S12E11 The Past is Your Teacher === Sundi: Welcome to another episode of Elixir Wizards, Dan: a podcast brought to you by SmartLogic, a custom web and mobile development shop. Owen: This is Season 12, Office Hours, where we invite you to step into our office for candid conversations with the SmartLogic team about everything from discovery to deployment to the magic of maintenance. [00:00:11] Hey everyone, I'm Dan Ivovich, director of engineering at SmartLogic, and I'll be your host for today's episode. [00:00:16] For the Office Hours season finale, we're joined by Alicia Brindisi, Project Manager at SmartLogic, and Bri LaVorgna, Vice President of Delivery at SmartLogic. In this episode, we're going to wrap up the season by reflecting on retrospectives, exploring how to maximize their impact, and understanding their essential role in driving continuous improvement. [00:00:35] Hey, Alicia. Hey, Bri. [00:00:36] Hi, Dan. [00:00:38] Hey, Dan. [00:00:39] You are both returning guests for the Office Hours season, but in case somebody missed your amazing episode, why don't we do a quick, who you are, what you do here, how you got into your role. we'll start with Alicia. [00:00:53] My name is Alicia. I'm a senior project manager at SmartLogic, and I make sure that all of our projects are on time and on budget, that the clients have what they need, and the team has what they need to move forward. I've been working in this space for a number of years. Prior to that, I worked in international education and development. [00:01:13] Yeah, that's me, I guess. [00:01:15] Welcome back. [00:01:17] All right, Bri. [00:01:18] All right, Bri LaVorgna, VP of Delivery. Uh, that means I work really closely with you, Dan, uh, to make sure the project teams are delivering on budget, on time, happy clients, but also making sure that we're pushing innovation, we do a little sales, we do a little bit, a little bit of everything at SmartLogic. [00:01:33] How I got here was a windy path. I don't know. I started in education, was a vice principal, a college dean, and then made the jump to IT and really just enjoy growing people, growing companies and making sure we're delivering to, we're exceeding expectations. [00:01:50] [00:01:50] Fantastic. All right. So, uh, retrospectives, as we, as we reflect on this season, as we reflect on projects, as we retrospect on, Everything. Let's retrospect on retrospectives. But starting with the basics, Alicia, can you break down what a retrospective involves, at its core? [00:02:07] Sure, so a retrospective is an Agile ceremony, in the kind of pure form of Agile, you would do this once a sprint period and you would reflect on how that sprint went, what went right, what went wrong, what are some things that we could move forward in the next sprint, to improve our processes or communication or how we're approaching things. [00:02:31] It's an opportunity to have a checkpoint with everyone in the team and sometimes with the client to see how we can constantly improve. [00:02:40] kind of building on constant improvement. Bri, when you think about a retrospective, what is the core thing you're hoping the team achieves during that time? [00:02:47] You know, not only just opening up the door for honest and clear, transparent communication with the project team, because like you need to have these really great working agreements where you have trust and you're able to give critical feedback to each other or reflect on a process to make improvements. [00:03:00] I think ultimately, it's the opportunity to celebrate. The good things that happen, it's not always a critical opportunity, but also coming out with tangibles, what is it that we can actually do to improve the process, to improve our output, to prove how we're working with each other or engaging with a client that we can implement tomorrow. [00:03:18] so I think, ultimately it's some sort of tangible, actionable, measurable, quantifiable, doable thing, that you can put in practice. [00:03:26] Awesome. Alicia, what do you think about in terms of like preparation for a successful retro? [00:03:32] it's often difficult to be a facilitator of a retro if you're on the project as well, because you want to insert your views and opinions. Also, I've struggled with this myself, so I think it's creating the framework to allow the team, one, the space to voice their opinions, ideally in a non anonymized way, to build that trust even before the retro starts so the team feels safe there, and to kind of, Ask the right questions, make sure that you're setting up the retro board in a way that's not too prescriptive, that you're kicking off topics in a way where you're not imposing your opinion. [00:04:11] So you want to facilitate and do that preparation of what would be the best framework where the team is going to be able to have enough direction to know what they need to say, but not too much where you're imposing your views. [00:04:25] Bri, do you want to add anything to that? [00:04:29] Yeah, I think it's in terms of preparation because you can set up