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Plus / Delta Feedback

A short reflection exercise between Core team members. Commonly accomplished at the end of a pairing day.

Phases

Delivery

Suggested Time

5-15 minutes

Participants

Pair or Cross-discipline team member (1 on 1)

Why do it?

  • To come to an understanding of what went well (plus), and what could be changed to improve collaboration in future (delta).
  • To introduce a regular feedback cycle at a 1:1 / individual level that allows for personal feedback.
  • To introduce a lightweight and casual feedback tool for fostering a healthy team feedback culture.

When to do it?

  • End of day or after a working session with a teammate.
  • After working with someone for the first time.
  • After working with someone whom you don’t regularly interact.

What supplies are needed?

  • In Person – pieces of paper and pen
  • Remote – a way to share remote notes / Miro

How to Use this Method

Plus/Delta allows feedback to focus on individual actions rather than team or group based actions generated from a group setting. It focuses on a more frequent feedback with a small audience.

For teams that do not currently have a culture of feedback, the Plus / Delta is a light-weight technique to introduce a regular feedback cycle at a 1:1, individual level.

Sample Agenda & Prompts

  1. Preparation: Set aside 3-5 minutes to think of any Pluses / Deltas during the day, ranging from small to large topics.

    For example (Plus):

    • “We handled that external meeting with the Security team well.”
    • “Thanks for teaching me those keyboard shortcuts.”
    • “Your suggestion that we should talk to the Design lead when starting the next user story was spot-on.”

    For example (Delta):

    • “We did not take any breaks at all today.”
    • “I felt I did not get access to the keyboard very much during our pair-programming session today.”
    • “I notice you always join meetings 5 minutes late, so we end up not ending the meeting on time.”

    Plus-Delta-Example

  2. Find a quiet area or video conference session with just the two of you.

  3. Take turns each going over a plus / delta, alternating between pluses and deltas.

  4. Depending on the feedback, suggest changes for future working sessions.

    For example:

    • “Let’s ensure that tomorrow at 11 AM and 3 PM we take a 10-minute break.”
    • “Let’s try the Pomodoro technique tomorrow and see if it helps us have more balanced pairing sessions.”
    • “If we have back-to-back meetings, let’s make sure we end the first meeting on time, so we’re not late to the next one.”

Success/Expected Outcomes

Both parties feel comfortable regularly providing feedback to each other in a clear and concise way, ideally evolving to feedback that can be given as needed rather than during plus/delta session.

After a session of plus/delta both parties will take away actions they should continue doing and activities they can improve during their daily work day.

Facilitator Notes & Tips

A longer, more formal feedback session might be warranted if the process took longer than 10-15 minutes.

Start doing this daily, scale down to less frequent as both participants feel comfortable.

Sometimes one or both parties are uncomfortable providing deltas or other constructive feedback. If plus/delta sessions consistently do not yield any deltas, try the following techniques:

  • Start the session by describing how the day went. Both parties can then work together to extract the pluses and deltas based on these descriptions.
  • Implementing a format of “two pluses, one delta” to prompt both parties to suggest deltas in a more structured, blameless manner.

Thanks for the Feedback By Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen – Recommended reading as a way to understand how people may interpret your feedback.

REwork by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

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