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# System prepended metadata

title: Retro 2023-06-05

---

# Retro 2023-06-05

## Discussion topics from the last retro
- Tsukino
    - Vojtech: not treat as expert, outsourced the architectural design to him, did not work
    - David: once someone comes to the team, it should be clear what his role is, also in relation with other team members
    - TODO update the roles/responsibility doc each time someone joins the team?
- clarity about roles, ownership, responsibility
    - David: written summary shared with the team about roles, ownership/decision making
    - Barbara: not clear what Attila's role is, dev or project manager
    - Michelle: skillsets are more important than roles
    - Michelle: maybe create a short "dating profile" page / text for each team mate
    - Filoo: roles but also responsibilities/ ownership
    - **Practical Outcome To Be Done: create a hackmd where we describe:**
        - 1. Basic info + skillsets
        - 2. What do you feel you're responsible for or would you like to be?
- internal communications, feeling in the loop
    - Michelle: suggest to do more in the open, meaning, discuss more in chat in team channels
    - Reputation? Need ego-less comms? (Michelle)
    - David:  Also talk / think about getting together as a team: 
        - Democratise financial aspect of getting together
        - Do more small / imperfect but more frequent get-togethers
    - Kiki: communicate more in team channels
    - Michelle: can we just ditch discord please?
    - Vojtech: i don't want to be surveilled by putin
    - **TODO: a short work group to come up with a plan to socialise the cost of getting together (Michelle wants to help here, and is asking V to also join because he has experience with giveth :)** 
    - **TODO: use the team channels for as much as possible, only use DM when really wanting private**
- definition of the project (or lack thereof)
    - Michelle: The vision should be clear but the mission / strategy can be made up 
    - Fi: 
        - vision: wouldnt it be cool if we can chat and do txs like this 
        - mission: how to get there, scope, tech used, planning, chunking the work up,...

## New topics
- how is the new project going
    - Vojtech: we don't haz the same struggle like we had w Kurate. We're now where we were 1 month before end of kurate so things are way more clear than before 
    - Michelle: yay we're getting better at this
    - Vojtech: yes that's great!
    - David: Project Def better than Kurate, but on the execution we do less better, coordination could be better (who does what why), so this retro is a good example of doing better
    - David suggests: getting together working and discussion a specific topic in a work meeting
    - David: more show and tell? 
    - Michelle: wants to re-state: communicate with your work / expression, not with your opinion
    - Barbara: feels like there's little need to show and tell because it only shows david's work (she is wrong 😉) <-- Barbara wrote this
    - Kiki: I like the personal channels, the feeds, bc it is free to check out (low time investment)
    - Attila: 
    - Michelle: Barbara can you make small video's going through latest work and share them in personal feed or team feed? Barbara: yes 😊

# 8<——— spill over

- availability/calendar/scheduling in general
    - David: I'm using cal.com and I love it, maybe they have team plans, maybe we can find something similar
- github use?
    - Barbara: Make sure that all issues are assigned? If something is everyone's responsibility, then it's no one's responsibility
- spending time on past projects
    - Barbara: Would like Filoo to be free to work with us
- Spill over topic from michelle: NOT EVERYONE WORKING ON THE SAME THING together. (like for me it's more fun if we can talk and work on different topics like boardwalk, kurate, waku objects,...) Imo not the whole team has to work as one on one topic.

# Retro 2023-04-27

### planned schedule
- think back of the things that went well and it is worth keep doing
- also think of the things that did not go well and it would be good to change in the future
- 5 mins each, 5 * 7 = 35
- we will have 15 minutes to discuss one or two topics
- 5 minutes retro about the retro

## David

### What worked

- Meeting Policy
I really like both how we realized the issue, worked on it and the solution we implemented.

- Team Communication
I feel that there's healthy communication in the team, everyone has been open to discuss issues with honesty, empathy and respect.

- Autonomy
I like the amount of autonomy we have as team members, I feel that everyone is given enough space and trust to carry out their best work.

### What we could improve
- More focus and follow-up
I think that we could do a better job at following up on agreed tasks and ongoing work. I have the feeling that we easily jump to something new before finalizing the work we’re doing, sometimes we also leave things behind or forget things we agreed on. At times I felt the we were scattered and not in focus.

- Scheduling meetings
I think we can do better than scheduling in the group chat on Discord, it’s very noisy and inefficient. Also holidays, scheduling time-off maybe we could use a team-calendar.

- Share design plans more efficiently
We’ve had many different versions and needs (flow, visual, guidelines…) and many times it was hard to follow or know which files to look at.

- Better use of Github project
I think we can improve on how we use cards, for instance between design and development on Github. I sometimes felt that the Github project board was not really helping.
Hard to find back information
Sometimes I got confused between all the different channels on Discord and all the files on Hackmd, not always easy to retrieve a piece of information.

- Tsukino
I feel that the way we brought Tsukino in the team created a lot of issues. What could we do differently next time?  

