Why Frequent and Short Retrospectives Matter

Frequent retrospectives ensure that feedback is timely and relevant. The key is to make retrospectives a quick and regular habit—an integral part of your sprint cycle rather than an afterthought. This approach not only fosters improvement with the issues fresh in mind but also enhances team morale by empowering members to voice their insights regularly.

Here’s how you can conduct an effective 30-minute sprint retrospective using five simple steps. Be sure to use a timer – time flies when you’re having scrum.

1. Set the Stage (2 minutes)

The first step on your retrospective agenda is creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their thoughts. Encourage openness and remind participants that the results of the session will benefit them and their work satisfaction directly.

2. Gather Data (3 minutes)

Allow team members to silently reflect on the sprint’s events or review relevant data. Some teams reflect on their burndown or continuous flow diagram. Other teams jot down thoughts on sticky notes or using digital tools for remote teams. If you decide to write notes, it helps to prepare the retrospective with topics. My favorite topics are the eight items on the agile manifesto, the scrum values – openness, courage, respect, commitment, focus – and the three elements from Daniel Pink’s Drive. The goal here is to capture individual perspectives without influence from others, ensuring diverse viewpoints are brought to light.

Remember that emotions are data too. Don’t keep it too cognitive. You can around with questions like: How satisfied die you feel? What are moments of low and high joy? How was your energy level?

3. Collect Perspectives and Solutions (15 minutes)

Cluster the collected data into subjects and start with the most important subject. Facilitate an open discussion focused on both positive outcomes and areas for improvement. Encourage participants to share their observations from the previous step, fostering a balanced conversation about successes and challenges alike. This dialogue should aim at uncovering root causes and brainstorming potential solutions collaboratively.

4. Prioritize Actions (5 minutes)

If multiple actions arise from the discussion, prioritize them based on impact and feasibility within the next sprint. This ensures that efforts focus on important changes that will yield significant benefits without overwhelming the team with too many initiatives at once.

5. Close (5 minutes)

Conclude by reflecting on the quality of the retrospective itself—what worked well in this session? What could improve next time? Finally, express gratitude to all participants for their contributions, reinforcing a culture of appreciation and continuous learning.

Bonus practical online tools for your retrospective agenda

If you can’t have retrospectives face to face, I suggest using a virtual whiteboard. Miro is my favorite because it feels most intuitive. When you’re in a Microsoft environment, Azure Devops can also capture observations with an extension. I also experimented with a Loop in an MS Teams channel.

Here’s a retrospective invite you can copy and tweak!

Hi Team,

Let's take 30 minutes to look back to the past weeks and find out how we can make our work more enjoyable and satisfying. Let me know if you have any specific topics you'd like to discuss.

Here's our agenda for the retrospective:
1. Welcome, goal and structure - 2 min.
2. Collect the facts - 3 min.
3. Discuss situation and actions - 15 min.
4. Prioritize actions - 5 min.
5. Closing - 5 min.

See you there!
Your Scrum Master.

By adopting this streamlined approach to sprint retrospectives, you’re not just saving time; you’re investing in your team’s growth and efficiency. Regularly scheduled retrospectives become less about finding faults and more about celebrating achievements while constructively addressing challenges— a recipe for sustained success in any agile environment.

So why wait? Start implementing these quick yet impactful retrospectives today and watch your team’s productivity soar! If you still feel the true conversation is lacking in retrospectives, be sure to contact me. The neutral ground of an external person like me might bring a boost.

The post An effective 30-minute Sprint Retrospective Agenda appeared first on Wendbaar Groeien.

The balance between work and life is crucial in maintaining team performance without succumbing to burnout. In this article on becoming a better team player, we dive into the delicate art of juggling professional demands and personal needs.

Long-term and Short-term Team Performance

Ever had the urge to binge-watch your favorite series? It’s an example of a short-term desire. While it offers immediate gratification, it can derail long-term goals. In team settings, this dichotomy plays out in balancing what we should do for the team versus what we need for ourselves. Striking this balance is key to preventing burnout teamwork and maintaining productivity.

