Observation Date: 9/1/22

Duration: 1hr

Attendees: Rob Fay, Chelsea Brigg, Amy Castellani, Howard Montgomery, Meaghan Hudak, Brandy Barnette

Observations:

• The team provided a review and status for existing OKRs. This seemed to be the primary objective of the meeting. Status was provided, and feedback was given to OKR POCs to facilitate continuing actions to achieve KRs.
• Good team engagement – Everyone seems invested and willing to contribute feedback
• After reviewing OKRs, the team began a walkthrough of Features/Stories. The context for the review was driven by Feature ownership/team members.
  • This component of the review seemed focused on work in progress (WIP).
• The team discussed some general prioritization of planning activities to support the upcoming PI (the next sprint was designated as an IP).
• The flow of the meeting aimed to provide a comprehensive review of all team activities, aiming to afford all team members an opportunity to review their work.
• Did not get a sense of the overarching backlog for the team. How is work prioritized across team members? Right now, it seems like each team member is POC over their own siloed backlog. What are the inter-relationships between work items and the overarching HCD vision/objectives?

Opportunities:

• Meeting activities could be more intentional. The flow/approach to the meeting was more “status” centric rather than used for targeted and detailed refinement of the backlog. The emphasis on providing a comprehensive view of what the team is working on/needs to do, limits the ability to complete a detailed review of a set number of features. This is effectively increasing batch size and reducing throughput for backlog refinement.
• Feature/Stories for discussion need to be identified in advance and may need to be only a subset of the total backlog. Start less, and accomplish more for the meetings.
• Due to limitations on time vs the volume of items being discussed in the meeting, the team was not able to go into a very detailed review of story writing, acceptance criteria, and sizing.
• Sizing did not seem to be a standardized/collective effort. Sizing seemed to be at each team member's discretion for their own items. This may be a team nuance/dynamic, however, if that is the case it may need to be noted/reflected in how velocity/throughput is calculated and communicated to stakeholders. This may make longer-range backlog forecasting more complicated and variable.
• The team referenced an upcoming PI Planning event, but the feature refinement ceremony did not seem to maximize the allocated time in preparing and prioritizing features for the upcoming PI. More time can be focused on planning vs statusing to expedite readiness for PI Planning.

Second Observation27 Oct 2022 

Durantion: 1hr

Attendees: Rob Fay, Chelsea Brigg, Amy Castellani, Howard Montgomery, Meaghan Hudak, Brian Flaherty

Notes from Observation:

• Rob kicked off the meeting with an overview of priorities and ranking for this PI and explained the current work and changes 
• The team had cameras on at all times, engaged and ready to participate and provide feedback
• A walkthru of the objectives and Key results was given by the PO and each feature owner talked about the current stage of the existing Sprint and share some concerns about completing some work and carrying over stories into next sprint.
• Meaghan shared concerns about the newsletter and crunching time getting it out of the door in a Sprint and a half, given some changes in team structure and collaboration with Brian.
• The refinement session was aimed at discussing work for the upcoming Sprint, but seemed more like a planning session than a refinement 
• The team talked about capacity and allocation and projected story points for upcoming sprint planning on Monday. 
• The stakeholder (Brandy) was not present at the HCD refinement session making it harder for to team to make decisions and clarify priorities 
• World Usability Day on November 8th seems to be on track and the team is really excited to reach the target 250 people attending this time
• Chelsea is behind on goals for training deck development commitment for this sprint. The goal is to deliver this training in December.
• For the second half of the refinement session, the team used their Sprint Board and looked at the stories and estimated story points, rather than looking at the overall (features, backlog, and stories) needed in order to meet the business objective and Business Hypothesis. 
• Some of the stories had both (Benefit Hypothesis and AC's) criteria in the body of work, and one story had a (10) story point estimation which is not Fibonacci. (Seems like the estimation points are relative in days rather than complexity, effort, etc) making it harder to measure and compare work scope and velocity/ metrics.
• The HCD team is preparing for any upcoming team changes and how this will affect the 3rd Sprint and there seems to be unknowns from Meaghan/ Brian and Chelsea going on Maternity Leave.
• Overall, Rob drives the meeting and each feature owner is called on the stories they will be working on in the upcoming sprint.