- Smaller iterations
We’ve been able to play with a prototype too late, it would have been awesome to test some parts earlier in the process


## Vojtech

### Went well 
- Collaboration with Barbara and how much she learned
- Collaboration with David (but this is also thanks to us working previously :) )
- Getting to know each other and communication
- Using adapter design pattern to easily swap backend
- Philippe joining and being second voice of reason and someone to rely on towards the end

### Did not go well 
- The scope being in flux for so long
- Very slow start
- Not having Philippe around and stuck on previous project
- Unclarity who is “owner” of the codebase and decisions (I assumed it was Philippe but this was never voiced, he thought it was the other way around)
- The design changing until very last moment
- Multiple versions of design, unclear what is the source of truth and also duplicated in epics in github (which I mostly ignored towards the end)
- Unclear and maybe overlapping roles and responsibilities - Michelle, Kiki, Matt, David 
- Adding Tsukino in mid project and giving him free reign
- Not necessarily having the takeaways we wanted to have - get the knowledge on ZK stuff…


## Kiki

### What went well
- focus in the last period, when we all had the clear goal in mind
- getting the aha-erlebnis when we pushed the concept until we all felt we had something really inovative going
- quickly spotting and changing the meeting policy and sticking to it

### What could have been better
- the focus at the end could have lasted longer
- time to come to that innovative concept of Kurate took too long
- cooperation with Tsukino, how he was brought in
- organisation in Github must be reviewed, did it serve it's purpose? Tried to have as minimal PM as possible, to have optimal freedom. Did this work or not?
- some overlap in roles that caused friction, fe in the comms area
- 
## Matt

### What went well
- make the board happy
- the execution of successfully building a concept from scratch in 6 months is rare

### What could have been better
- not feeling in the loop regarding changes that affected their role (comms, team, processes and the presentation)
- could have given feedback to the presentation
- wish had spent more time with the technology

## Barbara

### What went well
- working with Vojtech who is an excellent teacher
- growing a lot

### What could have been better
- communications, felt out of the loop, maybe because of different timezone?
- lack of a central source of truth for design changes
- bringing in Tsukino
- the definition of the project changes over time so it's hard to get a feeling of getting it done

## Philippe

### What went well
- meetings policy
- the team is quite open and communication is easy
- autonomy is good but also a bit bad
- logos is happy

### What could have been better
- lack of leadership / ownership / roles
- when bringing in Tsukino took over things that previously Philippe did
- the ZK learning part feels missing
- lack of clear objectives with Wakuobjects
- that is the dark side of autonomy
- it was not clear that the FAQ design was not final an implemented it nevertheless
- feels too long to getting into Kurate
- unclear roles at the beginning

## Michelle

### What went well
- thank you all for giving a chance to realize a dream
- honest feedback from Matt helped overcome personal changes
- Philippe being radically direct helps keeping on the right direction
- happy to work with David and also for coaching
- Vojtech is a really unique person in the space
- Barbara for taking a personal risk of choosing this project over a corporate job
- do things together with Kiki
- logos is happy

### michelle raw output
Feel like I can do my dream scenario with the people I love
Happy about you wanting to work with me 
I feel grateful you are giving it a chance 

 I had to kickstart this alone  /someone has to do it 
Don’t even know what it is

Growing pains

Made many mistakes and it led to me going on a personal journey / medication 

ESPECIALL WANT TO THANK MATT for being so open / critical / telling me where my shit is, 

Also Filoo > thank you for being so direct and honest with your feedback

David thank you for doing this, since I met you  I wanted to work w you /you also really coached me and helped me understand myself better

Vojtech finally we can work together and I can give you something I always wanted to give because I think you are so worth it 

Barbara thank you for jumping in and taking this personal risk and going on this personal journey

Kiki finally we can do what we do so good 

Yes logos is happy but I want you all to feel like you are valuable and doing the things you like to do and are challenging within this team and its scope

EVERYBODY 
STOP DOING THE IMPOSTER SYNDROME THING and accept the reality of this endeavour

I THINK the board presentation made you see the reality of what we do 

THIS TEAM IS HERE TO GIVE YOU FREEDOM AND TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR OWN OUTPUT

and i want to thank my parents and god for making me

![](https://i.imgur.com/0DUoAHD.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/LzI6vwI.jpg)

## Closing thoughts

- Kiki
    - would reflect on what is written and add comments

- Barbara
    - would like to retros during a project as well, not just at the end of a project

- Philippe
    - not a lot was new to me
    - was good but did not learn much

- David
    - this is not done, this is just a beginning
    - actions are where this can be valuable
    - appreciated Michelle's vulnerable moment and emotional feedback, but would have also like to hear more concrete thoughs on what went well and what could be improved

- Matt
    - liked it and sees the potential action items

- Vojtech
    - I really liked this session, i think we have great opportunity to improve things and learn. Happy to do more recuring retros. Also happy to learn that being awesome is not my achievemnt but achievement of my parents ❤️

- Attila
    - feel free to edit this document and correct the things written if they are misinterpreted by me or missing
    - feel free to add your comments and if you have ideas how to improve things please also write them and take initiative on fixing them!