like Alicia said, like asking the right questions. So really thinking about what is the output that you're looking, what is the desired output that you're looking for? is it just to reflect maybe on just that particular sprint or do you need to have a moment in the project flow where you need to have a larger scale? [00:04:49] time frame they need to be reflecting on. so what is it that you want to reflect on? What is the feedback that you're looking to collect? And what's going to be most actual and most impactful for the project team to move forward? So knowing what you're striving [00:05:00] to extract or to collect from the team, and then setting up your questions, setting up the format, using the right tools, and just being prepared to facilitate [00:05:08] Alicia, when you talk about like having a board that's not too prescriptive but also set up in a way that it's helping the team, do you have any kind of favorite board setups or things that work particularly well in one scenario or another? [00:05:21] Yeah, at SmartLogic, we use a tool called Retrium, which is just really user friendly, so you can customize your board, you can use a pre determined template.I like the formats of the Retrium templates. That's my favorite one is the 4L. It's liked, lacked, longed for, [00:05:41] Learned. [00:05:42] and loved. [00:05:43] and learned. [00:05:44] Yeah, and I really like start stop continue as well. I think it's any, anything that is going to provide an opportunity to. Say what didn't go well, but acknowledge what did go well, to celebrate each other, to acknowledge learnings that we are moving forward. so getting that balance is really important because it, retros can often skew negative and I don't think they're necessarily productive when they're all negative. [00:06:15] Agreed. [00:06:17] Yeah, I know one that we've used on occasion. I really enjoy is the sailboat one. [00:06:22] knew you're going there. just, it resonates [00:06:25] with me. [00:06:26] and because I think the 4Ls are very good and there's overlap in all of these, but I think the, I resonate with the sailboat one because it's the picture is a sailboat and that's the idea, but the columns that are related to things like, what is, what's the wind things, external things that are pushing the team in any given direction. [00:06:43] And what are the anchors that are holding you back? And the rocks are things that you could see ahead that you need to avoid, or that could be pitfalls. And the sails are like how we as a team are working together to harness the energy we have and some things like that. And I don't know, to me, it's, It's just interesting to focus on those pieces. [00:06:59] And I also do like Start, Stop, Continue and the 4Ls as well. so when you're picking one, Alicia, what are the types of things you continue, you consider? [00:07:08] What's worked in the past, either with that configuration of team members or on other projects? again, what's going to be a balance for conversation with Start, Stop, Continue? I think Continue is actually the most important column because Implicit in both start and stop is something negative. [00:07:28] Stop is you're not doing it correctly, do it differently. start is you're not doing something right, start doing this other thing. But continue is like, let's all acknowledge that we're doing a good job and we've discovered things and we can keep doing those. And that's also implicit in some of the 4Ls. [00:07:45] Again, it's finding that balance. I feel like at this point, I know our team's well enough where I know it's going to work or not. And, or maybe like you were saying with the sailboat, like that's a kind of has a cutesy framework. And maybe if morale is low, you want to use emojis or you want to inject some humor into something. [00:08:03] So it's like, where are we in the project and who, what is our makeup and what do we need in terms of both structure and vibe? [00:08:14] Bri, any other thoughts on picking a retro format? [00:08:17] Plus one to all the things you guys have said. I think the one that kind of takes the continue to the next level is probably the starfish one, which is like, what can you do more of? What do you mean less of? what can you keep doing, start doing and stop doing? So it's just taking that, that continuing, maybe just fleshing out a little bit more granularity. [00:08:35] plus I also liked it as a starfish and I did the cutesy part of it. but at the end of the day, it's the value of the feedback and kind of really helping people frame. What they want to say in a constructive way that we can then have a constructive conversation about it together as a team. [00:08:50] Alicia, are there any challenges that you see come up during? A retro that like, just happened kind of often or the, it can be early pitfalls if a team's adopting this for the first time. [00:09:02] Yeah, I think what I mentioned before is if you're a facilitator and a project member, balancing those roles can be challenging. when there are interpersonal conflicts on a team, not