How to run a Design System team ceremony or workshop
This document details the principles, tools and resources we use when planning and running a ceremony or workshop on the Design System team.
Facilitation principles
There are some principles that are important to remember when planning and facilitating a ceremony or workshop on the Design System team:
- consider if there are asynchronous methods you can use to get the information you need. With remote working it is easy to experience video call fatigue.
- share an agenda and session details ahead of time (including links to slide decks and collaboration tools). This helps participants prepare for the session and frame their thoughts - it can be difficult to think on the spot.
- consider the accessibility of the tools used in the session - we prefer to use Trello or Padlet.
- make use of the ‘optional’ invite for those who don’t need to be there.
- if it’s an open workshop, consider adding the meeting to the Design System team events calendar which can be seen by all. Ask a delivery manager for a link to the calendar.
- avoid booking over the lunch period (12-2pm). We generally avoid that period for meetings to give everyone an opportunity to have lunch and get away from their desks.
- things always take longer than you think they will! Scope your session carefully and ensure it ends on time.
Ceremonies
All team ceremonies should live in the Design System team events calendar. This is to ensure multiple people can access the calendar entries to make amendments if the facilitator / owner is absent. It also helps with visibility of squad ceremonies to help prevent clashes.
Stand up
The team currently hold separate stand ups for each squad in a given cycle. These can either be a syncronous stand up on Google Meet or an asyncronous stand up hosted on Slack.
During the syncronous stand ups, use of the GitHub project board is encouraged to track progress against a brief.
Keeping stand up focused
Do your best to ensure stand up keeps to 15 mins but this can be tricky when conversation starts flowing! Encourage the team to take detailed conversations offline.
Show & tell / mid-cycle demo
Show and tell occurs in reflection week. Mid-cycle demo occurs in week 2 of a cycle. The facilitator will take a copy of the previous slide deck and prepare it ready for sharing. The team is prompted on the no-meeting day beforehand to prepare slides.
We expect to hear from every brief at each show & tell. Show & tells help us to:
- document projects, key decisions and activities
- communicate across the team
- share knowledge, understanding and ideas
- stop covering old ground in meetings
- get feedback on hypotheses, scrappy prototypes or conundrums
There are multiple slots available with 5 mins presenting time and 2 mins for questions (7 mins in total).
When facilitating show & tell or mid-cycle demo, keeping time is probably the most important thing as it’s very easy to run over. Communicating clearly at the beginning of the session that each talk has 15 mins and you will intervene if it runs over helps with timekeeping.
Start the recording. Introduce each of the speakers and their topics, and encourage questions afterwards.
Cycle planning
Cycle planning occurs every reflection week.
In these sessions, the team reviews the briefs prioritised for the next cycle. Because of this, it’s important that the whole squad attends. These sessions are also recorded to ensure anyone on leave can later re-watch.
The briefs are prepared beforehand by the team leads and drafted into GitHub issues. Epic leads are identified by the team leads and informed of their role before cycle planning. Squads for each brief are also currently determined beforehand, but in future we’d like to move to a self-select model during planning.
In the session, the facilitator will recap the briefs from the previous cycle and introduce the upcoming briefs and squads. They will also highlight anything of note happening in the next cycle (eg significant leave or events which may impact delivery). We use the same slide deck for each planning session but just update the details each time.
They will then allocate a breakout room to each squad for a 45 minute discussion about how they will deliver the brief. After a short break, each squad will play back their high level deliverables for the brief.
Retrospectives
Retros (or cycle reviews) occur in reflection week. The purpose of retro is to reflect on the previous cycle and identify ways a squad can improve its processes going forward. Therefore it’s useful if the whole team attends so we collectively agree to actions. The same retro board can be used each time.
When planning or facilitating a retro, there are a few things to remember:
- retros use the same format each time (reflection exercise, working / stuck / unstuck, kudos)
- retros are squad based, but there is opportunity to reflect on other squad’s briefs
- it’s the responsibility of the facilitator to document the notes from retro and clear the board ready for the next session
There is a slide deck to be used during retro which also acts as a walkthrough of the facilitation.
Other team meetings
Epic check in
Twice during a cycle, the team leads will check in with the epic leads for each brief. They will ask if the epic lead needs any help and help resolve issues and blockers which may have arisen during the cycle.
Design System dev catch up
This is a meeting between developers across the Design System, to make sure we’re all aware of what everyone is working on. It happens twice a week. Discussions are informal and relaxed, no need for prepared presentations.
This catch-up gives developers time to:
- update other developers on what they’re currently working on
- flag anything they’re working on that may affect other squads/teams
- get help and advice for anything they’re stuck on
- discuss tech debt and technical issues
Facilitating this meeting is very light-touch. On a Monday, start by going around the group and asking each person for their update. If there is time, look through the agenda items. Start with anything listed under ‘related to work in progress / support / time critical’, before moving on to ‘non-urgent’ agenda items.
On a Thursday, reverse the order by starting with agenda items first, and then going to updates if there’s time.
When facilitating this catch-up, there are a few things to remember:
- make sure someone else is happy to note-take (rolling meeting notes here). It’s difficult to facilitate and note-take at the same time!
- try and make sure discussions come back around to actions, even if they’re not things we will be picking up straight away
- if someone is asking for help with a problem, try and make sure they at least have some avenues to explore by the time the call has ended. If not, discuss how to best help them (and who will do that) outside of the catch-up.
Team L&D session
A team L&D occurs in reflection week. Each L&D session will be focused on a different topic and facilitated by different members of the team. The delivery managers on the team are currently responsibile for identifying facilitators of these sessions.