Wtf notebooks how to#

Then, during the team conversation about the problem, I'll identify something that teammate suggests as an action item that we could try immediately. I'm looking for something I can put on the retro board and know I won't be the only person who's bothered by that problem. If it's more process or social, it means bringing the problem up at retro and talking about it with the whole team.Īt this point I'm looking for one or two problems that have been bugging one of my new teammates for a while, and that have relatively simple solutions. If it's a technical problem, that means writing a story or a ticket together, and then we'll work on it.

Wtf notebooks how to#

Or they'll help me figure out how to fix them. On a lot of teams, when I ask some questions about things that turn out to be in the first few questions, the person I ask will just fix them immediately. They've tried to fix the problem before and failed.The problem is relatively new, and the old problem it replaced was much worse.Generally, I'll find out that the things that problems I've noticed are around for one of a few reasons. That's the reputation that's going to let me make changes later. I'm trying to establish credibility as someone who's genuinely curious and empathetic, who's patient, and who respects the expertise of my coworkers. I'll ask why things on the list are that way, and how they got to be that way. At this point I'll start talking about it with other people on the team, the team lead, and my manager. When I do see an easy fix, though, I'll just go ahead and make it.Īfter a few weeks, though, I'll still have a bunch of weird, unresolved issues on that list. That's not always immediately obvious when I first see a problem.

Maybe there's some documentation I can write, once I know where it is, or maybe there's an easy change once I find the right scripts. Sometimes, it'll turn out that there's a really simple fix for some of the things I've identified. Or they might have a pretty good continuous integration system and good habits around making small changes, so not being able to run the tests locally isn't stopping them from deploying multiple times a day.

The team might do all of their work on virtual machines, and have a simple chat command that provisions those machines for them. If the tests don't run locally, for instance, that might be a known issue that there's an ongoing effort to address. There are four reasons at this point that I might cross off something I've put on that list: Once I've got a nice big list, I start crossing things off. The team is spending a bunch of time on some feature, but when I ask around no one can seems to know why it's important or how it'll help a customer. Only one person can do some critical, time-sensitive thing. Big chunks of the build board are always red. The tests don't run locally and no one seems to notice. The team talks for an hour in retro about a serious problem, and then leaves without making any action items. There's always stuff that makes me go 'wtf' on a new team. So I'm going to walk you through how I use that list, and how it helps me to build a reputation as someone who's really effective at getting stuff done, and avoid being someone who's complaining all the time. It's one of my most powerful techniques for making changes on a team, and managing myself while I do it. This is a trick I picked up from a team lead a few years ago, who learned it from a previous lead of his in turn. I just watch, and listen, and I write down everything that seems deeply weird. I don't show up at retro with all the stuff I think they need to change.

I don't tell the team everything that I think they're doing wrong. ' Then I make a note every time I run into something that makes me go 'wtf,' and a task every time I come up with something I want to change.įor two weeks, that's all I do. I'm not one of those people you see on Pinterest with the fancy spreads – I mostly just use black ink, the standard setup, and the occasional custom collection.Įvery time I join a new team, I go to the next fresh page, and on top of that page I write: 'WTF.