having that be injected into the retro feedback, or at least like not having the retro go off track and veer into interpersonal conflict. [00:09:29] Retros happen frequently, and it's not that we don't want them. issues don't repeat themselves, but there can be a tendency to not be able to move on from the past. if we've discussed something, if we're actively addressing it, but it was a big deal, sometimes it can be a challenge to get people to move forward, to focus on like, we all acknowledge this happened, but what can we do better in the future? [00:09:56] Basically not having it be a bitch session. and have [00:10:00] it be a productive conversation of, we recognize there are issues, but let's be solution oriented. [00:10:06] Is there any tips for keeping things on track when it turns, tends to be a, a rehashing of things? [00:10:14] As a facilitator, interjecting, putting, kind of stopping the bleeding on that type of conversation, and also saying, we can address this separately online, or this is a really great topic, and it feels like there's a lot of rich discussion here, and it might warrant a separate call, but we don't want to take up the time of this meeting. [00:10:37] that's the role of the facilitator, is to use those levers to keep the. Conversation moving [00:10:42] Bri, I think sometimes it's easy for retros to start feeling like just another thing that we have to check off because the process says we should. What are your thoughts on keeping them, uh, valuable, fresh, engaging? [00:10:59] Yeah, it's so easy to go, Oh, we'll just move that meeting or, you know, we'll do it the next time. Um, I think, you know, the whole point of iterating and the whole point of being agile is that this is baked into the process. And, [00:11:11] it's the, once you start removing it, then you're removing. the importance of it. [00:11:15] So it really needs to be baked into the culture. The importance is, the fact that we all value improving our process, improving our output, also improving working together and how we communicate. And so I think it's just one of those things that you have to prioritize because it's beneficial. So how do you maintain that momentum? [00:11:32] You have really clear action items at the end of a retro. And you don't lose sight of them. They don't just go on a list somewhere and then you just forget about them. They have to be brought back up as the can. So, you know, Alicia does a nice job summarizing the notes at the end and sharing those notes out. [00:11:46] this is what we came up with. This is what we discussed to it. And here are the next steps. And then,starting the next retro revisiting those action items or bringing those action items to the standups going like, Hey, so and so, you said you were going to do X, Y, Z. You just want to check in. [00:11:58] How did that go? Or do you need assistance with that? And so I think if you, with any process that you're improving, it, Great. You improved it. You had that conversation. Wonderful. But it's now what's so what? So you have to make action happen to the action items so that your team sees, Oh, we just didn't have that conversation, but we are actually making behavior changes and effort to make those things move forward. [00:12:20] And then the values in that effort. And so when people realize [00:12:23] that it's not just a conversation, have a conversation, but that we're going to actually do things differently, that's where the power is. [00:12:31] Yeah, I think that dovetails really nicely back to what Alicia was saying around, if you're just rehashing the past, if you're talking about things that really need maybe their own place in space that you can lose sight of, the goal here is to figure out how we can all move forward in a better direction. [00:12:47] And if we don't have action items, or if we don't have outcomes that we can agree on and move forward, it doesn't mean that we're going to solve every problem under the sun, but we're going to find some decent, find some, discreet things that we can actually make a change on. And I think, I mean, I've been at SmartLogic a long time and I think, Alicia coming in and from a retrospective really kind of owning those action items and saying okay, what are the concrete things we're going to do? [00:13:11] Who are they assigned to and how are we going to follow up on them? And I think that was a realization for me from a continuous improvement standpoint around Like these things are just as valuable as the backlog because building the team is as important as building the product. And you kind of can't do one without the other. [00:13:26] and so making sure that those things get captured and followed up on,it's really easy to say, this is something different than what we're doing day to day, but it's not, it's all part of the team. [00:13:36] Yeah, I also think because we're at an agency with multiple projects and multiple clients running concurrently, having that shared Knowledge as an organization is really helpful because it's not like one project is