The Company Retrospective — looking at a company as if it’s an agile project
A company is a living body. A live organism whose sole purpose is to survive in the harsh environment of the market that it operates within. The ultimate goal is, of course, the profit. Because without the profit, there is no company. So to run a company, which is to make profit, the management’s primary job is to continuously be wary of its surrounding in order to shrewdly predict the next move. And the next move should be the one that moves the company one step forward in the direction of its goal. It’s important to realise the challenges come from the inside as much as they do from the outside. Companies that recognise this are the ones that can survive and stay healthy.
At Typeqast, our goal is to become one of the biggest and the strongest software development agencies in the country, with the best working culture, coolest clients, modern tech and the most competent development teams. So for us, a step forward is a step in that direction.
We are still a young company. We’re changing the way we work all the time and still trying to find ourselves. And there’s many unknowns in every aspect of work. We discover and learn as we go. So in essence, the process of growing a young company such as Typeqast draws many similarities to the process of working on a software development project. The company has a desired state, in software project terms that would be the business problem you are trying to solve. The company has a general plan how to do it, in software project terms that would be the architectural diagram. The company has a group of individuals it relies on to execute the vision, in software project terms that would be the development team. So you start “the project”. And as in life, the problems start appearing, and they keep happening all the time. New day, new problem or a new impediment. For me, someone who you might call a seasoned software developer, there is so much similarities between these two worlds. And what I mastered in software development I try to use in company management — Agile approach to solving problems.
Software industry is a young one, today maybe in its 40s or 50s. Over the course of the industry’s lifespan, smart people came to the realization that the main problem of the industry is not the technology, but to know what the relevant product we are trying to build actually is. With several decades of iterations, we now know that the Agile approach is one of the very few that makes it possible to get to an end of a project, due to its nature of constant feedback and continuous adaptation to the situation.
There are obvious parallels between the problem of finishing a software project and the problem of creating and running a fast growing company. In my own case, the company is a software development agency, but the problem is universal. Like software development project, the company also has a desired end state or a goal. And that goal is pretty vague and hard to visualise in the beginning. So you’re wandering in the dark and trying things out to see what works. You get valuable feedback, adapt and carry on. As in software development project, the environment will soon start to change and new obstacles will appear all the time. But how to keep moving forward when you’re being hit from all the sides all the time? The answer is simple: just keep moving. If you stop, you’re dead. Many books illustrate this nicely as driving a bicycle: if you stop, you’ll just fall down on the side. You have to move forward, you constantly have to steer around obstacles, grip your handlebars tight and move it left and right in order to stay up and not to fall.
Agile retrospective
One of the popular team ceremonies in Agile software development is The Retrospective Meeting. The idea behind it is that, from time to time, we diverge from the ideal path and as a team we start loosing focus and start doing things in a wrong way. So we have to stop and look back to see what went good, and more importantly why it went good, and do the same for the things that went bad or wrong. We do this to regain focus towards our end goal. To move forward in the right direction is to resolve those problems that are pulling us down and making us detour from our way.
So if we are to treat a company as an agile project, from time to time we need to stop and see where we are as a company and where we’re heading. To inspect where we’re strong and what we need to change or completely stop doing. Do a reset. And in Typeqast, we did just that. Welcome to The Company Retrospecitve workshop.
Idea of The Company Retrospective workshop
I came to the idea of such workshop some time ago. It took me few months to refine the idea in my head, but I had a very clear picture how we would organise such event and what the expected outcome should be. Since one of our offices is rather small and young compared to the other one, we decided that this exercise would only have value if we organise it in the office that had some history by now and that had accumulated certain issues and frustrations over that time.
Since the office counts almost 50 heads, it was impossible to expect a productive dialogue with so many people involved. So we divided the team in 3 groups. Each group had its own dedicated workshop day. What was clear from the very beginning is that we needed an experienced agile coach to moderate the workshop if we wanted to make it focused and get a valuable output out of it. We needed impartial external person on this position to avoid possible bias. Our dear friend and advisor for all agile things, Andrea, came to the rescue. Second thing that was clear is that my presence as a CEO is not an option. To allow people to speak freely and openly I had to be away. So we kicked myself out of the picture completely.
To make the workshop as productive as possible, we wanted to find out upfront what people would like to discuss about. That’s why we sent (quite a lengthy) survey to all participants few weeks before the workshop, to get their initial feedback so that we can prepare the topics they would really like to hear about.
We did the workshop with 3 separate groups of people, each group composed of a mix of seniors and juniors, “workers” and “managers”, people who had been in the company for some time now and people who had just recently joined us. Each group had its own 3 hours of workshop at disposal. We tried to stimulate discussion on all possible topics in each group and it worked like a charm. With the help of many post-it games and exercises, people openly shared everything that bothered them. The good and the bad. And we kept writing it all down. The goal was just that: to write it all down, analyse and act on it.
The topics covered included:
Employee satisfaction
- Feedback and recognition
- Work and life blend
- Alignment and involvement
Typeqast leadership
- Company leadership
- Team management
Project mamanagement
- Overall
Team setup and stability
- Communication and collaboration
- Teamwork and ownership
Typeqast performance
- Inovation
- Engagement
- Service and quality focus
Client relationship and satisfaction
- Overall
Tools and processes
- Learning and development
- Enablement
As you can see, it’s a comprehensive list of many things that as a company we work on and want to make better. Some topics might be more relevant than others, depending on where in the hierarchy one is. Feedback from the initial survey was used to craft the agenda of the workshop day. All topics were equally discussed with each group, and as we would have expected, all 3 groups came out with very similar results in form of questions, concerns and action points.
The conclusion
At the end of the workshop week, we spent one whole day analysing and filtering down all the findings. We had 9 hours of discussion to distil. The result was an All Hands meeting with the entire office. The meeting was led by myself and the agenda was very simple: try to give answers to the questions people have asked and to address the concerns they have shown on the workshop.
In the All Hands meeting, we divided the results in 3 groups:
- The good: What we like and want to continue doing
- The bad: What needs to answered, discussed or clarified
- The ugly: What we need to stop immediately or redefine
We went through all the questions, one by one, around 60 Powerpoint slides total. And tried to elaborate and answer each question with enough details so that people’s concerns are addressed. As a result, we came out with the list of concrete action points that we will work on in the coming months. The workshop gave us clear focus on which things we need to work harder to make a stronger company and a better workplace for everyone.
In the end, I think everyone was pleased with the workshop and its results. It gave the management points to act upon. It gave the people reassurance that someone is listening to them. The workshop gave us the fuel to keep the company moving towards the right direction for the coming period.
I would like to thank every Typeqaster who was involved and contributed with their open and honest feedback and ideas. The Company Retrospective workshop is something that we will definitely continue doing on a regular basis, just as you would do in a software development project if you want it to succeed. And we do want Typeqast to succeed as a company.
