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Appreciations and Retrospectives

One of the key aspects to being a successful Agile Samurai is the Retrospective Meeting.  The Retrospective Meeting is a specific and deliberate time during the development process for the team learn what is going well and what is not going well.  An Agile team is constantly learning throughout the development process.  But a Retrospective Meeting is specifically intended to collect the learning from the previous sprint so it can be applied to the next sprint.

For a better understanding about retrospectives I would highly recommend Agile Retrospectives Making Good Teams Great.  

Appreciations

This article is about including appreciations as part of the retrospective.  The first thing to do is define appreciation.  From the Merriam Webster dictionary:

: a feeling of being grateful for something

: an ability to understand the worth, quality, or importance of something : an ability to appreciate something

: full awareness or understanding of something

In order for someone to appreciate something they need to be grateful, understand the worth, quality, or importance of something and a deep awareness of something.  Appreciations are specific not general.

On my teams we do appreciations and they take the form of:

I (person giving the appreciation) appreciate (specific person) for doing {specific action} because {what did that person's action do to help you out}.

Some examples of appreciations that I have received:

I appreciate David for keeping the project moving forward and working closely with the vendors.

I appreciate you (David) for bringing a positive attitude & outlook everywhere you go.

Some examples of things that are nice to say but are not appreciations:

I appreciate the team for working hard this last sprint.

I appreciate Joe for working hard this last sprint.

Why do Appreciations

At some point every project is going to have a hard or series of hard sprints.  For whatever reason things are going to go wrong and the team's morale is going to drop.  By documenting appreciations we acknowledge specific actions people are taking to help us (me) overcome an obstacle.  Also when an individual isn't sure they are valued on the team, if they have received appreciations in the past they can go back and look at those appreciations as a reminder that in fact they are valued.

Doing appreciations helps to build team connectedness and cohesion.  People who are appreciated by the people they work with day to day are more likely to give their best, even when things are not going well.

End of a Release Appreciations

At the end of a release give every member of the team a 4x6 card, colored are nice, and have them write their name at the top of the card.  Then have each person pass their card to the person to their right.  Each person can write a specific or set of specific appreciations for the person whose card they just got.  When a person finishes writing on the card, they pass it to the right and keep doing this until their card comes back.

Later this card can be a reminder about what the team appreciated about each member on the next release or even years down the road.

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Tibi Semper Ero Paravit

I will always be prepared

When I started thinking about creating a new website I decided that I would like a logo and motto that reflected more about who I am and how I see myself.

Shape

Using a shield as the basic shape for my logo is a natural outgrowth of my desire to be noble, honorable, heroic, and adventurous.  I haven't always lived up to those ideals but they are a part of who I am (and just as true as I am a cynic).  I selected Azure as the color for the shield because it often represents loyalty.  This is a quality that I have not always lived up to but one which I aspire to live up to.

Symbols

There are five symbols on the shield that represent important parts of my life.  First there is the headstock of a Fender guitar.  I have played the guitar since 1994.  My guitar playing is a work in progress wink

The second is the Crossroads of US Highway 61 and 49 a well known symbol for the blues.  I fell in love with blues music when I started listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan and started learning who Stevie Ray Vaughan covered.

The third symbol is a classic 20 sided dice, which is known to anyone who has played any tabletop role playing game, especially Dungeons and Dragons.  When I was in college I started playing tabletop role playing games.  I recently started game mastering again (see Valdorian Age - Rising Power on the Frontier).

The forth symbol is camera.  A friend of mine once commented that "All Tannen's are born with a camera in their hands."  That isn't exactly true but it is close.  My grandfather was an excellent photographer (film/slides and a darkroom in his basement).  He passed on his great 'eye' to my dad and dad passed that on to me.  I have combined my love of photography with blues to document many great blues artists while they were performing.  Some of these great artists are no longer with us but their music and the images I captured are still around to enjoy.   You can find my work at Photographs.

The fifth symbol is the cross that divides the shield.  It is a subtle symbol.

Motto

Tibi Semper Ero Paravit, which means I will always be prepared, grew out of both my Boy Scout experience and my being a worse case scenario planner.

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"Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

One of my favorite movies is The Princess Bride, although when I was first 'dragged' to it I thought I would hate it.  There are many wonderful scenes in the movie, but the scene that comes to mind right now is when Wesley is explaining Buttercup his life aboard the Dread Pirate Roberts ship.  Wesley tells Buttercup that at the end of each day the Pirate Roberts would tell him "Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

When I first started consulting I was told by a good friend of mine that I should always keep that line in the back of my head.  Working as a consultant has made keeping that thought in my head much easier because I always knew that if the client decided they didn't want my services, for whatever reason, and as along as I did my job well I would just be sent to another client.

And in fact I have had a couple of good experiences where things with the client ended well.  They got what they needed and it was time to go.  I have had one that went very poorly and I got 100% support from my management.

But that is not my current situation.  The client has done what clients often do - project is going badly so it must be the project manager's fault.  I will own any mistakes I have made during my engagement because that is how I learn.  I will publish an article on that later.  But it is a rare client that actually looks at themselves to see what they are fundamentally doing wrong, either as individuals or as an organization.

So I am currently, as in this week, billing 50% of my time to the client.  I am here 100% of my time.  Honestly that doesn't bother me at all. 

In the past I have gotten 100% support from my own management but this time I am not feeling that same level of support. 

In the past I would have done a number of very unhealthy things.  Instead I am doing the following:

  • Reviewing my affirmations, appreciations and blessings on at least a daily basis
  • Spending plenty of time with Trudy, Benjamin and Catalina
  • Going to the Sat. Morning Jam
  • Talking with my friends
  • Meeting with my friends
  • Gaming
  • Working on my personal projects
  • Realize that my management might just be reacting to a bad situation without thinking how their reactions are affecting other people (specifically me).  In other words it isn't all about me devil
  • Cleaning up my resume smiley something a former boss told me a professional should do every year.

 

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