During my time as an Engineering Manager at Automattic, I worked for the Special Projects team where I oversaw many best in class WordPress website builds for our VIP partners.
While the majority of my time was devoted to the building and launching of those sites, every now and then we would run retrospectives on some of these projects.
I had recently begun using AI to amplify that process and make it more efficient in order to deliver the outcome of the retrospective – a long form document. My final deliverable was really well received internally, and I thought I’d share how I went about doing this.
Key Steps
- Preparation:
- Schedule a one-hour meeting for all project participants using Google Meet.
- Use a tool like ChatGPT to create an outline of questions for the retrospective.
- During the Meeting:
- Have Fathom join the call to take notes and provide a transcript.
- Use the predefined questions from ChatGPT to guide the discussion.
- Ask Fathom for additional insights or clarification on specific points.
- Post-Meeting:
- Utilize Fathom’s transcript and summary to generate the first draft of the retrospective document.
- Edit the document for clarity and depth.
- Consider using ChatGPT, Jetpack AI’s WriteBrief tool, or Grammarly for further editing assistance.
Additional Notes
- Ensure that all participants are comfortable with AI tools being used during the retrospective.
- Double-check the generated content for accuracy and relevance to the project.
- Maintain confidentiality and privacy of sensitive project information.
Tips for Efficiency
- Customize the questions provided by ChatGPT to suit the specific needs of the project.
- Use Fathom’s summary to ask deeper questions and gain more insights.
- Experiment with different AI tools for editing to improve the quality of the final document.
- Encourage feedback from participants to continuously improve the retrospective process.
Bonus Tool
Another tool I’ve been tinkering with since leaving my previously role, is Google Notebook. I think this could be an additional efficiency tool because you could run your project documents and emails through this to gain some additional insights, either before or after the call.
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