Category Archives: sprint planning

WSU x AMPATH || Sprint 4 Retrospective

Sams Ships (12)For this sprint wrap-up, we discussed how we are trying to move on based on our team planning meeting. One of my teammates, Kristi, along with Professor Wurst, tried to check out an idea they had and continued to bounce ideas back and forth with one another until they came to a conclusion.

Overall, I’d say we are continuing to plan out our next steps and work on something new. A new development was a suggestion by one of my teammates based on what we already have to work with. The suggestion was that we should wait for the other group to push what they need and then we can seamlessly build upon it. If the other group (who are working on the sidebar and navigation bar) add their work, it would help us have a better base.

We have to carefully analyze how the components are going to go together and get through to make sure that they are not just getting thrown in. If we plan things out more, it will make the process more efficient. I think taking a step back to look through angular was helpful because it allowed us to learn something new at our own pace. It’s nice to not have to rush on what we are doing; especially when the concepts are newer. This will help us deliver something even greater for our client, who is Greg from AMPATH.

There is also the approaching team presentation that we are going to be focusing on to explain our work and what is happening. I think it will mainly be focused on the search bar and our experience with learning angular or the concepts that introduced us to it.

On top of what we have been doing, I have been continuing looking up resources to learn more for our project. I think Codecademy is a good reference for learning AngularJS, https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-angularjs. It is actually one of my preferred sites for reviewing programming languages to sharpen up on things I may have forgotten or for learning new ones in general.

It has been a great experience being able to work with a solid team so far this semester. I wonder how much we will accomplish by the end of it! I think learning about communicating within a team is so important, especially since we will all be graduating very soon and entering roles that require consistent communication.

Overall, the only thing I would say I would have proceeded to do differently is come up with another way to “work smarter not harder” when it came to figuring out the process for the search bar. There were not necessarily any fails because our continued work dealt more with the planning behind the work instead of testing to see what worked for us. I am very excited to continue moving forward with this project in the few weeks we have left!

Some advice for others who are going to work on things includes:

  • Having an open mind on what they would like to do because things are always changing
  • Understanding what the client wants is important because at the end of the day, they will be the ones who need to use this software
  • Try to make sure teammates are on the same page with you on what is happening that week

 

From the blog CS@Worcester by samanthatran and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

WSU x AMPATH || Sprint 3 Retrospective

Sams Ships (11)Hey guys! This sprint retrospective will cover what the WSU Coders Without Borders team has done from the week before spring break and up until this week.

As the project is propelling forward even more than before–due to us having more concrete plans to begin working on the project, it has been an exciting transition. We saw our options from Greg’s wireframes and explanations through his YouTube videos. From there, we created Zeplin accounts so we could visually understand and remember certain parts of the app in progress.

Since it was my first time using Zeplin, I wanted to add a little review of it. As someone who loves to organize things, I found that it is a great tool to have for sorting projects and handing off designs and style-guides to other users. It seems like an effective way to share ideas directly with people.

The overall WSU team now has a GitHub section for dividing up the components and issues we will be working on. So far, my team is going to tackle the search bar and everything else it would entail to create. It was nice being able to collaborate amongst one another to find a component that we agreed to work on (and the fact that a few other components had already been assigned to some teams helped our decision be made faster).

From there, we were figuring out what we need to do and how we can get things done. We discussed some potential ideas with Professor Wurst and from there continued to brainstorm for the search bar. There is nothing that comes to my mind that I would have chose to proceeded differently with if I could go back.

We are continuing our meetings as they have been scheduled and are actively participating in our stand-ups. I like being able to scroll through the log of my team’s answers because it shows our progression throughout the semester as well as serving as a reminder of when we did something specifically. I am happy to say that my team does not seem to have run into any issues or potential miscommunication among one another. It really shows how we are all working to achieve something together and effectively communicate what is happening.

In this sprint retrospective I also wanted to discuss how what we learned may be applied in other situations like in the workforce. We have to make sure we are checking in with teammates to have them understand the project more and be able to express their opinions and concerns when they arise. Similar to the bystander effect in psychology, if there is no direct communication between members when it comes to getting things done, how will there be any progression versus just observing what is happening? All it takes is being comfortable to ask different individuals if they have anything to share or add to the open conversation.

Overall, I am excited to move forward and see what is in store for me and my team during these weeks up until the end of the semester!

From the blog CS@Worcester by samanthatran and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.