going to have a problem that's unique to it that can't be applied to other projects. So [00:13:56] sharing out those action items can help the organization because they can often spur really great ideas like, oh, we should have a template for this type of document, or we should have this new process in our project that could be helpful to another client and another other work that's happening at the same time. [00:14:14] Any [00:14:15] particular [00:14:15] moments that have come up that, [00:14:18] you know, spur [00:14:18] a significant change? [00:14:20] I don't think we've done this yet but there was a really great idea in a recent retro where we had to take over a project from another development shop, and one of the team members had the idea of doing, creating a template for when those types of handoffs happen in the future to make them more productive, more useful, then it creates almost like a dossier for that handoff. So we looked back on how that handoff went for us and realized it wasn't like it was bad, but it could have gone better. And so if we have this kind of standardization around that, we're setting ourselves up for success in the [00:15:00] future. [00:15:00] Alicia, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't design reviews also come from an idea in a retro? so we now have baked in our process, the design and dev are now having You know, routine collaborations. Cause like we knew we wanted to strengthen that touch point. And so we changed the whole process by baking that in our project management philosophy. [00:15:20] no, I'm pretty sure that came from Retro. [00:15:22] There's also, there's kind of like a meta level of we've changed the process around retros, [00:15:27] where [00:15:28] it's like the retro summary notes was an idea that came out of retros and sharing the action items at the beginning was a suggestion from a retro. So You know, retros can improve themselves. [00:15:39] we've touched a little bit on interpersonal dynamics, but obviously any team of some number of people can probably have at least that number of people of opinions around various things. in a contentious moment, Alicia, what's your strategy on dealing with that conflict? [00:15:55] I think it's important to acknowledge to both parties or multiple parties that they're being heard and they're not being dismissed. And again, it's that facilitator role. you're not there to say yes or no or to knock down an idea. It's to say like, yes, I hear you. That's acknowledge or documenting it. [00:16:14] we're recording it in the summary. And again, if there's a need, we can create a dedicated space to hash that out. you don't want that to spill over into the whole retro or take up too much time or get out of control. But I think retros are a place where people are allowed to vent. And sometimes that is a good thing. [00:16:36] And sometimes That can go awry. So as long as you're doing your job as a moderator and containing it, but also respecting people's opinions and voices. [00:16:48] Yeah, it makes me think about how you have to make sure from the get go that everybody's coming in with good faith. Right? And I [00:16:53] think, [00:16:54] Yeah, I mean, we work with a stellar team and while we have differences of opinion, I think it's widely understood that nobody's coming in trying to cause an issue or wanting things to be uncomfortable. [00:17:03] but in the heat of the moment, I think having somebody.who can facilitate that? Okay. Yeah. we're going to disagree. That's all right. let's focus on what we can change so that we can all be more productive and, do, to do a better job by each other and by the product and the, by the client. [00:17:19] Sometimes the facilitator to, to guide that is, so Alicia Paramount, people need to have that space in place and to be heard and to, to build that trust that they can share these things. But sometimes it's the facilitator, it's, you know, you shift the conversation by asking clarifying questions. [00:17:37] So identifying what is the root cause of the point of frustration. Asking questions. Asking the person who brought that to them, what would be a solution to that situation? How would you approach it differently? How could the other person have approached you in a way that would have precipitated a different kind of result? [00:17:52] And so sometimes it's asking open ended questions, trying to get the conversation to an actionable state, and something that's a little bit more concrete, a little bit more objective, removing the subjective feelings around it and getting to, okay, this is the issue. Repeating back, am I correct in understanding that this is the issue that you're bringing in? [00:18:10] All right, team, who has some ideas? and so sometimes either asking the person who brought the clarifying point of contention to the table, or sometimes it's a really good opportunity to call on somebody who's been kind of quiet and reserved, what are your thoughts about this? I think that's also really important, is to encourage engagement from all