Microsoft Azure DevOps (Microsoft ADO for short) is an offering from Microsoft which helps software development teams plan, orchestrate, develop, and release code. I see it as a one-shop-stop for coding projects and encompasses tools to make software development more effective.
A benefit to using Microsoft ADO is if there is a tool that your dev team uses that isn’t available by default, there numerous extensions which your Microsoft ADO administrators can install. If none of those suit your needs, then you can always develop an extension yourself.
An extension that my development team frequently uses is the Retrospectives extension developed by MS Dev Labs. The extension enables teams to add Sprint Retrospectives in Microsoft ADO.
Aside from the benefits of having retrospectives itself, I enjoy the online version because of:
- Availability: Members can add retrospective items at any time – not only at the end of the Sprint! These retrospective items can be placed immediately when someone notices a need for improvement as opposed to waiting until the end of the Sprint where that thought may be forgotten.
- History: The retrospectives from past Sprints are stored to ensure we are improving.
- Templates: The extension allows for making a retrospective off a template to give developers suggestions for new topics to chat about as opposed to sticking to what they are comfortable with.
- Allows for Anonymity: Prior to online retrospectives, my team went through each person in a round robin fashion and they spoke what they felt. While for the most part, my group readily announces what retrospective item they added, the retrospective extension allows anonymous posting.
- More Useful Comments: Prior to using online retrospectives, my team did our retrospectives by a round robin approach where we went through each person individually and had them verbally say their comment. While there were a lot of useful comments, I often felt that the group could be more prepared.
I feel having retrospectives are an extremely important part of the development process. In a recent update, I saw that MS Dev Labs added a retrospective template for Psychological Safety.
I thought this was an innovative idea from those at MS Dev Labs to put psychological safety front and center in a retrospective. However, I am curious how well effective the template will actually be. Meaning, if a person’s not feeling safe to express feelings in a 1:1 or in a small group setting, why would they feel safe expressing it as a group? Are we forcing these individuals to speak up even when they don’t feel comfortable doing so?
Google’s Project Aristotle proved that Psychological Safety is the most important pillar of effective teams. I definitely agree with that sentiment.
As a leader, there have been a couple of times whereby not addressing situations, I created situations where people were cautious to ask questions or make mistakes – destroying psychological safety. Even though I did rectify these situations with individuals involved and reached (some level of) understanding, the damage was done, and the trust took years to fix. Nowadays, creating psychological safety is one of my passions in leadership.
As with many aspects in leadership, I think the key lies in the questions. I feel the questions posed in the template are good questions. They aren’t yes / no questions and leave room for interpretation. To reiterate, I have concerns on how useful the template would be in situations where someone in the group is already not feeling psychologically safe. As such, in these situations, I feel the question “What makes it safe?” will resonate more with individuals (and hence, be more useful) than “What hinders safety?” — which is great because that’s positive reinforcement.
I also feel the template can be useful in periodic check-ins. At the very least, sometimes we need something to break up the monotony in retrospectives and challenges us to retrospect from a different perspective. I’m interested in trying this out at the next retrospective meeting I lead.
