
Team Improvement Techniques - cauliflower99
http://www.dcaulfield.com/team-improvement-techniques/
======
jph
> how do we gather improvements that are worthwhile and specific enough to
> solve our problems...?

My teams have tried many ways, and we like using a lightweight template thanks
to medical professionals:
[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/issues/blob/master/TE...](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/issues/blob/master/TEMPLATE.md)

~~~
cauliflower99
Excellent! This is very similar to the 'Preventative Actions' practice that we
have in our team. Your template provides an added level of detail though, so I
might steal it and give it a go.

------
ishcheklein
I've seen different teams and sometimes for some reason it's quite challenging
to get folks participate in retrospectives in a meaningful way. E.g. it's hard
to come up with a few things that went bad for engineers. And it's not a
matter of trust, it's something else. Does it come with practice? What are the
techniques to get people involved?

~~~
elric
In my experience, everyone on every team has ideas that could help improve the
team. Everyone's experiences shape their perceptions of things. Getting your
team to talk about those ideas is the hard part. Small teams can grow in to
high trust teams, but big teams pretty much can't. It's _much_ easier to get
meaningful feedback/retrospectives from high trust teams.

I think part of the lead engineer's job is to foster trust. But garnering this
feedback by asking the right questions is just as important. Even if it means
asking difficult questions until answered.

If a team struggles with meaningful retrospectives, it might be because they
don't see the value in them. When that's the case people can end up thinking
"it's just another meeting", "just let me code". Or it might be because the
trust isn't there, even though it might seem like it is. Exposing problems (of
whatever nature), tends to end up involving management at some point, and I've
noticed over the years that many engineers have a strange fear of management.
You can't have a meaningful discussion about problems if you don't trust
everyone involved, including management.