Your gut is the canary in the coal mine

From birth, we are primarily driven by immediate needs – the “belly”. As we grow, we learn to plan and set long-term goals – the “head”. However, the belly never truly disappears; it serves as a reminder of our physical and emotional needs. In teams, when members ignore these needs, it leads to stress, dissatisfaction, and burnout. Successful teamwork requires acknowledging and balancing these aspects.

The Art of Balancing Head and Belly

Many view balance as boring. Yet in the context of burnout teamwork, it is a dynamic and essential skill. Consider extreme athletes: their prowess lies in maintaining an extreme dynamic balance. Similarly, effective teamwork involves creating space for personal needs amidst professional obligations. Mindfulness about one’s productivity and taking breaks when needed is crucial. It’s a mistake to think that pushing harder is the solution to decreased productivity. Instead, restful breaks often provide insights into underlying issues.

Taking True Breaks

Distinguishing between fake and true breaks is essential. Fake breaks involve activities that still engage the head, like checking emails or social media. True breaks, however, allow the mind to rest. Activities like taking a walk, enjoying a coffee chat, or mindfully drinking tea can rejuvenate the mind and are integral to managing burnout teamwork.

Maximizing Teamwork by Balancing Work-Life:

Balancing productivity and rest, individual needs, and team objectives, is a continuous process. This doesn’t imply working less or lowering ambitions. Instead, it’s about working smarter. To achieve significant goals, it’s vital to fine-tune the balance between our immediate needs (belly) and long-term objectives (head). You can simply start by taking true breaks. Then check your battery levels. Discuss with the team. They will gladly assist you in finding a better balance.

This piece draws insights from the book ‘Effect’, which offers lessons from a team of ice skating champions. Interested in enhancing your team’s performance while avoiding burnout? Contact Anton Vanhoucke for expert consulting in agile, scrum, innovation, and leadership coaching. Discover how to balance the demands of high-performance teamwork with personal well-being.

The post But…My team needs me! appeared first on Wendbaar Groeien.

NFC payments. Hurray!

I was able to set up my bank (ASN) with the wireless payment on the Fairphone 3. This is something I was not able to with the iPhone. On iPhone, I was limited to Apple Pay and there’s only one bank in my country that supports that.

I paid with NFC a few times now, at a restaurant, barbershop, and supermarket. And it is awesome. So easy! I have two accounts, one business and one personal. I can select either of them, hold my phone next to the terminal and approve the payment.

Camera troubles

The camera is a disappointment. Yes, it’s 12 Megapixels. Yes, it’s the sensor as the Pixel 3a. But it’s not very light sensitive. So if you’re lucky to get a sharp photo it will still have a lot of gaussian pixel noise.

Only 1 out of 4 photos I took were focused well. This could have to do with the long shutter times. Or maybe it’s a bad focusing algorithm. I hope Fairphone can fix this.

The auto white balance isn’t very good either. Manual white balance settings improve the pictures a lot.

Below are some pictures that illustrate the camera issues.

More pixels than an iPhone 11 Pro

I’ve come to appreciate the large rectangular display on the Fairphone. It’s easy to read in daylight and dims enough at night. I like the response to touch. Its full HD panel is sharp and has more pixels than an iPhone. The bottom line is that it gets work done in those small moments where you can’t get your laptop out.

Returning my old iPhone for recycling

I sent my old iPhone 7 to Fairphone for recycling. I used my Fairphone box for that. You can generate a free shipping label on their website to get a €20 rebate. Sadly the shipping label they generate doesn’t really fit the box.

Navigation & long-lasting battery

I used the Fairphone for navigation last week. I don’t have a car charger for USB-C, but I didn’t need one. The battery was enough to navigate me to and from my appointment easily. Google Maps activates Google Assistant by default. This means Google listens in to all your conversations in the car. It also means you don’t have to push a button for voice dialing, which is really nice. I appreciate the fact that phone calls do not hide the navigation screen. With an iPhone, it was extremely frustrating to receive a call in the middle of a trip. It would hide the navigation directions and just turn off the phone after the call! I had to ask a passenger to switch the iPhone back to the navigation app for directions.

