Routines & Workflows

Cycles

Every two months we start a new cycle. A cycle consists of a six-week work phase and a two-week organization phase. We borrowed this concept from Basecamp and are happy with the outcomes.

There are two reasons why this is working for us. First, the scoped work phase of six weeks forces us to prioritize on what is important. Second, after a cycle is over we take time to reflect and plan our next steps accordingly.

Work Phase (6 weeks)

The work phase is true to its name. Here we are focusing on actually moving projects forward and try to achieve our targets.

Organisation phase (2 weeks)

The organization phase is at the end of a cycle. Its main purpose is to allocate time to reflect on the last cycle and plan the next one. On top of that, the two weeks are great to wind down, do leftover tasks and fix things.

Things that are happening here:

  • Doing the Cycle Retro as a team
  • Planning the upcoming cycle
  • Cleaning up E-Mails, Files and Tools

Retros

The 4L framework

For our retros, we use the 4L's framework. The L's stand for Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for. How it works in practice:

  1. Split a canvas/whiteboard into 4 areas

  2. Ask the participants to individually write notes on a post-it for each of the L areas.

  3. Go from one area to another and let everyone pin and explain their post-it

The difference between Longed for and Lacked can be confusing. Here is how to understand it: Longed for is for things that would have been nice to have (e.g a colder office in the summer). _Lacked_ is for things that would have been essential, but missed completly.

This retro originally created and blogged by Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener.

Weekly Retro

We are doing one weekly retro every Friday in the work phase. In the retro, we have time to reflect the week, our sprint goal and write it all on paper. In one cycle this happens six times and creates a nice overview of our progress.

Duration: 30 Minutes

Cycle Retro

The cycle retro happens in the first week of the organization phase. It's the same as the weekly retro, with the only addition, that there is more time to look through the weekly retros from the currently ending cycle.

Duration: 45 minutes

Week & Cycle Actionables

After every retro, we take time to look at the board and ask ourselves: "How can we put this into actionable?". An actionable is something that we are capable of solving in either the next week (weekly retro) or the next cycle (cycle retro). This helps us to separate short-term and long-term thinking.

Say for example there is a post-it saying "More structured conversations inside slack" on the weekly retro board. A weekly actionable for this could be "Delete messages outside a thread". This is something that we can quickly adapt and test out in the next week.

1on1

We are starting to do 1on1's to create time for a continuous conversation regarding feedback on roles, challenges, and growth. The meetings go in the two directions and help to create a culture of open feedback. Currently, the 1on1's are happening in the first week of a new month.