Software + Management // by Mike Borozdin

At the end of every sprint my team has a sprint review.  It’s been a bit of a tradition and I think everyone agrees that we all got a lot out of it.  People share best practices, things to watch out for and generally check in with each other. To have a great review meeting you need to get people to open up. How do you create a comfort zone where people can speak up? It is the sticky issues that generally slow people down, annoy them and sometimes cause people to quit their job. Here are a couple of tricks I’ve accumulated over my twelve years of management: Ask people to write things that they consider “accelerators” and “blockers” on sticky notes.  Ask them to come up with at least 2 of each.  It will take a little effort on everyone’s part but it’s better to have a bunch of things that are minor rather than miss one major issue.  Somehow writing things on a sticky note and not adding your name to it makes people more comfortable than speaking up in front of everyone.  After eve