What worked well this sprint was our division of roles and tasks as well as the planning for tasks and the sprint as a whole. Each member had a specific section of our project that we worked on, some even taking part in more or most of the project, as well as connecting the pieces of the project. I think we spent a lot of time planning and working out what we need to do, the path we want to take, and the many decisions along the way. This hopefully led to less confusion while working through the sprint.
What didn’t work so well this sprint was the communication. Communication during certain moments in the sprint was lackluster and thus other members didn’t know what certain members were up to or working on. This also led to those other members having to pick up work had the certain member not done their work within a specific time.
To improve as a team, I think we should communicate more. Specifically, what we’re working on, what we can and can’t do, if we need help, and to complete tasks that require more than one member. As we move towards a complete product, I think the work may become more complicated and the communication will be necessary to connect and join respective pieces of the project.
To improve as an individual, I need to communicate more and stay on top of my work. Putting in more effort to communicate with my teammates and completing my tasks should be my number one priority. Personal issues, lack of effort, or lack of understanding led to me not being able to complete my tasks. Not only is that quite the issue, but I didn’t communicate any of that to my team at all, and thus they have no idea what I’m up to and have to pick up the work that I didn’t do.
The apprenticeship pattern I felt was most relevant to my experiences was “Expose Your Ignorance” from Chapter 2. This pattern states that there are people depending on you to know what you are doing and need confidence that you can deliver. The solution to this pattern says to “Show the people who are depending on you that the learning process is part of delivering software [… and that the …] most obvious way to expose your ignorance is to ask questions.” I felt that this pattern partly describes what I experienced during this sprint. There are people relying on me to do my part but I don’t have the confidence in my ability and am unfamiliar with a lot of the processes that we will work through. My teammates, on the other hand, are very familiar with the processes or are very willing to learn.
Although I did expose my ignorance and ask questions of some of my teammates who were much more experienced than I am, I could have done so much earlier. Not only that, but I still feel hesitant to ask questions because there are plenty of things I should already know but don’t. Reading this pattern may have encouraged me to ask questions more often and much earlier in the sprint, increasing communication from myself and between teammates, and would hopefully lead to me knowing what I need to know to tackle my tasks.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Kyler's Blog by kylerlai and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.