voices, not just always the loudest ones, and not always the ones that are bringing the things that are most critical. [00:18:33] I think that's a good point around facilitation is like, no one should be necessarily forced to speak, but making sure the people who don't speak. Often, at least given space to, um, you know, and that may mean explicitly asking for it or creating that opportunity. It may also mean understanding that some people just like, like to think about things before they [00:18:54] respond and making sure that you have the time and the space kind of created to let those things come to the surface. [00:19:01] Alicia, when, we've talked a bit about, The value of this, like any particular way in which we try to measure retro success or, metrics or gathering feedback. We talked about retro and retro, but any other kind of feedback mechanisms or success criteria? [00:19:16] yeah, I think just like with employee feedback, the best feedback is given in real time. So by baking in retros and doing them on a regular cadence, even if it's not a race sprint, you're allowing yourself to kind of right the ship if a project is getting off track, so I think that's the success metric is that as long as we still have, team members feeling like their voices are being heard, and they have that space and things like that. [00:19:44] And we're allowing, A vehicle to improve the project work itself in, Service to the client and the product that we're working on, then that's the success metric. [00:19:56] I think there's something good in there For our listeners who are not, [00:20:00] in, in project leadership or otherwise, right? if you're participating in retros, keep in mind, like you can give feedback on more than just like my pull requests take too long to get reviewed, right? [00:20:09] Like you can give feedback on the process itself or maybe even the retro itself, and I think when we think about. okay, our time since the last retro, like it's okay to consider the last retro part of that time period and feedback on that and how we handled the action items and the outcomes of that can be, perfectly fair game for how the last few weeks have gone. [00:20:31] Mm [00:20:37] Yeah and that's also why we also started looking at the last retro at the beginning of a new retro to have that kind of anchoring point of like, where were we and have we improved and where are we headed next? if you're just having retros to have them, then they're not that helpful. You need that kind of point in time or that at least review of the past in order to make the most of them. [00:20:58] Builds continuity. [00:21:00] Oh, you know, this, this is, this is what I spend, 98 percent of my week doing, but there's so much more to that. And in, in that day to day, it's easy to lose sight of the improvements since the last retro. And so I think that, that period of reflection of Hey, a sprint ago, we were struggling with this and now we're not. [00:21:17] And, or maybe we still are, or maybe there's, we got the 80 percent solution and we can get another 10 percent in if we talk about it again, knowing what we know now, cause if nothing else, a sprint later, we all have more information. [00:21:30] Yeah, and I know we do this sometimes at SmartLogic, but having a separate retro for all of the whole project, [00:21:38] like looking at it from the [00:21:39] beginning to the end. [00:21:40] If we have, that's also an opportunity to have, you have a different time horizon and you're looking at where were we six months ago, a year ago, and where are we now? [00:21:49] And that is definitely a good place to look at improvements and larger learnings and bigger lessons than just like, , pull requests and things like that. [00:21:58] Yeah, I think everyone agreeing to the scope of the retro is really important. And the, I think where I struggle sometimes when we say, let's do a project wrap up one is where's the end of a project? Because that's always a little fuzzy. but, it can be helpful to think back on the whole thing. [00:22:13] and kind of look at that. So in kind of in that vein, then, when we're scheduling retros, not every project has the same cadence, the same needs, the same, well, we're always, we're always week sprints, you know, and then we do a, a retro, maybe every other sprint. but like that doesn't always fit every project. [00:22:31] So how do you think [00:22:32] about frequency? [00:22:33] Yeah, I think what I've seen work, and this is particular to SmartLogic because we have smaller teams or smaller projects, is the once a month retro. it's a good chunk of time. we usually have three to four sprints in that time. So that feels good. But we've had larger projects with larger teams with a lot going on where we've needed to do it every other week. [00:22:56] Or possibly every week. So it, I think it really depends on the size of the team, the amount of work that's going on, the issues that the team are facing. It's kind of customizable project to project. [00:23:09] And it's okay to change that cadence. depending