This week, we completed the guts of a feature which will allow facilitators to go back and undo a completed retrospective Group phase in order to regroup reflection cards.

The code for this feature is expected to ship into production next week, but it won’t be visible to users. This is something to celebrate. You see, when our colleague started implementing the undo feature user story from our backlog, she got stuck because the UI for the feature wasn’t specified to a degree she could build with certainty. Rather than mark the story as “stuck” and switching to work on something else, we decided to make the feature accessible via a “cheat code.” By entering the keystrokes “ididntmeanto” at a completed Group phase, developers can test and validate that the feature works, unblocking its ability to be merged into a release. The unfinished bit of UI has been added to a new user story which will be prioritized during our next sprint and picked up by a team member with the appropriate skill specialization. If users write into our support looking for a way to undo the Group phase of the meeting, we’ll have a way to serve them.

Our team development philosophy—to get work shaped to a degree it can be tested and released, is an important principle of agile teamwork: dividing larger work into smaller chunks that can be shipped to stay nimble and moving forward.

There were green lights all across the board this week. We’re noting an ever so slight softening in the rate of new user signups, and a significant increase in the number of weekly meetings held.

…earned a flattering and well-produced review of Parabol on CRM.org. We particularly appreciate the well produced visuals from our brand palette.

…facilitated retrospectives at the World Agility Forum’s eXperience agile 2020 conference. We were invited to lead retrospectives with conference participants in order to improve the delivery of the conference while it was going on. It was a blast and we were grateful for being able to participate.

…shipped a great enhancement to the Tasks dashboard that allows you to filter by any team and user. Curious to see how loaded a colleague is across their teams? Now you can.

…kick off an abbreviated Sprint 66. The next one will be two days shorter in order to give folks two days off before our next all-team retreat, S.P.A. 16.

Have feedback? See something that you like or something you think could be better? Leave a public response here, or write to us.