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WEEK 1 - Learning the Ropes
Coming into week 1, I decided to implement a small weekly goal that would help boost accountability within meetings to ensure I wasn't getting lost with jargon the team might be using on a project. This goal's main purpose Is to establish confidence in myself to have my voice be heard and to get comfortable with the team.
Goal: Speak up at least once during a team meeting to ask for clarification, provide feedback or confirmation to the team
What is Agile? What is SCRUM? What is a Sprint?
And more!
Image 1 - Agile Scrum Framework
Agile Scrum Methodology
Agile Scrum Methodology
To fully understand this weeks objectives, I needed to explore more about the Agile Scrum Framework. Agile Is an Iterative approach to software development, allowing a team to launch features while also adapting to requirements without Impacting release dates. A process of agile, Scrum uses the term sprint rather than Iterative, breaking down project objectives into 'smaller' deliverables.
The NOAA EPIC Workflow Team uses an Agile Scrum Framework to accomplish project goals. Currently, the team implements features in ~2 week sprints and is on Program Increment(PI) 5. As part of planning for a PI the organization decides on what features are to be prioritized and Implemented within this phase. Then at the end of a PI the team holds a retrospective, where 'the team reflects on what happened in the iteration and identifies actions for improvement going forward.' The Illustration highlights this Iterative approach, and we are currently closing up PI 5 & In the planning stage for PI 6(Image 1).
Inspect & Adapt
Inspect & Adapt
Program Increment(PI) 5
At the end of each PI an Inspect & Adapt(I & A) event will be held to demonstrate completed features and discuss their practices to identify ways for improvement of PI execution.
Attending the problem solving part of the I & A, addressed that the team continuously underestimates the difficulty and scope of a task. Giving me valuable Insight Into how many objectives were closed during the previous PI, In-progress and to-do. Of the 12 objectives for PI 5, the team successfully closed five, has five in-progress, and two still left to-do. This means that the in-progress and to-do features will be rolled over to PI 6.
Image 2 - Inspect & Adapt
Planning Poker, Sprint Planning & Retrospective
Planning Poker, Sprint Planning & Retrospective
Program Increment(PI) 6
With the retrospective phase of PI 5 completed, we could now continue to the planning phase of PI 6. As part of this stage, we used Jira to review stories or tickets which uses a technique called Planning Poker. Planning Poker assists a development team to estimate the amount of effort a task will take. For example, our UW (Unified Workflow) Sprint 6.1 consists of seven tickets (UW-175, UW-177, etc.), where on each ticket to the right there is a value for the estimated load of the task (Image 3).
The scale for rating a task follows the Fibonacci Sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ...). In Image 4, you can see an Instance of the team playing planning poker for UW-206, where we had a load estimate of ~1.6 which was rounded up to a 2. For Sprint 6.1 the UW Team has a capacity of 14 points, and for Sprint 6.1 we estimated a 12 point value difficulty allowing room for unanticipated Issues.
Only core team members on the UW Team attend this meeting, which Is typically much smaller than the Inspect & Adapt. The I & A has anywhere from 10 - 80 participants, where the planning poker has ~5 participants.
Image 3 - UW Sprint 6.1
Image 4 - PI 6 Planning Poker
A Look Ahead
A Look Ahead
Next week, will be a bit more meeting heavy to accomplish all the Planning for PI 6. UW Sprint 6.1 will begin on September 12th and will close on September 23rd. Throughout this week I predict Emily and I will be assigned specific tasks to tackle within each sprint of PI 6 with a concentration on tasks In sprint 6.1.
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