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Schedule: Day 2 - Tuesday (Oct 08, 2024)
Beyond Code: Crafting effective discussions to further technical decision-making
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Beyond Code: Crafting effective discussions to further technical decision-making

Allison McMillan • October 08, 2024 • Boulder, CO • "Talk"

In the presentation titled "Beyond Code: Crafting effective discussions to further technical decision-making," Allison McMillan addresses the critical skill of leading technical conversations in software engineering. The talk occurs during the Rocky Mountain Ruby 2024 event, highlighting the importance of engaging meetings as engineers advance in their careers.

Allison begins by discussing common frustrations with meetings, emphasizing that despite their necessity, many are perceived as inefficient or unproductive. She shares alarming statistics about meetings, noting that 71% of senior managers deem them ineffective, and almost half of all meetings fail to engage participants. She argues that effective facilitation can transform the landscape of technical discussions.

Key points discussed in the video include:
- Preparation is Key: Prior to a meeting, consider its purpose and structure. Different types of technical conversations require unique approaches—for instance, whether to solicit feedback, brainstorm ideas, or reach decisions.
- Engagement Techniques: McMillan introduces various modalities (exercises) to foster participation, such as brainstorming sessions, risk assessment discussions, and the use of virtual whiteboards for remote interactions. Tools like sticky notes can help visually organize thoughts and ideas.
- Participatory Instructions: Varying instructions for participation can create a more inclusive atmosphere. Examples include breaking participants into pairs before regrouping or using anonymous feedback methods to gauge clarity and engagement.
- Addressing Common Pitfalls: McMillan identifies facilitation pitfalls, such as running meetings without clear action items or straying into irrelevant topics. Techniques such as the "parking lot" method can help manage discussions effectively.
- Conclusions and Takeaways: She concludes by encouraging participants to experiment with new facilitation methods in their upcoming meetings, to actively seek engagement, and to maintain focus on action items to avoid meaningless discussions.

Overall, Allison McMillan's talk delivers valuable insights into not just running technical meetings but transforming them into productive, inclusive forums for discussion. By adopting innovative approaches and being mindful of diverse perspectives in conversations, technical decision-making can be greatly enhanced, benefiting both teams and projects in the software engineering realm.

Beyond Code: Crafting effective discussions to further technical decision-making
Allison McMillan • October 08, 2024 • Boulder, CO • Talk

Whiteboards. Proof of Concepts. Pairing. Spikes. These are all tools we use every day to have high-level technical conversations about ideas we propose or approaches we think are the “right” way. As someone advances in their career into more experienced levels of software engineering, however, a critical skill becomes how you conduct and lead these conversations. It involves clearly articulating a vision and securing buy-in, while also valuing and integrating the diverse perspectives and feedback from your peers. The goal beyond each individual conversation is to foster an environment where ideas can be exchanged, discussed, enhanced, and decided on. You’ll walk away from this talk with some new, innovative approaches to try out that not only help get your technical ideas across but also solicit additional thoughts and opinions in ways that engage and effectively address different points of view.

