Organizers:
SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED UNTIL OCTOBER 18, 2004
Linda Rising, Consultant, risingl@acm.org
Mary Lynn Manns, University of North Carolina at Asheville,
manns@unca.edu
Even if you were not at the OOPSLA'03 workshop, you are most welcome to join all of us for this one!
Retrospectives are important, not only for object technology, but for any human activity -- to provide time for reflection, to improve on performance, and increase our understanding of the task at hand. The Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto state that, "At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly." There have been articles and an excellent book (Norm Kerth's Project Retrospectives, 2001) written on this topic but as is the case for many domains, experts know much that novices don't. We believe that documenting expertise in the form of patterns is an excellent way to share knowledge. The goal of this workshop was to begin documenting patterns in conducting successful retrospectives and looking for a pattern language structure.
Participants are asked to consider problems they have encountered in
preparing and conducting retrospectives and capture this in a pattern
using this
format. Although new patterns are
welcome, participants are asked to read through the wealth of information
that has been collected in
previous workshops. First drafts do not have
to be polished works
but we assume that authors will be willing to work with a shepherd -- that
would be us -- to get
patterns ready for the workshop.
For
example, a draft follows:
Every Opinion Counts
Context: The retrospective has many different people with different roles and views.
Forces:
Problem: Everyone sees things a certain way. There is a tendency for us all to believe that the way we saw the project was the truth and anyone that disagrees is wrong.
Solution: Create an atmosphere in which every opinion counts.
The following technique can be used: Create Safety (Kerth 2001:
108)
Resulting Context: The details of the project emerge. Each member of the team has the complete story, rather than only his or her own perspective.
We expect participants to be familiar with Norm Kerth's book (Project Retrospectives, 2001).
Following are some pattern drafts and artifacts from last years
workshop and
artifacts from the 2004 Retrospective Gathering in Vienna, Austria.
The
patterns and other artifacts from the workshop will be posted on this web
site for comment. The patterns will be submitted to a PLoP conference at
the next
opportunity and the work will be continued in workshops in subsequent
conferences.
The goal is to produce a companion to Norm Kerth's book that would
describe patterns in retrospectives. This book will have
pattern contributions from many different retrospective facilitators. The
patterns and preliminary work at this workshop was also
displayed at the OOPSLA '04 poster session.
Manns and Rising are authors of the book, Fearless Change:
Patterns for Introducing New Ideas
Linda Rising has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in the area
of
object-based design metrics. Her background includes university teaching
experience as well as work in industry in the areas of telecommunications,
avionics, and strategic weapons systems. She has been working with object
technologies since 1983. She is the editor of A Patterns Handbook,
The
Pattern Almanac 2000, and Design Patterns in Communication
Systems.
She
has experience leading retrospectives in a number of companies and
academic settings around the world, as well as giving presentations on the
benefits of retrospectives. She has over 20 years of academic teaching
experience and over 15 years of industrial training experience. She also
has experience leading workshops in pattern mining.
Mary Lynn Manns has a Ph.D. from DeMontfort University in England
in the
area of software patterns. She is on the faculty at the University of
North Carolina at Asheville, with over 20 years of teaching experience.
She has taught seminars on project
retrospectives and has led numerous retrospectives in both industry and
academia. She also has experience leading workshops in pattern mining.