Last Retro

2017-05-25

Old Action Items

JA: Will give non-present wolves until next week to react to notes before beginning redaction.
Next month’s facilitator: ? using spontaneous self-facilitation for this meeting.

What happened (Since May 25)

Organizational Changes
- Tune-up was implemented
  - Totally new roles for GG, KS, KL, AR
  - Post-tuna changes
  - Joel’s moving to Technology!
TPG/uild Business
- Annual performance reviews
- First TPGuild meeting
- Offsite
  - Wolves GG and KS won’t be at the offsite 😥
  - Decided not to do whale watching cause JA and NH get seasick 🌊
    - And sadly no trip to the cape cod potato chip factory either :(
    - NH didn’t know :( that’d be a great trip
- MB back, mostly missing for events between retros
Engagements/projects
- JA got fully busy with Editing re-org
  - Very interesting
- Possible re-emergence of phlogiston (“I’m not dead yet!”)
  - (Victoria is keenly interested)
- Krarthur™’s development conversation workshops
- Kevin is diving into coordinating 19 programs across 12 teams in Technology
Other org stuff
- Engagement survey
  - and the aftermath of not having a recording: epicly long email thread
- Two interesting visitors to WMF gave interesting talks
  - Uzo Iweala
  - Adam Hochschild
Non-Work
- Arthur went on vacation and got poison oak-poisoned
  - Is poison oak actually poison if you don’t eat it? Note: don’t eat it.
    - “Venomous” Oak?
    - Some people claim that by eating fresh, young poison oak leaves you can develop an immunity
      - And an inside-rash

What went well

AR: Inaugural TPGuild meeting
- MB: +1 Thanks to Natalia for leading the charge with a pro presentation
- KL +1 well done
KS: Kevin’s post-tuna experience has been quite pleasant
JA: Editing Re-org coaching—very productive so far, IMNSHO.
- Could still collapse spectacularly.
JA: Excited to (still) be pairing closely with KS (and GG)
KS: Getting Joel into Technology makes me really happy
JA: Technology job gives me a clear path to work on annual and quarterly planning.
1st T & C assignment - Loved doing hiring manager trainings (developmental conversation) with Arthur +1
Annual Reviews
- Great annual performance review conversation +1
- AR: reflecting and pulling together peer/self reviews
- Enjoy doing reviews, esp. celebrating/reviewing accomplishments (KL)
- JA: reviews was much simpler than I expected.
- NH: Writing reviews was harder than I thought but a beneficial exercise
NH: I like my 1/1s with Jon Katz

What went poorly

Tuna issues
- MB: Still feeling apathetic about a lot since the Consultation. Got the sense that it has been challenging for others, too, based on the check-in at the first Guild meeting (sorry Natalia)
- AR: post-tuna changes have been somewhat surprising, hard not to feel like the TPG legacy is disappearing
- MB: Post-tuna feels disjointed, both in separation from former TPG teammates as well as org-feel. Lots of uncertainty now.
JA: went from very underworked to about 2.5 full-time threads + travel and leave coming up.
JA: 3–6 month plan for Editing Re-Org was squished into 1 month due to Tuna.
JA: Editing Department’s medium-term needs for Coaching/management still very vague
KS: Peer review deadline was frustrating (the deadline was announced while I was on vacation, and passed while I was still on vacation)...but it ended up being easy to clean up after I got back
- MB: +1, and hard on hackathon and vacation time
AR: sad about GG and KS not attending offsite
- MB: +1
- NH: +1
- JA: +1
AR: MB getting trampled
- MB: +1 no bueno
KS: No signs of retrospectives about the tuneup (understandable given all the pain and stress, but not great from an organizational learning perspective)
- MB: +1, I also recall that there was an offhand comment that we would retro, but have heard nothing since. Additionally, Stillwell seemed to like our idea of retro’ing the changes themselves in 3-6 months’ time, but nothing has been scheduled and I fear it dropping off.
JA: wasn’t going to Wikimania, then maybe going to facilitate offsite in Montrèal after Wikimania, then not going, now going to facilitate other offsite in Montrèal after Wikimania.
- MB: I’ll be there too (offsite only, too) let’s party.
- I hear the food and nightlife in Montreal are excellent
  - MB: Poutine is gross.

Other

KS: Not sure how well we’re doing at closing out TPGroup work
KS: Feels like longer than 2 weeks since TPG split upmorphed into a Guild, but still feels really weird
- MB: Also personally felt weird that the transition happened while I was on vacation, not sure if I missed out on something (processing or something else, etc)
Feeling mildly weird/unsettled about Offsite

Followup

Joel to lead getting notes posted.