How to make virtual sprint retrospective meetings: Kyivstar experience

Kyivstar is a Ukrainian telecommunications company providing communications and digital television services. The company is a leading mobile operator in Ukraine and has been connecting people since 1994. 

Today, Kyivstar is a business unit of VEON, one of the world’s largest integrated telecommunications companies headquartered in the Netherlands. Its shares are quoted on the largest stock markets, including NASDAQ, New York, Euronext, and Amsterdam. 

The company provides communications and data services that encompass a broad range of mobile and fixed-line technologies. VEON provides services to over 26 million mobile customers and employs more than 1,000 employees. The company monitors innovations in the field of technology and implements new solutions in team workflows.

The Challenge 

The Kyivstar team needed a space with interactive opportunities that didn’t require special software and was easy to set up for holding virtual retrospective meetings for their team. The R&D team works in sprints, and at the end of each sprint, they go through a demo and retrospective of actions.

During the retrospective, the team discusses the current sprint, what was good, how the team members are feeling, and what needs to be improved or optimized in the future sprints. This spring, holding an offline meeting for the R&D team wasn’t going to be possible. Kyivstar had to go online and beyond the standard tools for business meetings like Zoom or Google Meet. 

The Solution

To be on the same wavelength with current trends like metaverses and virtual spaces, the Kyivstar team hosted their retrospective using Party.Space, a metaverse-style event platform.

For the Kyivstar R&D team, a space was provided that allowed them to discuss all the necessary moments of the meeting at the table without using the standard Zoom or other platforms that are often used for these types of online meetings. 

Party.Space focused on several key elements creating an authentically live presence atmosphere:

• The conference hall was designed to resemble a brick-and-mortar venue where guests could move around the room, join different tables, and communicate with co-workers. While watching live retrospective presentations, each participant could both listen to the speaker and discuss their thoughts and ideas with other people sitting at the table.
• During the breaks, attendees could break the ice and play different games like sending different emojis to each other or the table in a group conversation.  

“It turned out to be more fun than usual. The platform and functionality are designed for a large number of people, where you can watch a presentation and sit at different tables and discuss what you see. Then you can return to the common space for discussions and presentations. You can also play games and mess around with different emojis in chats 😜🔥💩🚀🙈”

— says Ivan Pasichnyk, Head of R&D Kyivstar.

The Results 

The participants were positively engaged with what was going on. Frankly speaking, they did not expect this type of weekly meeting. One of the reasons for choosing the space was the need for chat and screen sharing to visualize information and then discuss it with the team.

PartySpace held a virtual retrospective meeting for Kyivstar with a team. During the meeting, there were no technical issues registered. Attendees were impressed when they were able to watch live presentations and discuss them with their colleagues. Unlike Google Meet or Zoom, these features added the feeling of being in a live in-person event that team members were participating in together. 

“I think it would be interesting to use for online hackathons and pitches. And probably some strategic sessions too. In general, we look forward to testing it.”

— adds Ivan Pasichnyk, Head of R&D Kyivstar.

Have you visited our virtual event recently? Write a review of Party.Space on G2 using the link and G2 will donate to Razom for Ukraine, a Ukrainian non-profit organization.