Feedback Guide

Some quick tips on requesting and giving feedback.

Requesting Feedback

Requesting feedback is a very difficult process, especially when dealing with a group of highly opinionated and talented people in your own field.

Expect Feedback

When you request feedback, the assumption is your current work needs improvement, and that you'd like the group to assist with this. This means even if your work was completely perfect, the group is going to try to make suggestions to fix it.

If you want to show off instead we recommend a lightning talk, the feedback process is not intended to validate what you've already done.

Define your Feedback Scope

At the outset, make sure you specify what you want feedback on. Asking for general feedback is always a bad idea, as you'll end up getting all your life choices questioned.

Feedback should be goal oriented – if you aren't willing to change something, make sure you exclude it from the scope. 

Explicitly state things that are non-negotiable

For example, if you need to implement a a page that has 1000 non-paginated records with 20 columns, and that, for some ungodly reason, is what your management has decided, state that at the outset of the feedback. If something your forgot to mention.

You do not need to provide a reason why its non-negotiable.

At the same time, don't use non-negotiability as a cure-all for bad practices. If you say everything is non-negotiable what's the point of getting feedback?

Don't let your feelings get hurt

People can be very vocal. Always remember that people making comments are doing so not because they doubt your ability or assume they know best, they are just trying to impart their own personal experiences and expertise.

Remember: you are not your work, and negative feedback is not a personal attack.

Be open to suggestions

The people giving feedback know what they're talking about (just like you do), so be open to suggestions that may exceed expectations. If you were asking for feedback on button placement, and you got recommendations to drop the button entirely from multiple people, take it into consideration even if it may not be what you were planning to do before.

Also, remember, you don't actually have to use all the feedback. So it doesn't hurt to hear everyone out.

You are driving, don't let anyone else take the steering wheel

Pick good times take questions when presenting (don't let people ask questions until you're done showing what you want feedback for)

Feel free to cut off (be polite is possible) trains of discussion that are derailing things.

Mirko / Steve / Room Leader may point out raised hands if it looks like they've not been noticed. this doesn't mean you have to immediately allow the person to interject if you aren't ready, you can just acknowledge and return to the raise-ee when you're ready.

Giving Feedback

Be respectful

For a lot of people these projects represent a lot of hard work. Even if you don't like / agree with what's being presented, respect the fact that this is someone else's hard work being shown off, and that that person is coming to you asking for ways to make it better because they care about it

Be constructive / don't be pointlessly negative

Feel free to criticize, as that's what's being requested – however pointless negativity is not what's being requested

Things like:

• "This is a stupid way to do something"

• "Why would you do x?" (why did you do x is valid)

• "I wouldn't have done it that way"

aren't useful and can really grind down presenters. Feedback should be actionable / usable 

Respect the scope

If someone's asking for feedback on button placement, don't question the purpose for the application / pick at the design decisions of the table on the page.

Developers have time/ technical restrictions / limits on what they can / are willing to change, so suggestions or feedback outside of the scope add no value to the discussion

Respect non-negotiable elements

If the presenter states that they're required to show the user a 10000 line 20 column table, and that point is non negotiable, don't comment on it.

This may be difficult to swallow, as it is almost always a bad idea to have a 10000 line 20 column table on a page.

However if the presenter explicitly stated that this is non-negotiable then they probably already know that, and they really cant change it. There's no value in de-railing a feedback session when there may be things that can be fixed / improved.

Use the Hand mechanism

Wait until you're called upon for giving feedback. The Room Leaders will try to make sure everyone gets noticed / doesn't wait too long.