Our fifth and final sprint, we focused a lot on opening and rectifying communication with the other food pantry group and clarifying some of the issues that were posted on GitHub. We have not been keeping up with our issues, which has been a real weakness between the two groups. Both groups were relatively unaware of what the other was doing, and there was a lot of redundant work being done between the two of us. Nathan also organized another meeting with Serena so we could discuss our work and some of the changes the food pantry might like to see.
The difficulty we were having with issues were numerous. The first was that we were not claiming the issues we were working on. Both groups were therefore unaware of the progress of the other group and what was available to be worked on. There was redundant work being done and a lot of general confusion. After a discussion, we agreed to be more proactive about claiming or issues, and also did more cleaning up on some of the tasks and stories we had on the repository and discussed what is important, what is redundant, what can go, etc. We cleared up our tasks and stories, assigned ourselves to what we were working on, and moved on to our next tasks.
We also had the pleasure of a meeting with Serena, who was able to look at our progress on the intake form and give us some feedback and new information. We were able to discover a few more questions/fields to plan to add to the form, and got some helpful and illuminating information about the weight system in the food pantry, and what could be done by us to make weighing everything easier for them. We deliberating what information was important to be captured by the form, for the purposes of the Worcester Food Bank and the campus’s needs. We discussed the privacy of the data we are storing as well, and how much information we should be asking for as well as what information should be optional versus the data that was essential.
It is incredibly challenging to work with people whom you do not meet with nor can you deeply discuss the changes and work you are doing on the project. We have spent a lot of time trying to streamline communication between the two groups, make sure we all have access to the same resources, and being able to work effectively on a project at the same time. Although we have come a long way, there is still room to improve, as I feel rather uninformed about the efforts of the other group, and would like to know more.
This sprint was pretty tame, and I definitely learned a lot of different ideas and strategies related to organizational operations and effective ways to communicate and share your work with your cohorts/peers. Hopefully the lessons learned here will help me avoid fumbling in my career as I have in this project.
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