The Reality of the Retrospective

One of the main reasons I was so attracted to the SCRUM method early on was because it allowed me to easily self-asses my abilities throughout the development of this project. The most important feature of this method (for me) is the retrospective meetings. After each sprint my team and I have a 15 minute meeting where we talk about whether or not we passed or failed the sprint and what we could do to improve next time. This process of talking out loud and frequently about how we thought we did really allowed me to get used to self-reflection. There are challenges with every project and instead of ignoring them we were forced to talk about them and this really helped us come up with strategies to be even more successful in the next sprint. Some of the biggest challenges for our project was the lack of time and energy we had to really focus on the production of the music map. All of my teammates were spread so thin with other projects and ventures that we found it hard to all collaborate. After the second sprint we made the decision to not only meet for our review and retrospective meeting but we decided to allot time to all meet together and work on the tasks for the current sprint. By setting up essentially office hours where we were all in the same room and able to give/get feedback and work together more efficiently to get things done. I learned throughout this process that my team members time was extremely valuable and if I could set them up in the environment to work successfully together our project would really benefit.

As the producer I learned a lot about myself as a leader and this helped me improve my management skills. Spending sometime looking inward and not only reflecting on the way the sprint went overall…but really reflecting about how I handled all the challenges and victories as a manager was really beneficial for me. I was able to really recognize my strengths and weaknesses and that helped me realize my impact on my team. I learned to control my impulses and adapt to changing circumstances. In the past I have always been in control and for this project that was not the case. I learned to trust my teammates.

THE BOARD

 

Now that I have explained a little bit about how the SCRUM method of project management will work for my project I’m ready to introduce you to my most valuable asset my SCRUM board. The board is a tangible way for my team and I to stay on track to meet our longterm goals. The board is a visual tool that lets us see our progress throughout our sprints.

 

Here’s the Plan: Sprints, Stand-Ups and Retrospectives

Every since I switched gears on my project and learned the SCRUM method for project management the production phase of my project has been chugging along pretty seamlessly. First, I created an extensive and detailed backlog of tasks and deliverables that were necessary to complete before the site could go live.

Next, my team and I sat down and talked about the production process and what it would look like moving forward. I broke the remainder of the semester into 5 week long chucks that for SCRUM purposes I call “Sprints.” The benefit of breaking the work into these digestible periods of time instead of assigning arbitrary deadlines to my team puts the team in control of the deadline which theoretically leads to consistent success. There are three important features of the sprints that allowed me to constantly evaluate each component of the project along the way:

Features of SPRINTS

• Planning Meeting
• Standups
• Review/Retrospective

Planning Meetings will all be under 30 minutes long and will take place on Wednesdays at the beginning of the Sprints. Planning meetings are where we all collaborate and really estimate tasks, we can update backlogs and add specifics. During the planning meetings we will also vote on valuables –What can we get done, estimate hours and pairs and then commit by moving the tasks into the WIP phase

Standups are essentially progress meetings or commitment meetings they will be 15 minutes long and will take place on Fridays or Mondays. At the Standup meetings we will all literally stand in front of the board and say

What have I done since we last spoke?

What will I do until we next speak?

What is in my way/do I need help with?

Review meetings are open to the public or stakeholders (professors) anyone can come and the team members have to literally demonstrate the functionality of what they have accomplished. Talk through the tasks they completed. Think of this as a show and tell.

Retrospective meetings will immediately follow the review meetings and they will be private. These are a casual follow up meeting and shouldn’t last more than 15 minutes. This is where we reflect. How did we do? Did we pass or fail that sprint? What did we do wrong and how can we not make the same mistakes again. Each team member is asked to come up with 2 tangible things to improve on in the next sprint.

Coming Soon

 

 

 

http://www.trianglemusicmap.com

The Triangles 1st interactive music map! Share your pictures on Twitter, Instagram, Vine or Facebook with the #TriangleMusicMap and find new ways to experience, connect and discover the local music scene! 

Essential Scrum

So I know up until now I have been talking a lot about how I was going to take the new scope of my project to the next level and over spring break I really figured out how I was going to do that. I finally had the time to do my research on the SCRUM framework of product development and it really changed the way I think about management completely.

Scrum works perfectly for my project because it is promotes collaboration among laterally structured teams. The framework is really intuitive and it is simple to follow and understand. The term came from the Scrum method for restarting play in rugby.

I had an extremely productive meeting with professor Rebecca Pope-Ruark, who has studied SCRUM pretty extensively and she was an amazing resource for me. She actually introduced me to Kenny Rubin’s book called Essential SCRUM as well as Personal KanBan by Jim Benson.

I’m super excited to share this framework with my team. I believe this methodology really has the power to give strength to my role as producer and I cannot wait to jump in and start working!

Pick a color any color?

I never would have thought that deciding on a color scheme and mood for our site would be such a daunting task. Initially Brenna and I picked out some swatches we liked and she has been putting together the graphics in those colors. Now that we are in the production phase I realized really quickly that playing around in Illustrator with different variations of colors was no longer fun it started to become confusing and counterproductive. I had to help my graphic designer by making a commitment but I had seen so many color wheels and complimentary combinations at that point that I was feeling jaded. I needed to feel inspired again–and I knew exactly how to light the fire again. I jumped in my car…ran to target bought some oaktag and cruised over to Lowes. I was going to find color inspiration the old fashion way by collecting paint swatches.

 

After editing out the combinations I wasn’t in love with I was able to narrow it down a lot and It became pretty clear that I was leaning towards a vibe or mood with the colors I continued to favor. I asked Brenna to come over and the two of us sat down and compared what I had come up with to what we originally were playing with in Illustrator and we were able to pick nine colors that we loved

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We choose three dark colors and three contrasting lighter colors that will be used for the majority of the interface. We also chose three accent colors that will be used to visibly filter the venues by neighborhood ie: Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh. I’m really happy with what we decided on, but if you asked me a couple weeks ago I never would have known that I would have such a hard time committing to a color scheme. It turns out it just took some good old fashion crafting and inspiration to help motivate the decision making process. Now that the whole team knows the color scheme everyone will have the information they need to complete the tasks on their lists. This step was extremely important for us as a team because the color scheme we decided on is going to directly effect the vibe of our brand.