## Title

Trusted Committer and Contributor Retrospectives

## Patlet

A host team working with contributors outside of their own line of management constantly runs into misunderstandings.
As a result collaboration becomes brittle and frustrating.
Setting aside time for regular retrospectives for the InnerSource team consisting of trusted committers and contributors can help make communication smooth.

## Problem

For long running collaborations friction between host team and collaborators is substantially reducing focus and energy for everyone involved.
Willingness to continue the collaboration is shrinking.

## Context

A host team of [trusted committers](../2-structured/trusted-committer.md) has started a long running collaboration with a group of contributors.

* Over time the number of misunderstandings grows.
* People may run into mis-communication.
* Teams may discover slight differences in development culture.
* Team members may discover that assumptions they made about how the other team works are false.
* Contribution processes may not be entirely clear and workable for everyone involved.

## Forces

* Participants are inclined to take "written over verbal" as "only written".
* Trusted committers are all part of the same team.
* There is a group of contributors all coming from the same team.
* As a result trusted committers know each other well and understand constraints, prioritization side effects and team dynamics without ever sharing them with contributors.
* Also contributors form a well knit group.
* The contribution process is seen as transient and temporary.
As a result little is invested in forming a shared team of trusted committers and contributors.
* There is no clear path from contributor to becoming trusted committer - other than becoming a member of the host team.

## Solution

Bring host team and contributors together:

* As a first step it can help to share a meal together and get to know each other.
* For collaborations running over several weeks establish a monthly retrospective meeting that involves everyone who is needed for a successful contribution.
* Make sure that action items for each restrospective are being followed up upon, ideally check these action items at the beginning of the next retrospective.
* Keep the agenda of retrospectives stable and predictable: It's already uncomfortable enough to name and resolve collaboration issues.

Example agenda:

* 5 minute check-in so everyone can test their audio setup, silly questions preferred so people can laugh together, reducing overall stress.
* 5 minute review for action items from last meeting (each item presented by its owner)
* 10 minutes to gather strengths and weaknesses of the past collaboration time period. Do this as a combination of writing (sticky notes on a digital white board) and verbally explaining the stickies to make sure introverts get involved as well.
* 2 minutes to put dots against weaknesses that should be addressed in the next cycle. Pick the top 1-2 weaknesses.
* 10 minutes to gather potential remedy actions to address the picked weaknesses. Again use time for writing sticky notes to involve everyone.
* 2 minutes to put dots against action items (each participant may add 2-3 dots), pick at most top 3 items, assign each item two owners - one trusted committers and one contributor.
* 5 minutes for checkout so everyone can wind down and leave feedback on the meeting.

Caveat: In particular for cases where people have tried to collaborate for a long time already, the initial meeting may need more than 30 minutes.

## Resulting Context

* Trusted committers understand how to improve communication and contribution processes.
* Contributors understand how to support trusted committers in improving documentation and processes.
* Likely both uncover issues that are beyond their direct control but also see ways to address these in the organisation adopting InnerSource.
* Ideally several learnings can be shared with other InnerSource teams so they avoid running into the same trouble.
* When done regularly after a handful of retrospectives collaboration improves, issues uncovered reduce, turning the session more and more into a lot of positive feedback. As a result motivation on both sides increases.
* [Communication Tooling](../2-structured/communication-tooling.md) and [Base Documentation](../2-structured/base-documentation.md) improves.

## Related material

* [Generator for check-in questions](https://www.checkin-generator.de) (in German)
* [Examples of retrospective formats](https://retromat.org/en/)

## Known Instances

* Europace AG

## Status

Initial