Rocky Mountain Ruby 2024

00:00:14.120 okay um today we are going to talk about
00:00:19.520 talking to people which is every engineer's favorite thing to do uh okay so we are going to start with a
00:00:27.320 little hand raising exercise um um raise your hand if you paid attention fully in
00:00:34.559 the last meeting that you were in like beginning to end Okay small handful of
00:00:42.000 hands um raise your hand if you remained fully engaged in the last deeply
00:00:48.280 technical meeting that you were in okay a few more all right okay raise
00:00:56.039 your hand if you don't like meetings all right that's what I figured okay this is
00:01:02.800 because so many meetings suck uh even if they aren't a waste of time even if they
00:01:09.400 have a good purpose they have an agenda they check all those sort of initial boxes still so many meetings suck I'm
00:01:17.240 Allison McMillan um the best compliment that I ever got was that I run me meetings like I hate meetings uh and I
00:01:24.840 am a big believer in the fact that so many meetings Gatherings and sessions
00:01:30.320 that we do together in groups are bad because they just sort of happen instead
00:01:35.560 of being facilitated in thoughtful ways a little bit about me uh I am on
00:01:41.960 the Ruby Central board I had a podcast about being a parent in Tech called parent-driven development um and for my
00:01:49.439 day job I help people have better conversations um I do that by doing
00:01:54.719 one-on-one advising and mentoring as a fractional VP of engineering and by running offsites Retreats facilitations
00:02:02.759 strategic planning uh strategy and prioritization days all of those kinds
00:02:08.239 of conversations um two super quick mentions uh we are looking for a new
00:02:14.440 Ruby Central board members this is the application link um I can also put in
00:02:19.480 slack afterwards if you are interested or curious feel free to talk to me um
00:02:24.800 and I'm also hiring a principal software engineer role for one of the companies that I'm a VP of engineering at um so
00:02:32.160 also P me if you want more information there okay um much of what's written
00:02:39.280 about meetings gives really starter suggestions right they offer things like
00:02:45.159 have an agenda think about the attendee list think about the Cadence of the
00:02:50.360 meetings and all of those things are really important but that is where it
00:02:55.480 starts right running a meeting especially a technical one is so so much
00:03:00.680 more than that here's some information about
00:03:05.799 meetings 71% of senior managers believe that meetings are
00:03:11.760 inefficient how workers feel about the effectiveness of meetings correlates
00:03:17.560 with their General satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their
00:03:22.959 job almost 40% of employees consider unproductive meetings to be the highest
00:03:29.040 cost to their organizations 62% say that meetings Miss
00:03:35.799 opportunities to actually bring the team closer together and only half of all meetings
00:03:42.720 are effective well-used and engaging and those numbers drop even lower when it
00:03:48.159 comes to remote meetings but meetings are also necessary right especially the ones where we're
00:03:54.159 talking about technical approaches feasibility post-mortems next steps
00:03:59.319 right all those meetings are necessary and really important so I would love for folks to
00:04:05.319 shout out some of the reasons why you're at last technical meeting was
00:04:12.239 helpful context context Dr a decision drove a
00:04:18.160 decision design oh there were a couple there at once Clarity all right service issues
00:04:26.560 great event nice okay so here are some of mine um two
00:04:33.280 brains are better than one more brains better than fewer we can build upon each other's
00:04:38.960 approaches it's a tool for teaching learning and knowledge sharing and it
00:04:44.600 decreases that Lottery Factor right what happens if someone wins the lottery and leaves tomorrow who else knows about
00:04:51.280 that part of the code base and these skills are also really critical to Career growth right it's
00:04:58.000 something that you do more and more you grow in seniority at some point your career becomes a little bit less about
00:05:04.199 Hands-On coding it's not just about writing and shipping code it's about getting people on the same page it's
00:05:10.199 about creating alignment it's about solving some of the gnarliest problems that your company is seeing and you're
00:05:16.320 helping to unstuck or unblock others right when Engineers come to me to talk about that next promotion or they're
00:05:23.319 trying to figure out how to level up more often than not this is the skill set that's their primary growth
00:05:30.919 Edge how many people here have recently led a technical conversation or discussion in anyway to turn a path
