Rituals

Published 15 November 07 by Justin French

Rituals have become a massive part of RedBubble culture over the last few months. Our build cycles are based loosely around one month chunks of work, with weekly iterations inside them, with daily bursts of work inside each of those.

Each of them is punctuated by some form of gathering – a 5 minute daily standup, an hour-long weekly demo/review of the work we’ve done, and a longer monthly get together to talk about where we’ve been, and where we’re headed.

That probably sounds like a whole lot of meetings, but they’re typically not the toxic kind of meeting that everyone hates. Especially the daily stand-up.

The beauty of all these rituals is that they add some form of structure to the whirlwind of chaos we’re working in. You vent, complain, boast, clear your mind, reset your focus and get back to it.

And the RedBubble community is picking up on these rituals and embracing them wholeheartedly. We release whatever we’ve done almost every week, so Thursday has become RedBubble Thursday — a celebration of what we’ve delivered, and what we’re doing next.

The “wow”, “yay” and “thank you” comments flood in just seconds after we announce the changes, and it seems to inject a massive dose of energy into the community. They see this thing changing and evolving in front of them, they see us responding to their needs and they see us pull out a few tricks and surprises they never expected.

Most agile development books go into these rituals in much more detail, and I’m almost certain most books about “communities on the web” would have plenty to say about it too.