shivjoshi1996 commented 6 years ago

On the 12th of December 2017, the team held an off-site meeting at the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch to discuss the process, strategy, and to have a bit of fun. We first voted on the topic we wanted to talk about, and then chose the 4 most popular topics and held retros. The topics were: Using evidence to improve our websites, MVP thinking, Design threads, and Pastoral care

The notes from the off-site have been included below, with the important actions in bold.

Retro 1 - Using evidence to improve our websites

User Testing

The team discussed whether it would be feasible to do testing before big decisions were made. A potential solution would be to create low-fi prototypes and test those.
The team agreed that stakeholders need to know about the purpose and value of any tests we run, including the end goals, metrics, etc.
The team raised a concern that finding valid users for testing purposes was hard because of our very niche products. The team explored the use of hallway testing - building relationships with customers/community while at events & conferences. By doing this, we can find the right people, build a database of valid testers, and remote test our products with them.
The team thought that currently stakeholders do not understand the value of qualitative data, and are only concerned with quantitative data. We need to show stakeholders the quantitative data (e.g. from AB tests), and then use this data to explain and justify running more detailed tests that would result in qualitative data.

Dashboard

The team thought that it would be beneficial to look at analytics through Dashboard in order to check page views, download numbers, etc.
Squads need to use Dashboard to define KPI’s
Each Squad should have a meeting about KPI’s and dashboard.

AB Testing

We need to define meaningful goals for AB tests
We need to define the expected user journeys
We need to then validate these user journeys against analytics gathered from AB tests

Site Build

Ensure GA actions and events are implemented on anything that is worth measuring
The team identified that there is a trade-off between site performance & GA events, therefore events should be on elements that we definitely need and want to track.
Squads will have a meeting about GA events - what UX’ers want to track
The team identified that the site speed varies greatly worldwide, for e.g. it is slow to load in places like China & India. The developers will have a meeting to discuss worldwide site performance & speed

Extra thoughts

We need to be careful of what we “target” and consider a “metric”, as it might have a negative effect on the overall experience.

Retro 2 - MVP Thinking

Planning

We need to measure the success of MVP’s or “phases” by testing them and analysing the data
The squads need to define what is the most “viable” product. An idea is to define this in the planning meetings while discussing the work.
The team wants more mini sprints for certain epics. In planning, we should look at features and decide what the best way to tackle it is: within the 2-week iteration or a mini sprint

MVP / Future Vision

The team wanted more one-day “future design” workshops/sprints to find out the bigger picture, and to also identify the MVP’s, and use this information to communicate with engineers

MVP as a research tool

We need to tie MVP’s into testing
The team discussed that we need to improve our communication with stakeholders about what is the MVP, and then show them the longer plan too
The team identified that when an MVP is developed, it is a good time to do user testing

MVP in Demo’s

The team discussed that we should utilise testing data when we are presenting work at the demo meeting. For example, if we are showing a version B of a homepage, we should show the data of the A/B test to discuss which version is better.

Retro 3 - Design Threads

GitHub “Team Discussions”

(You have to be a part of a “team” to access the GitHub team discussions)

A stickied post can contain a link to the spec, as well as a refined summary of the discussions, had in the forum thread
Members of the discussions forum can link to specific cards when discussing topics
A lot of the team were keen to keep design threads on Git. “Github Team Discussions”, a new forum-like feature on GitHub, was proposed, and the squads have agreed to try it. Find out more here: https://github.com/blog/2471-introducing-team-discussions

Proposed rules for team discussions

It should be easy to see finished and agreed designs
Should be open to the community
The history should be preserved
It must email (alert) people

Retro 4 - Pastoral Care

The company needs to be more transparent on things like training & team budgets
More healthy snacks in the kitchen (not just fruit!)
Daily yoga meetup
More structured fun (pub of the week, etc.)

anthonydillon commented 6 years ago

@shivjoshi1996 thanks, can you move this issue to our meeting notes repo, please.