00:05:37.919 forward new feature functionality good number of folks what would people say about the
00:05:44.800 last technical meeting that you ran but they say it was informative that
00:05:51.600 there were a lot of rabbit holes that we went down that it was just the same people talking and it was a little
00:05:57.280 chaotic that it was interesting inclusive that it ended without action
00:06:05.479 items a lot of these conversations are usually really frontal right you share your screen you talk through an idea you
00:06:12.240 ask for comments or feedback sometimes you provide a pre-read sometimes people actually read that
00:06:18.039 pread uh sometimes it's you know a loom walkr in advance did you know that employe is
00:06:25.639 multitask in at least 41% of meetings you are potentially multitasking right
00:06:33.840 now and we know that especially in rote meetings right we're always fighting against dozens of other
00:06:40.759 distractions what if all of the reactions to your meetings could be things like it was really engaging super
00:06:48.120 informative I had a chance to provide my own approach I felt really comfortable sharing my opinion we walked through Uh
00:06:56.720 current thinking and approach and understanding and it's possible facilitation is a
00:07:03.879 superpower and I'm going to share um some of the steps today that you can use so first in order to facilitate you
00:07:13.520 first need to think really deeply about the conversation that you're having this goes beyond having an agenda or an
00:07:19.879 outline this is the purpose think really deeply about the purpose because not every conversation
00:07:26.680 is the same right even when you're looking at technical conversations every feature approach every retro every let's
00:07:34.280 talk about this brittle part of our code base is a little bit different what do
00:07:39.360 you want from people are you looking to explain your idea are you looking to
00:07:44.759 generate a variety of approaches and ideas are you looking to solicit criticism or feedback about risks or
00:07:51.599 what could go wrong do you want to give people enough context to join the work all of those are different purposes for
00:07:58.759 the same sort of technical conversation or subject matter and then prepare yourself what's
00:08:06.120 the structure of the meeting going to be how will you ensure that people are actually following what you're saying
00:08:14.159 how will you get the diverse opinions in the room right how will you limit that
00:08:19.319 person who is always taking over the conversation from doing so and how will you hear from that person who's really
00:08:25.720 quiet but who you know usually has really good ideas and how will you get the opinion of that person who always
00:08:33.120 has one but frequently doesn't bring it up until it's too late and then it feels like in order to address that concern
00:08:39.120 you have to take 10 steps back next you want to articulate that
00:08:45.680 Vision let people know what those core questions are that you want to ask and
00:08:51.080 what the purpose of the meeting is this gives folks a chance to prepare
00:08:56.320 themselves and a chance to narrow their mindset to the purpose of the meeting it sets the expectations which also allows
00:09:03.680 you to keep the time really focused and engaged if everyone knows why they're at
00:09:09.000 the meeting when you go down rabbit holes you can bring them back to the
00:09:15.600 purpose now there are um two approaches or two ways to sort of think about making meetings really engaging and
00:09:22.079 interesting to accomplish your goals the first are modalities these are sort of exercises or things that you can do and
00:09:28.880 the second are instructions or framing right so how people are having these conversations I'm going to talk about
00:09:34.959 modalities first um I'm going to give you five modalities again modality is like a fancy word for an exercise um
00:09:42.120 that you can utilize with your groups okay so the first exercise that you can do is to have people think about
00:09:48.880 different approaches to the problem the goal here is to come up with a massive quantity of ideas because you need a
00:09:56.519 critical mass of ideas including a whole lot of bad ones to pick out the good
00:10:01.720 ones you can do this by providing a technical approach first and then having people sort of play around with that
00:10:07.959 approach using a question like how would you change this approach think of all the ways or you can present people with
00:10:15.440 the problem that you're trying to solve and then people can brainstorm different solutions right these ideas will have
00:10:21.760 varying levels of technical feasibility right some are going to be like no that's not possible some are like oh interesting but that's the goal right
