Let’s Taste - The Retrospective

Posted By Duncs ~ 5th June 2013

Here we go then with the dissection of my “Lets Taste” session at Let’s Test 2013. After reading the great post from Aleksis where he applies 6 Hats Thinking to attending Let’s Test, I’m going to try & use the same technique for retrospecting on my session.

This retrospective also includes valuable feedback I received from Paul Holland, Fiona Charles, Iain McCowatt, Carsten Feilberg & John Stevenson- thank you all.

Whilst reading around the subject of 6 hats thinking, I found this & thought I’d use it with the Wikipedia entry to frame my post:

White Hat - Information

40 minutes talking
20 minutes open season
Session split into 2: presentation & experiential
no tables
Chairs in circle around me
Borrowed clicker off Huib
Had to change batteries in clicker before session

Red Hat - Emotions

Nervous
Excited
Anxious
Proud
Happy

Yellow Hat - Optimistic Response

Man - I’m presenting at my first conference & that conference is Let’s Test!
Happy to have been given this opportunity
Look how many people showed up!!
Nervous about presentation content - although focus had changed to more of an experience report
Nervous about experiential session - is it too contrived?
Started confident - this was going to be a piece of cake!
Full house of attendees - the biggest crowd I’d spoken in front of
Good banter at beginning - were they really only there for the chocolates?
Good response to the challenge in the experiential session
Some great probing questions carried the experiential session without me having to do too much
The “buggy” gummy bears worked a treat!
I got some really great questions about how I test sooner - working out how they could apply it in their context
Some supporting comments from an attendee stating he uses a simialr technique in larger scale organisation - that was really great to hear. I changed the session to be more of an experience report as a kind of safety measure because I was unsure if this technique could be applied in different contexts
Some of the attendees got some of the points I was trying to get across - One in particular had a look in the “factory” & found the ingredients for making sweets!

Black Hat - Discernment

I lost confidence throughout the presentation - caused me to waffle
I spoke longer than I intended - this cut into the experiential part of the session
I spent too long looking for confirmation in the attendees from the first couple of slides - I didn’t need to, the content was that deep to warrant me checking I hadn’t lost the audience
The leap from the presentation to the simulation was too much - it was tricky for the attendees to get where I was coming from
I thought I’d primed the attendees with the meatballs & that I prefer testing close to the source code, but that priming was undone with the challenge handout
The simulation was to contrived - too much going on , trying to demonstrate too much.
I had to push the attendees in the direction I wanted to go - my socratic questioning failed me
The simulation ended up being less about learning & more about teaching the idea - that’s not what I wanted
From feedback received, it was clear that the session had evolved when I was preparing it & this had a negative impact on the session

Green Hat - Creativity

Presentation adds “noise” which doesn’t add much more value than the simualtion alone
I need a simulation which gets the point across
Simulation needs to have less points to get across
What is the point?
- Testing sooner provides advantages such as fast feedback, better communication, rapport between team members
- The whole development team is responsible for quality
- Need to try & bake quality in from the beginning of development of a feature
Is the presentation actually needed?
Other simulations I’ve attended don’t have presentations, they’ve included stories of experience drip fed throughout the simulation
I don’t really like presentations as I find myself being hindered by them - maybe i’m putting too much info into them?
Need to have more courage with the session - from feedback, I know the testing approach is good & it can be scaled. As I was preparing the session, I didn’t know if this was the case or not, so shied away from saying it was scalable
Need to read up on systems thinking more - this approach to testing can be applied to big systems which have been broken down into their sub-systems, which is exactly in the case in my current employment!
Would the session be better in Lego?
Can I adapt the Scrum / Kanban Lego simulations?

Blue Hat - Thinking About Thinking

My practice sessions were only to my work colleagues - this probably meant that I received different feedback than if I had presented the session to strangers as well.
It was great to get my first conference session under my belt
That session was the first time I had carried out a session with that many people - looking after & talking to that many people are definitely skills I need to practice
OK - it didn’t go as I’d hoped, but I got some good questions & feedback from the attendees
I’ve learned some valuable lessons & I’m grateful for having the opportunity to learn
So I need to rebuild the session from the ground up
- Drop the presentation - does not tie with simulation & adds little value as it stands
- The points I’m trying to make in the presentation can be made throughout the simulation
- Drop the chocolates - they were a gimmick which didn’t pay off as I’d hoped
- What can I use instead of chocolates? I’m thinking there’s got to be something with dice or Lego
Get the attendees more involved from the start - assume roles within the simulation
I need to practice running other peoples simulations
- They are far wiser than me & their simulations are tried & trusted
- I can focus on learning how to run a simulation without the stress of creating one - creating simulations can come later
- Learning how to run a simulation first will help me to adapt in simulations & “go with the flow” if needs be
Sources of simulations I have access to include:
- Experiential Learning Jerry Weinberg
- Problem Solving Leadership Weinberg, Rothman & Derby
- Collaboration Games Karen Greaves and Samantha Laing
- Gamestorming Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo
- Lego Simulations Various
- Lean Simulations Org Various
I still prefer an experiential session over a straight up lecture - I just need to get better running the simulations before trying to create my own!

All in all, a great experience & I’m thankful for everyone who chose to attend my session - I hope you got something out of it other than just a sugar high!

Whats next? Rebuild the testing sooner simulation, run other peoples simulations with smaller groups of people, preferably strangers…