A short reflection exercise between Core team members. Commonly accomplished at the end of a pairing day.
Phases
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
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.”
Find a quiet area or video conference session with just the two of you.
Take turns each going over a plus / delta, alternating between pluses and deltas.
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.
Related Practices
Recommended References
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