00:10:28.920 and you could can encourage this through thinking through a handful of different prompts that really help people think
00:10:35.079 outside the
00:10:49.760 approach is that you can have people list out the risks and concerns that they have of a certain technical
00:10:55.000 approach either out loud or posted uh first and then have them Circle the one
00:11:00.240 that they think is the most probable and then the conversation be beyond that
00:11:05.839 becomes how are you mitigating that or diminishing that particular risk right what can be done thought of or changed
00:11:12.839 to alleviate those feelings or concerns okay how might we um this
00:11:19.360 exercise is sort of really a reframe when you're solving a problem frease it as how might we
00:11:25.519 statements uh you can also toss this to participants and you can say like hey how about you all come up with a few how
00:11:32.240 might we statements as a way of determining the different things you actually need to discuss and decide about and anything can be a how might be
00:11:39.639 right so some examples might be um how might we build X feature or how might we
00:11:44.880 have resolve this incident faster how might we make X part of our code base more stable and reliable you can also
00:11:51.880 use how might weuse when you're not coming up with a specific technical approach something like um how might we
00:11:58.200 alleviate concern concerns about a risky approach or a less than ideal technical solution that we needed to put in place
00:12:04.279 because of a time frame promise never done that right um or how might we
00:12:09.800 understand what Solutions fit within our constraints fourth option if you're not
00:12:17.120 looking to open up the conversation so widely is to present an approach and
00:12:22.480 then have the participants change one thing about it to change one thing
00:12:27.720 shapes the constraints and Narrows down what people are thinking it allows for
00:12:33.079 additional participation because the barrier to entry is much lower right people don't have to be like okay do I understand
00:12:39.519 this entire approach this entire thing to make changes to come up with new ideas Etc right it's really they don't
00:12:46.040 have to think about all those complex risks and mitigations it's just can they think of one aspect or one approach one
00:12:52.839 thing that they would change and that they would alter to improve the approach in some way and explain why
00:13:00.399 and lastly um utilize the virtual whiteboards especially for folks that are remote um we love a good virtual
00:13:07.399 right whiteboard even though we still know there isn't a great great one in Tech we're still working on that um and
00:13:13.360 we're really good at virtual Post-it noting so create a board that has different sections on it at the top of
00:13:19.600 each section frame a question that you want the group to discuss and answer now what these questions or sections will be
00:13:26.079 will vary wildly based on the purpose of your meeting meeting um but they should be answerable with a variety of ideas
00:13:33.600 that are short enough to fit on one post a note like one post a note per one idea
00:13:39.480 and then you can do a lot of things with that you can group them you can discuss sort of figure out where to go from
00:13:46.800 there okay these exercises approaches these modalities are important for a number of
00:13:53.320 reasons that again build on some of the success factors that we talked about earlier
00:13:59.320 they give more ideas a chance at least 30% of workers believe that their ideas
00:14:05.360 are shut down far too quickly in meetings they allow people to build on
00:14:11.680 each other's ideas they enable creativity and creative thinking and
00:14:18.720 solutioning and they Foster a deeper sense of curiosity and
00:14:25.880 Discovery all these are sort of initial approaches right you start with these kinds of exercises to get people talking
00:14:33.040 engaging and interacting and then you start narrowing down those ideas to figure out like okay what actually fits
00:14:39.519 within our constraints what feels actually realistic or interesting Etc it's a slightly different set of
00:14:45.480 exercises and approaches that I'm not going to go into today um to make sure you're getting to those specific next
00:14:51.560 steps and action items but there are things like dot voting um or a number of other ideas that really sort of take a
00:14:57.720 large set of inputs and and and start narrowing them
00:15:03.279 down okay the other way to do this is through
00:15:08.680 instructions So the instructions are the way that people participate in these
00:15:15.240 modalities instructions and varied instructions are great for introverts
00:15:20.600 for neurodiverse folks and for greater engagement of everyone right if I were to like tldr this section I would say
00:15:29.199 not all discussions need to be large group discussions by varying the instructions
