Before entering the review session, we need to do some preparatory work:
- Build a review atmosphere : provide participants with a safe and balanced review environment.
- Sorting out missed opportunities : From a company-level macro perspective, what is the most regrettable missed opportunity? Sorting out the major opportunities in advance can help us control the rhythm of the replay, and prevent the replay from becoming a naked club, which is led by a Maiba into his personal spiritual monologue.
- Setting goals : guide the participants to have a clear understanding of the review goals. If you can't get a very insightful conclusion and action point that can really increase the probability of future success, then the review cannot end.
In these preparations, there are two places that need special attention.
1. Safe recovery environment
The accountability mechanism is a more domineering approach, which may cause participants to lose their sense of security, blame each other, and even cover each other to conceal the facts. If the company already has an accountability mechanism, then our architects often cannot change the environment.
But there is a compromise, which is to review the architecture activities hosted by your architect, and isolate them from the official architecture activities. The review of architectural activities can be placed after the review of problems, and it is best to hold it in an informal place outside the company, the effect will be better.
If the company's accountability mechanism is relatively strict, then the review you host, no matter in terms of location or time, must be completely separated from the review of issues under the official accountability mechanism. An effective suggestion is to position the review you host as an unofficial co-creation meeting, arrange it a week or two after the accountability meeting, and invite participants to think about the structure activities and make constructive suggestions for the future. suggestion.
2. A balanced review environment
- The balance of perspective is to balance the examination of others and the examination of oneself. Examination of others and self-examination are actually a pair of contradictions. When we think from one perspective to the extreme, we will inevitably ignore the other perspective. For a very simple example, if we find sufficient reasons for our own failures from others, it is difficult for us to face up to our own failures. vice versa.
- Balance different decision-making levels within the company . This is a challenge to the accountability system of "Punishment is not a doctor", that is, when the highest-ranking person in the room is questioned, it will stop abruptly. Similarly, this is done to separate the issues at the decision-making level and the implementation level, and look for their own opportunities.
- Balance different dimensions . When technicians do review, the topics are often how to change the design, how to improve monitoring and discovery tools, how to improve engineering efficiency, and how to improve the quality of digital decision-making. From the perspective of the company, the same goal can be achieved through other means, and technical means are only one of them. Therefore, in the review, it is necessary to guide the participants to pay attention to the dimension of balanced thinking.
- Balance depth of thought and time to act . Many people do review, and before completing a comprehensive analysis, they have already listed a large list of action points, ready to rectify. You should know that replaying is not a failure response, and there is no need to stop the bleeding immediately. The focus of the review is to pursue the essence of the problem, not to rectify the phenomenon.
The review of architecture activities is a good time for you to learn deeply with other participants. This is a collective thinking process, not our daily habitual behavior. Therefore, a series of methods and methods must be adopted to ensure that this thinking process can maximize the success probability of future architectural activities.
This article is a study note for Day24 in May. The content comes from "Guo Dongbai's Architecture Course" in Geek Time . This course is recommended.