Picture transfer to my Mac

Getting pictures from the Android phone on my Mac and into a blog post was a bit of a challenge. It is a very important feature for me because I use smartphone pictures for sharing my training content. Here are the options I tried:

• Google Photos: This is the default on Android. Before you know it, Google grabs your pictures and ‘syncs’ them. I’m not sure I like the privacy implications of this. Furthermore, there’s no way I can ‘sync’ Google Photos down to my Mac. Google has a bit of a one-way definition of the word syncing. There used to be a backdoor using Google Drive. Google disabled that recently.
• Dropbox: Dropbox has an option to upload all camera photos to dropbox. Again I’m not sure about the privacy implications here. Although I suspect the scheme is to upload as much stuff as possible so people start buying the paid upgrade. What I don’t like about Dropbox is that it duplicates everything. It makes it hard to clean up and remove unwanted photos.
• DS Cloud: With my Synology server I have the option of syncing a Cloudstation folder on Android with my personal server. No privacy issues here. It’s encrypted over a secure layer. It syncs the complete phone content to a special share I made on my NAS. It was very little arcane to set up and it only worked after restarting my Android phone. But now I have complete access to my Android on my Mac via two-way sync. I can add and remove files easily. Awesome!
• USB cable: Good old Image Capture with a USB cable doesn’t work with Android. It works with all my cameras, iPhones and iPads, but sadly not with Android. I wonder what I’ll do is my Android storage is full. Normally I use Image Capture to download everything and delete the downloaded files on the camera. No such luck anymore. There are some shade Mac apps that let you download photos. They all require a separate app to run on the droid and none that I found let you delete imported pictures.
• Bluetooth: Old Bluetooth file transfer works fine with Android too. It’s a lot like Airdrop, but way harder to use. I prefer the DS Cloud option over this one. Bluetooth is a nice fallback if there’s no secure Wifi available.

Some other AirDrop clones I tried. They worked, but they were a lot of hassle.

Android, apart from the photos

I actually started to LIKE Android. It seems less quirky than iOS. The UI takes some getting used to after iOS. But then it’s all quite coherent. I really like the swipe keyboard.

Android is especially comfortable if you go to the crossroads and sell the privacy of your soul to the Google.

You don’t even have to sign in blood. All your settings, devices, contacts, files, calendars, accounts and history are synced through Drive and your Google account.

Android doesn’t have some of the strange limitations that Apple is imposing on its apps. Apple forces Appstore purchases. Apple limits access to hardware and some frameworks. For instance, Apple recently banned Electron apps.

VPN is also better on Android. I can force it to be on at all times. This was impossible on the iPhone. It just feels safer on open or semi-open WiFi.

Alternatives

I started researching alternatives to the Fairphone with a better camera. iFixit keeps a repairability score. The Fairphone 3 scores a solid 10. The Shift 6m is just behind that, but it has worse performance specs than the Fairphone. Apple’s repairability scores have plummeted after the iPhone 7. My previous phone was a refurbished iPhone 7. That’s a very sustainable phone because it’s reused and repairable. However, it proved not to be as waterproof as advertised. If Fairphone decides not to produce a camera upgrade, I will look for another Android phone. Maybe a OnePlus. Definitely not an iPhone.

Conclusion

I’ll just stick with the Fairphone 3. It’s clunky but it replaces my wallet. It does regular payment and loyalty cards. I hope it will do NS train gates in the future. It probably won’t replace my credit card for toll roads and parking garages.

If I need great pictures I’ll just drag around my DSLR. My Canon definitely makes better pictures than an iPhone 11 Pro.

In the end, the Fairphone 3 works OK and it makes me feel like I’m making this world a little better. That’s very important to me. Isn’t it for you too?

The post Switching from iPhone to Fairphone: day 4 to 10 appeared first on Wendbaar Groeien.

I believe our power as consumers is greater than we think. We can not only vote in elections, we can also vote daily with our purchases. When I ordered my Fairphone last august I voted for fairness and sustainability. It was a risky bet because I’ve been very dependent on iPhones in the last few years.