00:15:35.560 and the way that folks are participating not just what they're participating in you're accommodating different
00:15:41.600 personalities different learning styles different thought processes to create a more inclusive atmosphere and ensure
00:15:48.880 that all voices are being heard and considered so what do I mean by
00:15:55.279 instructions so here is an example when you're having people discuss a question
00:16:00.639 or an approach again it could be a specific question in your overall sort of technical meeting or a larger
00:16:06.319 technical approach break it up into Parts first give a minute or two for
00:16:11.800 people to think on their own and get their thoughts together then have them talk with a pair
00:16:18.199 to share those ideas then have two pairs get together for a small group of four and have the
00:16:24.560 small groups discuss and then have each of the small groups sort of share with a large regroup their thoughts right
00:16:31.279 there's a progression here and it allows people to participate on different levels and makes your meeting way more
00:16:38.680 Dynamic more effective and more efficient because not everyone has to share their thought in a large
00:16:45.959 group and you don't have to do the entire progression right frequently just having people chat and pairs can be
00:16:51.759 really effective or maybe they're in pairs and then they go back to the big group and then they go back into those
00:16:57.199 same pairs for like a next discussion or you mix up the pairs right it depends a little bit on the size of your group
00:17:03.560 what you're trying to achieve Etc or chatting in small groups is helpful right you can go right into that and
00:17:09.839 then small groups can summarize their concern or like what is the one thing that they want to bring to so they're
00:17:16.000 not summarizing their whole conversation but they as a small group have to decide what's the one thing that we want to bring to the larger group um for further
00:17:23.799 thinking and discussion this is all to say that
00:17:29.440 having conversations in a large group isn't bad portions in a large group can also be good um but I would say if
00:17:36.600 you're having large group discussions especially remotely you can use some of those remote tools to your advantage so
00:17:43.120 for example you can uh use emojis to your benefit to ask people to be
00:17:48.720 reacting to things regularly in the chat it also has the side benefit if you have like a very like chatty chat group um it
00:17:56.880 has a side benefit of keeping some of the those side threads to a minimum because people know that the chat is
00:18:03.000 actually going to be used for the purpose of like advancing the primary discussion that you're trying to
00:18:09.520 have okay I know there are probably some of you in this room who are thinking about
00:18:15.440 all the reasons that this wouldn't work maybe it's because there's a level of unfamiliarity here or a level of
00:18:22.360 skepticism about these kinds of exercises and how effective they would be in technical discussions and
00:18:28.039 situations and facilitating conversations can also be really scary because you have to let
00:18:34.360 everyone in right all of those different personalities that we talked about before they're all part of the
00:18:41.159 conversation and sometimes it's just easier to give a presentation and hope there aren't too many
00:18:48.480 questions so here's how you can avoid some of the most common conversation facilitation
00:18:55.880 pitfalls first is through feedback and how feedback is phrased so we talked about how might we a little bit before
00:19:02.280 in terms of like how you can frame um questions in the discussion but also phrasing feedback through how might we
00:19:09.679 statements or what are all the ways in which or I'm curious about can all be
00:19:15.919 really powerful they can help reframe rephrase and refocus what someone is
00:19:22.080 asking it feels more constructive it might feel a little forced to sort of require this like
00:19:28.840 required these sentence starters at the beginning but it also um it really helps
00:19:35.840 individuals be more succinct in their thoughts as well because they have to specifically figure out what question
00:19:42.960 they're asking as opposed to like word vomiting a bunch of thoughts at you or
00:19:48.039 the rest of the group Next is knowing when to move on
00:19:54.520 establish a parking lot explain what the parking lot is at the beginning so everyone's aware this is the parking lot
00:20:02.679 when something comes up that we want to talk about more but that doesn't fit into the specific purpose of this
00:20:09.919 conversation again you get to bring it back to your purpose because you've set and established your purpose already so
00:20:15.280 you can use that purpose as a tool you can say it doesn't fit into the specific purpose of this conversation we're going
