma.com\/wrapup-meetings-feedback-teams-improve\/\">tech emma<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Nobody likes admit\u00adting mis\u00adtakes. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20070515\/021134.shtml#c230\">Except this guy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Getting peo\u00adple to go to a post-mortem meet\u00ading is easy. Getting peo\u00adple to par\u00adtic\u00adi\u00adpate with\u00adout a sense of impend\u00ading doom is hard. Most peo\u00adple don\u2019t want to be there. They show up ready to fight or make excuses, with a pit in their stom\u00adach as they wait to talk about what went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>So, how do you fix that pit-in-the-stomach feeling? We\u2019ve worked on this a bit at Emma, and here\u2019s my formula:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Set high-level, achiev\u00adable goals and have meet\u00adings even when things go right.<\/li>\n<li>Focus on how every\u00adone will work together to make things bet\u00adter in the future, not what went wrong.<\/li>\n<li>Get every\u00adone to participate.<\/li>\n<li>Share with the whole com\u00adpany what the group learned.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now might be a good time to tell you that I wrote about some changes to our inter\u00adnal down\u00adtime process last week (<a title=\"Prior blog post\" href=\"http:\/\/tech.myemma.com\/better-planning-for-maintenance-window\/\" target=\"_blank\">read that post here<\/a>); today I\u2019d like to fol\u00adlow up with details about our ver\u00adsion of a post-mortem meeting.<\/p>\n<h2>Set high-level, achiev\u00adable goals and meet about success<\/h2>\n<p>A main\u00adte\u00adnance win\u00addow here is con\u00adsid\u00adered a suc\u00adcess when we make our changes, recover from any fail\u00adures with\u00adout impact\u00ading pro\u00adduc\u00adtion and end on time.<\/p>\n<p>As a group, we decided what\u2019s okay to include in the win\u00addow, and stripped out some riskier changes. Those included tasks that were hard to esti\u00admate time for, or ones that would push against the amount of time we allo\u00adcated for test\u00ading.  At this point, going into each win\u00addow, we have a clear list of tasks, and we can assess suc\u00adcess or fail\u00adure of each task after the change.<\/p>\n<p>In that first win\u00addow in January, we com\u00adpleted the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Upgraded our PostgreSQL databases<\/li>\n<li>Recovered 5% of the disk space on our largest data\u00adbase cluster<\/li>\n<li>Fixed a long-standing main\u00adte\u00adnance issue with par\u00adent tables on our largest database<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We decided to have a meet\u00ading after the win\u00addow \u2014 regard\u00adless of whether the change suc\u00adceeded or failed.<\/p>\n<h2>Talk about what went well (aka Why I decided to call these meet\u00adings \u201cwrap-ups\u201d)<\/h2>\n<p>I always hated call\u00ading these dis\u00adcus\u00adsions \u201cpost-mortems.\u201d I get why tech peo\u00adple want to com\u00adpare the process to a med\u00adical pro\u00adce\u00addure, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0451954\/\">I love a good zom\u00adbie movie<\/a>, but it sets the wrong tone. I decided to call them \u201cwrap-ups,\u201d to help make it clear that we\u2019re there to reflect on the project, not find blame.<\/p>\n<p>And here\u2019s what we try to do in each wrap-up:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Spend time talk\u00ading about how things went well, and why<\/li>\n<li>Focus on how to improve future projects<\/li>\n<li>Distill what we learned<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Documenting how the team man\u00adages main\u00adte\u00adnance win\u00addows makes the great work peo\u00adple were already doing vis\u00adi\u00adble. We also open up the meet\u00adings so non-IT folks at Emma can con\u00adtribute and make them better.<\/p>\n<h2>Conduct the dis\u00adcus\u00adsion for 100% participation<\/h2>\n<p>After a main\u00adte\u00adnance win\u00addow, we com\u00admu\u00adni\u00adcate the out\u00adcome to the rest of our col\u00adleagues. Then, I sched\u00adule a 30-minute meet\u00ading with a sim\u00adple agenda. We go over what hap\u00adpened dur\u00ading the main\u00adte\u00adnance win\u00addow to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Discuss what went right<\/li>\n<li>Discuss what went wrong<\/li>\n<li>And deter\u00admine what we could do to make things bet\u00adter next time<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In our most recent wrap-up, seven peo\u00adple attended, and I requested at least one com\u00adment from each per\u00adson on the agenda bul\u00adlet points.