on the tempo of the team and if the last couple of retros haven't really been resulting in a lot of meat and a lot of output, then just having that open honest conversation going, is this meeting your needs team? Or is this a good use of our time? [00:23:24] Or should we adjust the cadence? And it's being agile with being agile, even for the ceremony that's at play. So. [00:23:32] We talked a bit about action items and notes, we've done a lot to try to formalize the outcomes of retros, but, Alicia, for anyone listening who, feels like they're struggling a little bit with retros kind of being a thing that happens and then disappearing into thin air. any tips, that you kind of have seen as you've, if you've made that a bigger part of SmartLogic's process? [00:23:50] Yeah, so we integrate it into the project management tool that we use called ClickUp. And so for anyone who's not familiar with that, it's similar to like an Asana or a Jira where you can create tasks or tickets. So, instead of just having an action item be a line item on an agenda or notes document or on a retro board, you convert it to a task, you assign it to someone, you possibly put it into a sprint, you put a due date on it, you don't let it just die in a list somewhere. [00:24:20] So, building the accountability mechanisms around the action items, and then I think it's helped as well to organize the note summaries, keep them in the same virtual place as the action items, and to share them internally with leadership. It just builds an extra level of visibility and accountability. [00:24:39] Bri, any other thoughts on following [00:24:42] up? I love that we share all this stuff. because like, you know, from a leadership standpoint, watching the trends over projects or watching how certain project teams are solving for certain things,I think it can really be informative for Professional development for the team. It could be informative for, enticing a conversation about process improvement [00:25:00] company wide or revisiting certain things. [00:25:02] So I think from my standpoint, I'm super grateful that the project teams are committed to their own process improvement, but I think for me, it really helps feed and inform. how are we doing? Where are we going? What should we be thinking about? and what should be including to, to improve company wide as well? [00:25:16] So as much transparency and communication as you can is great. [00:25:21] I also know [00:25:21] that [00:25:21] there are some attitudes at Certain agencies and certain product teams were like, no, this is our personal space, our personal feedback. And they kind of like to put up some pretty strong walls. And I think as a company, and I'm super proud of that, we kind of shifted that energy to being much more inclusive and much more transparent. [00:25:39] And the fact that we are sharing the output , cross company, I think that only strengthens other project teams and other company wide efforts. So I'm all about starting from the beginning, having a really positive, inclusive culture and like understanding that like, Hey, yeah, this is for us here and we're going to, we might vent some things out here, but we might also celebrate some certain things here, but also, we're part of a bigger picture, of the puzzle. [00:26:04] Yeah, and we don't attribute notes to anyone, or we do, unless that person has consent to that. So the retro board itself is anonymous. Obviously the discussions aren't, but my note summaries are. I don't say, so and so said this thing, you know, it's just in general, these topics were discussed, which allows for that safe space. [00:26:32] Yeah, I know we've done [00:26:33] a few iterations on kind of like how much note to take, and it's tough, right? Cause it's not it's not like you're taking like, word for word notes, right? And I think that would be, kind of inappropriate and also not helpful. [00:26:44] cause I don't need to sit and reread the transcript effectively of a 45 hour long meeting. but having those bullet points of clear acceptance criteria, QA steps, just like whatever the things are that are coming up either as working really well, or that we're struggling with, to Bri's point, that helps us inform like professional development opportunities, all hands conversations, things that we can look for that we can approve across the board. [00:27:07] as well as things that we can celebrate across the board in terms of process and,we've been doing a lot of process improvement lately, and I think this is all kind of plays hand in hand. so let's say we've sold somebody who's not doing retros on retros, and they're going to, start now. [00:27:23] Alicia, what do you want to tell them? [00:27:25] I think I would tell them to internalize the spirit of a retro to themselves. So know that there are opportunities for improvement on how you facilitate on how you set up your board on the process itself. So just do it like do it as a first step because that's going to give you the first data point of what's working and what's not