00:20:21.880 to add it to the parking lot and then we'll blah blah blah right like you can explain when the parking lot will be
00:20:28.080 Revisited it usually is not in the same meeting so you can focus on your purpose
00:20:33.120 and constantly bring it back to that uh next are rabbit holes the
00:20:40.960 parking lot can be one successful way to deal with a rabbit hole the other is by
00:20:46.720 um taking a kind of poll from the group so after a few minutes when it feels like the group probably has enough
00:20:53.280 context on this topic again for the purposes of this conversation but it
00:20:58.960 seems like the conversation is still continuing um you can ask the group for a thumbs up thumbs down or middle thumb
00:21:07.000 on if you should continue the current conversation thread so up is yes down is no middle is I could go either way um
00:21:14.760 the other way that I use this sometimes is when someone really really really wants to talk about something and I'm
00:21:21.720 not sure if it will or won't add to the conversation so it's not an easy like okay let's talk about this and then do
00:21:27.919 thumbs or okay let's parking lot this um I'll say something like I'll time box it
00:21:33.279 so I'll say something like okay I'm putting four minutes on the clock for this conversation when the timer Chimes
00:21:38.880 everyone do thumbs so that we know if we should move on or add a few more minutes to the clock for this conversation
00:21:45.360 thread and it's really like the timer Chimes I go thumbs and everyone just holds up so it's a very quick sort of
00:21:52.000 like glance of okay
00:21:57.039 cool the next Pitfall is when no one knows what's being talked about but
00:22:02.799 everyone is pretending that they do you can recognize this because
00:22:09.520 there's often complete silence when questions are asked or when asked for questions a good solution here is to um
00:22:17.880 take like a five minute break and ask for questions to anonymously or semi anonymously be sent to you as folks go
00:22:25.360 on to break right you can say something like what's something you need Clarity on you know you can open up like feel
00:22:31.679 free to post a question or send me a question like I lost you at X part Etc and then you can review them sort of
00:22:38.440 pretty quickly during the break and as folks get back you can reset you can clarify you can update on you know terms
00:22:45.760 approaches questions uh
00:22:51.080 Etc finally the ultimate Pitfall is having a lot of conversation with
00:22:58.520 without any actual action items or getting to any sort of a conclusion really need to get to
00:23:05.400 decisions and next steps this is the part that so many meetings Miss on you
00:23:11.520 have to end with action items and next steps when conversations seem to be going in different directions you can
00:23:17.799 try a recap right what I'm hearing is do we have any specific actions we
00:23:23.840 want to take or decisions we want to put in front of everyone my like spicy hot take is that
00:23:29.880 if your meeting doesn't end with action items or next steps maybe it shouldn't have been a
00:23:38.200 meeting okay so take a moment to think or you can write this down if you have a
00:23:44.480 notebook handy one thing I want to try in my next
00:23:49.520 technical group conversation is one thing I want to try in my next
00:23:56.480 technical group conversation is
00:24:11.640 here's what I hope you try I hope you try a new to you approach
00:24:17.760 that encourages more participation I hope that you try
00:24:23.240 sitting in silence for a little bit longer than you're comfortable with
00:24:29.679 I hope you try developing your gut sense of when a conversation is on track or off
00:24:37.320 track and I hope you try some new approaches to re-engage people when you
00:24:42.720 start to notice that they're obviously doing something else without calling them out right because the that's the
00:24:48.559 worst nobody wants to be called out and your goal is not to embarrass them it's to engage
00:24:55.559 them so the next time that you feel like talking too much you probably are deploy one of these methods to allow
00:25:03.720 others ideas opinions thoughts and reactions to surface you won't regret it
00:25:09.279 you'll develop your own facilitator superpowers um I'd love to answer
00:25:15.039 questions for folks you can find me in the hallway around uh the conference today I think we might have a couple minutes for questions I look like this
00:25:22.799 um I'm also happy to answer to help or answer any questions after the conference because really like running
00:25:29.520 uh helping people plan and facilitate effective meetings Retreats offsites Etc is my most favorite thing to do in the
00:25:49.480 you questions questions did I mention that I do one-on-one advising
