Benjy StantonRetro note – have more retros
- Author Benjy Stanton
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A weeknote starting 14 April 2025.
Know your stakeholders
My post last week seemed to go to down well. But, after boldly proclaiming that I'd solved stakeholder management, I was humbled this week. After working hard to gather everyone's opinion, I left one Very Senior Stakeholder out.
Then, at a meeting where I was hoping to simply rubber stamp the designs, that Very Senior Stakeholder turned up with lots of critiques and challenges that I just wasn't ready for. Lesson learnt for next time, make sure you include the right people.
This is a running theme with the current service I'm on. The stakeholder landscape is very complex.
My first retro (on this team)
On to positives though, we had our first retro this week. It's the first we've had since about October 2024. I'll never go that long without one again, or at least without strongly recommending that we have one.
As the Atlassian page linked above says…
These meetings are essential because regularly assessing and improving processes leads to quality results and fewer obstacles.
It was massively cathartic, and I felt much more aligned with my team. I think there was some pretty strong agreement about the things we need to do to help with the problems we've been facing.
Sometimes retros can feel like a waste of time or too introspective, but I think our team is approaching a point where the problems blocking our ways of working are preventing us, and the wider service team, from meeting user needs.
Anyway, that's enough weeknotes for now. I'm off to enjoy a long weekend walking around beaches and eating chocolate.
Solidarity with trans people