Nicole Bryant Retrospective
Sprint #1
The following will describe the work that I have completed during this sprint:
- Create Web App with Basic Components - Utilizing tutorials and related resources, I created a very basic web application, with components and layouts we might be using for the BNM project. To show this was completed I uploaded the resources and talked a little about what I had used and how successful it was in a comment on this issue.
- Using Docker to conatinerize Toy NodeJS App - Similar to the previous issue, I added the tutorials and informational sites I utilized to make progress on this issue. I also added how the links I provided could prove useful to understanding the overall structure of our project more effectively.
- Review/Learn TypeScript - Although we did start to work on this issue, it was decided that the best option would be to move away from TypeScript, so we simply updated the outcome to reflect this decision.
The following group of issues all pertain to the working agreement agreed upon by the team during a meeting I facilitated. I created each of these issues to ensure the team is able to As the team chooses to make changes to these areas of the agreement, the issues will be updated accordingly. Each issue represents a different section of the working agreement.
- Weights - After a long discussion we settled on using a 1-5 scale for weights on our issues.
- Meeting Time - We chose to set a regular meeting time with the intention of ensuring everyone would be available at the same time for longer discussions or issues that arise throughout the process.
- Merge Requests - We agreed all issues that require a merge, need a review.
- Picking up issues
- Branching - describes the basic structure we expect to utilize for branching in gitlab.
Retrospective Reflection
This sprint showed that we are a very strong and capable team. We jumped right into the project to try to make progress as quickly as possible. When given a task, any team member was very quick to get going and diligent in completing tasks. We have some very knowledgeable team members who helped direct the team through some of the more encompassing and technical decisions we've made. However, I feel as though every team member has been given the opportunity to voice their opinions and have open discussions about any topic or team decision. Our in person communication has also been very strong. Team members are willing to be detailed in their explanations and updates of work loads. In general, we are very comfortable being straightforward with each other which has allowed us to progress quickly despite our sometimes inconsistent thoughts.
Throughout this sprint, I believe our biggest issues have been decision making and communication outside of class time. While the team was eager to start working, this excitement caused a little jump through the setting up process of the project. This led to a lot of changes in our working environment throughout the course of this sprint affecting everything from our project structure to our tooling and language choices. I am hoping to see our group become a little more organized and thoughtful in our approaches to larger-scaled decisions through a more organized method of research, discussion, and lastly making a decision. Going along with this, is the issue of decision-making itself which has been arduous, repetitive, and often overturned. Our group has many members who are fairly opinionated which can make coming to a consensus difficult when those opinions are different. We struggled with that a lot this sprint. Similarly, we often overturned decisions shortly after finally coming to an agreement due to new research discoveries. I am hopeful that following a more structured procedure prior to a decision will make the conversations and decision go more smoothly and be more likely to stick in this upcoming sprint. Communication has been another thing that has been difficult for our group to get a handle on. Although we opened multiple lines of communication, we only seem to really communicate in person. When those other forms of communication were utilized it was difficult to get a response without letting the team know in person that a different form of communication had been used. I think moving forward, we would be best served to downgrade the number of communications we use or asking people to be more attentive to them. This would allow us to spend more time in class being completing work instead of having meetings that take up our class time.
Personally, I think the biggest areas of improvement I have for the next sprint are my timeliness and motivation to contribute on GitLab. I found that I was more concerned about assisting or coordinating teammates than I was about completing my own issues this sprint. Although I did complete the work, I feel as though I could have put a higher level of effort into completing each issue in a more thoughtful and timely manner. I am going to be more regimented about allocating time to completing issues and be more mindful of offloading my progress to GitLab regularly.