00:25:56.159 inventory um so I think that you can uh you can start by being like hey that
00:26:02.200 meeting was really interesting I'm curious how you think it went or I'm curious like what your goals of the of
00:26:07.360 the meeting were right how can I help you like how can I help you achieve those um you can sometimes be like oh I
00:26:14.840 saw this conference talk it might be interesting to try a few of these things in our next might be interesting to try
00:26:20.880 a few of these things in our in our next meeting um because some like sometimes
00:26:26.320 actually your managers like don't think that they are running a meeting well but they don't know any other way right and
00:26:31.960 so they just run meetings how they're like they're like well we have to have a meeting so I guess this is how we're
00:26:37.039 going to do it right so like I would say at least half the time like they're also not thrilled with how it's going um but
00:26:44.840 they just don't know any any different or how to sort of try other things um so
00:26:49.880 you could you could sort of try try in that way you know like I'm curious what
00:26:55.039 the goals are I want to help achieve those goals right those sorts of things yeah's a gentle way to call people out
00:27:03.279 we multitasking like I was um during during meetings yeah um sometimes it's
00:27:10.440 usually not just one person uh so sometimes I'll say something like hey just a reminder like let's really focus
00:27:17.039 that we're making the most time because like nobody likes a wasted meeting right so sometimes I'll be like hey let's make
00:27:22.200 sure that windows are closed so that we're focusing uh on our purpose here um sometimes I'll say like it looks like we
00:27:28.960 need five minutes so that people can uh just like dive into and then put to bed
00:27:34.640 anything that they're sort of wrapping up I do it also um when running offs sites I always suggest that sort of the
00:27:40.720 day before there's a strong encouragement to say like wrap up any threads that you think might be
00:27:46.399 distracting so also if you're going to a longer Workshop session like a three-hour right you can also put that
00:27:51.840 in the morning like to prepare for the workshop today make sure your mental threads that might take you elsewhere
00:27:57.799 are wrapped up make sure that you set your slack status so that you don't feel bad about not answering a DM um right
00:28:04.279 but you can also say like if it looks like you're losing everyone you can say let's take five and then and then come
00:28:09.600 back I yes um this is like death by report out uh so this is where um like
00:28:16.919 sometimes in small groups you can say like what's the one idea the other thing that I'll do is start a sentence prompt
00:28:23.399 and then model it so like on this slide um
00:28:28.799 one thing I want to try in my next technical conversation is if we were doing that let's say we had 10 people
00:28:34.320 and I wanted everyone to to do that as like a closing I I would model it I would say finish the sentence no run-ons
00:28:41.000 no ANS buts Etc no multi sentences one thing I want to try in my next technical
00:28:46.840 conversation is I would role model it um and then as the next like one or two
00:28:52.760 people go if somebody doesn't start with that sentence prompt and finish I would say just as a reminder we're starting with the s starter and ending with a
00:29:00.600 like with a period um which feels really rigid but people very much appreciate
00:29:07.559 it g go back there we use a parking lot in our meeting and I think I heard you
00:29:13.000 say that you suggest using the parking lot items for separate meeting uh I'm
00:29:19.080 just curious why you think that's a good idea yeah it's just a matter of when you want to revisit the park like if the
00:29:24.159 purpose of the meeting isn't to address the things in the parking lot now the parking lot doesn't always have to be addressed through a separate meeting
00:29:30.200 right sometimes it might be like okay we're we can take these things to a slack thread um or if there's time at
00:29:36.360 the end of the meeting it could be like okay we have five parking lot items like which of these do we want to spend the
00:29:42.399 10 extra minutes that we have in this meeting moving into um but you generally don't want to try to the parking lot is
00:29:49.480 specifically like these are things that are not relevant to this meeting so you
00:29:54.519 don't necessarily especially if the meeting is going to like go over time or things like that you don't want to dive
00:30:00.080 into the parking lot for that reason and with that I think that I'm overtime actually
00:30:06.440 so uh thank you all
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Allison McMillan
@asheren
Explore all talks recorded at Rocky Mountain Ruby 2024
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