The concept

For those of you unfamiliar with the Fairphone concept, the idea is to offer a phone that lasts longer because you can repair it yourself. The materials are sourced 99% fair and slavery free. I’m not sure that the repairing aspect makes the Fairphone more sustainable than any other phone. In my town there are at least 3 shops that repair an iPhone screen or swap a battery while you are waiting. And it isn’t that expensive either considering it’s pretty much hassle free.

Unboxing the Fairphone

The Fairphone comes in fairly large box and there’s no charger included. The bottom 3 cm of the box is taken up by a screwdriver. The screwdriver looks uncomfortably small. I think I will have misplaced it before I ever need it. I suppose the designers wanted to make a statement with that screwdriver. Including a screwdriver as an option when ordering spare parts would have been more user friendly I guess.

Unlike the iPhone packaging this packaging contains no plastic and is fully recyclable. And it’s even better than recyclable: you can use the packaging to send your old phone back to Fairphone. They promise a EUR25 rebate and sustainable recycling.

Bulky and rugged hardware.

My first impression of the phone was: massive. It’s 10mm thick with it’s bumper. It’s more than 16cm high. It’s like walking around with a brick the size of a scientific pocket calculator in your pants, but heavier. 

The back side is translucent and shows the internals of phone that should be easy to repair. 

The screen is sharp and bright. It’s a rectangular full HD panel. Unlike the newest phones the screen doesn’t go all the way to the edges. That’s OK with me, but I would have liked a hardware home and a back button to save screen space. 

The speaker on the Fairphone is on the left side. This means the palm of your hand will be covering it if you’re a lefty and the volume will be really low.

Unlike iPhone the Fairphone has two sim card slots and an SD card slot. I’m using only one sim, but for many people a second sim is very important. I put a 64Gb micro SD card in the SD card slot, but I haven’t needed it so far.

A fingerprint sensor that takes some practice

The fingerprint sensor is on the back. It’s either very secure or not so accurate, as it often requires multiple tries to recognize my finger. This means you have to pick it up every time to unlock it. When working I usually liked to leave my iPhone flat on the table. I then unlocked it with the home button from time to time to look something up.

Fast charging USB-C

The Fairphone has a modern USB-C socket. If I use my USB-C Macbook charger it says ‘Fast charging’ on the lock screen and takes about 90 minutes to fully charge.

Camera

The camera was the biggest disappointment. The specs promised a 12MP camera. That didn’t sound too bad. However, it’s slow, it shows artifacts and isn’t sharp. Yesterday I was at a party and I ended up asking my friends to message me their pictures because mine were blurry.

I suppose the camera will be functional at work. It will capture flip-over sheets just fine. It will also scan tickets and documents. But don’t count on beautiful memories of parties you were at.

The camera is a hot competitive item on smartphones these days. Even the cheaper ones have great cameras. The Fairphone lost big time. I really REALLY hope they release a camera upgrade you can install yourself. Maybe even a Fairphone 3.1 that ships with a better camera by default.

iOS to Android

I expected a new operating system would be the biggest of my problems. I have invested in some iOS apps and expected to loose a lot. However, the software transition was easier than the hardware transition. It turns out the apps I use are either free or subscription based and I could transfer my subscription to android. The only exceptions I found so far are Green Kitchen – a recipe app – and irealb – a sheet music app. I can still use those apps on my iPad. I did not use iCloud very much. At some point I will have to migrate all iCloud notes to google drive. Google has many free and ad-free apps that work really well. I hope Google does not turn evil one day, because they now everything about me now.

I also didn’t use the iCloud keychain very much – I have different password storage. This made logging in to my apps on Android really easy.

I’m going to miss airdrop – I used that a lot. Maybe google drive will be some kind of substitute. I’m also going to miss the Apple Siri Shortcuts app. 

On the other hand I really appreciate the Android widgets and the Glide Typing keyboard.

Conclusion

So far I think the Fairphone is a reasonable phone for the price. It’s rugged and functional. If it would have had a more expensive version with a better camera and maybe a faster processor, I would have bought that one for sure. The Fairphone 2 was never upgraded with partially better hardware. I hope the Fairphone 3 will get life extenders to stay relevant in a fast market. Let’s see what the next few days of Fairphone use have in store….

The post Switching from iPhone to Fairphone: day 1-3 appeared first on Wendbaar Groeien.