working. [00:27:51] Then you can improve upon that as you have more retros. We also in the retrium tool at the end of every retro, it has a little survey that says was this helpful? So if you're new to retros and you're just starting, you can ask that question to your team. Like we, we did this, we're starting a new process. [00:28:10] What would you like to see? what could we do differently? So it's like retros about retros, but, even if you don't, Have a formal process around that, like having that attitude of it might not be perfect the first time. [00:28:21] Bri, any other thoughts on first time retro runners? [00:28:25] Yeah, I mean, I know this is not a plug, but love Retrium as a tool for any new facilitators. It really guides you through, like you click the button, it takes you to the next step. It's a very easy tool to use, and it helps you navigate the process as to putting all the feedback, sorting the feedback, prioritizing, voting, so it's a really easy tool for [00:28:47] a brand new [00:28:49] user. The second piece of advice that I would give that I am constantly learning myself is embrace the pregnant pauses. Pregnant pauses are good. And as a facilitator, you want to keep it going and you want to keep the conversation going. So you might start talking, might give your opinion. [00:29:05] And, to Alicia's point, like learning as a facilitator, if you are the project team, your voice, not that it should be last, but you want to open the floor, you want to facilitate group discussion and those pregnant pauses. They usually work something fantastic, so them be. [00:29:20] you're not producing a radio show. Open mics are not a problem. You can let that silence do the heavy lifting. people get uncomfortable and they want to fill it with something and they'll, uh, they'll say what's on [00:29:29] their mind, right? [00:29:30] They will, it always works. [00:29:33] All right. Well, as we near the end here, are there any other. Kind of tidbits on retros or retrospectives or, process improvement in general that you'd like to share. [00:29:42] That's how you gotta prioritize it. It's important. I know, especially, time and materials, it's expensive when you think about hourly rates and putting them in a group and, what is the real value and sometimes selling that value or communicating it to a client can be, an uncomfortable conversation if they don't understand how Agile works. [00:29:58] But It really [00:30:00] is just as important as, a daily stand up. It's a true Agile ceremony and a part of the process. As long as you're making those changes, you're taking those action items and implementing them. having a retro just to have a retro that nothing changes or nothing is celebrated to continue and support that behavior, continuing [00:30:17] to happen, then they lose their, they lose all their value in their magic. [00:30:22] So you got to prioritize it. And I assure you, if you prioritize it and you come out with real cool action items and you show that those action items are changing process and improving things, the value is clear. [00:30:33] [00:30:36] All right. thank you both for your time. as we come to a close here, are there any, anything you'd like to ask of the audience, anything you'd like to plug or just like advice? [00:30:46] So, I mean, I'll always plug us. Um, so we are here not only, uh, for SmartLogic. So if you are interested more about retros, um, or any kind of project management, skill set, we can help consult with that as well. we would love to partner with you and, to show you, to model and to help self set you up. [00:31:02] so project management is a service that we also offer aside from building really cool mobile and web applications. So if you have those needs too, we're here for you. So check us on, LinkedIn, check us on social, or you can just, if you have any needs whatsoever, my email is probably the easiest out there. [00:31:18] It's Bri, B R I at SmartLogic. io Message me and I'll get you connected. [00:31:24] All right. Well, thank you both for your time. It was really, uh, really great to reflect on retrospectives with you all. And thank you all for listening and, we'll see you next season. [00:31:35] Thanks for having us. Dan: Elixir Wizards is a production of SmartLogic. Owen: You can find us online at smartlogic.io and we're @SmartLogic on Twitter. Sundi: Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review. Dan: This episode was produced and edited by Paloma Pechenik for SmartLogic. Yair: Hey, this is Yair Flicker, president of SmartLogic, the company that brings you this podcast. SmartLogic is a consulting company that helps our clients accelerate the pace of their product development. We build custom software applications for our clients, typically using Phoenix and Elixir, Rails, React, and Flutter for mobile app development. We're always happy to get acquainted even if there isn't an immediate need or opportunity. And, of course, referrals are always greatly appreciated. Please email contact@smartlogic.io to chat. Thanks, and have a great day!