In interviews, you'll be asked about how you approach working in projects, and being able to describe how you utilize agile processes is a great way to help you stand out as a junior developer candidate. This reflection is meant to help you develop this skill.
With that in mind, please answer the following questions in your own gist about your group project:
- What have you learned about the use of agile vs. waterfall in software projects? Agile utilizes short sprints of work that focus on revision based on user and client feedback to constantly improve the work. While Waterfall projects focus mostly on client feedback without any deployment until the project is finished or dies.
At Turing we work on paired and group projects. Over the course of two weeks we create a viable application. During the build we meet with our instructors and with other student groups to test the application at different stages of development. Evaluators and students act as users testing our applications and providing feedback, allowing us to work in an agile environment. The projects are similar and build on each other allowing us to learn and execute better code over the course of our work at Turing.
- How did you and your group approach project management in this project (what tools did you use, how did you hold each other accountable, etc.)? We talked about communication and planning better, meeting regularly to keep things in check.
We checked in daily to plan how the schedule would go for the day, where we had gotten and what we were having trouble with. We used slack to communicate when we were not on campus but working. We all improved out git/gitHub workflow.
- What role did you take on in the project?
I have been the person who initiates planning and pairing because working together is helpful for my process. Although, the dynamic of this group preferred to divvy up chunks of the functionality and come back together when things were not meshing to troubleshoot. It is not my preferred method but everything came together. Issues were solved and we had a decent functioning application.
- What changes would you make to your approach in future team projects?
Reading over the rubric together and whiteboarding the project big picture.
- How does retro function in a team project .
Hindsight is 20/20. You always realize how you could have done better. The key is utilizing those insights in the future.
- In your team retro, how did you engage in the feedback process? What principles of feedback did you use in these conversations?
We used the three L's and talked about better planning and communication. It did improve communication.
- How would you describe your ability to communicate feedback? How has this experience affected your communication skills? How do you want to improve in your ability to communicate feedback?
I think I need to be more upfront with my needs as a team member and what I want to get out of the project, but I am still learning what I need in this setting so more of that will come with time.
Complete -- great responses and reflection!