<\/p>\n<h2>What we learned<\/h2>\n<p>In just 30 min\u00adutes, we came up with plenty of things that the group felt good about doing well and a set of clear changes to make in the future.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the things peo\u00adple liked:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Creating a cus\u00adtom error mes\u00adsage for the main\u00adte\u00adnance window<\/li>\n<li>Having a phone bridge and using Campfire through\u00adout the win\u00addow to communicate<\/li>\n<li>Using a wiki page to orga\u00adnize tasks and each task\u2019s owner dur\u00ading the main\u00adte\u00adnance window<\/li>\n<li>Using the change win\u00addow to test out new Linux ser\u00advice scripts for the sys\u00adtem admin\u00adis\u00adtra\u00adtion team<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This was our first main\u00adte\u00adnance win\u00addow where we used both <a href=\"http:\/\/campfirenow.com\/\">Campfire<\/a> and a phone bridge at the same time for the whole team. We chose Campfire because any\u00adone new who joined could eas\u00adily see what con\u00adver\u00adsa\u00adtion had already taken place. We used the phone bridge to make it sim\u00adple to type com\u00admands and stay in touch at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>In the past, we\u2019d used email and <a href=\"bestpractical.com\/rt\/\"><span class=\"caps\">RT<\/span> tick\u00adets<\/a> to doc\u00adu\u00adment what was hap\u00adpen\u00ading in the main\u00adte\u00adnance win\u00addow. Everyone loved hav\u00ading a wiki page to ref\u00ader\u00adence and update instead. The wiki just had a bet\u00adter <span class=\"caps\">UI<\/span> than email or a ticket, and pro\u00advided a bet\u00adter experience.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the sys\u00adtems admin\u00adis\u00adtra\u00adtion team used the win\u00addow to test out new ser\u00advice start\/stop scripts for a series of cus\u00adtom appli\u00adca\u00adtions. This is the type of thing that can go un-exercised when you rarely have down\u00adtimes or main\u00adte\u00adnance win\u00addows. The team was smart to seize the opportunity!<\/p>\n<p>We also thought a few things didn\u2019t go so well:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We didn\u2019t give our cus\u00adtomers enough of a heads-up.<\/li>\n<li>Steps for the changes should have num\u00adbers, not just times asso\u00adci\u00adated with them.<\/li>\n<li>Our test\u00ading took quite a while because the change affected all the data\u00adbases at the same time, and tests only looked at one data\u00adbase at a time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There may have been other things that peo\u00adple thought we could have done bet\u00adter, but we kept the list short and action\u00adable. We\u2019ll change the process slightly in the future to inform cus\u00adtomers bet\u00adter, add num\u00adbers to all the steps and test data\u00adbases concurrently.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond this cur\u00adrent win\u00addow, I also asked every\u00adone to imag\u00adine how we might do things dif\u00adfer\u00adently or bet\u00adter dur\u00ading other downtimes.<\/p>\n<p>A few ideas included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Trying out video con\u00adfer\u00adenc\u00ading dur\u00ading the main\u00adte\u00adnance, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tokbox.com\/\">Tokbox,<\/a> to help make com\u00admu\u00adni\u00adca\u00adtion even better<\/li>\n<li>Pulling in more helpers for test\u00ading \u2014 for train\u00ading, and mak\u00ading the work\u00adload lighter for the <span class=\"caps\">QA<\/span> team<\/li>\n<li>Using Salesforce to com\u00admu\u00adni\u00adcate upcom\u00ading changes internally<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My favorite sug\u00adges\u00adtion, though, was:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Playing \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ksHsh4r8tJA\">Point of no return<\/a>\u201d when we know every\u00adthing worked<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Feel free to com\u00adment below \u2014 I\u2019d love to hear how you man\u00adage your meet\u00adings, and what you\u2019ve learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone makes mistakes, but wise organizations learn from them. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/2011\/02\/23\/wrap-up-meetings-provide-feedback-that-teams-need-to-improve\/\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3479"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3653,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions\/3653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}