- What have you learned about the use of agile vs. waterfall in software projects?
The lines between agile and waterfall are still blurry to me. In this project I've seen what good workflow looks like, and I've seen what bad workflow looks like. To my understanding, our approach ended up being a waterfall approach, with all of us working towards a cumulative goal. Our main problem was that we had many separate branches, and didn't regularly commit to master. In the future, I would focus on completing mvps and merging that with master.
- 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.)?
For the most part, I think we learned what not to do. Our organization was all over the place, and communication was sorely lacking. The main organizational tool we used was Trello, with each card holding a task that needed to be done. We tried to meet as often as we could, but we had a hard time getting regularly scheduled meetings in.
- What role did you take on in the project?
As well as writing some of the internal classes, I was elected project manager. I did my best to keep the design and organization of the remote git repository consistent. (Spoilers: it didn't go so well)
- What changes would you make to your approach in future team projects?
We hit some pretty big problems with the overall structure of the project, so I think I would have liked to sit down and plan out the architecture of the program before we wrote any code to make sure we started out going in the right direciton. Division of work was fair, but the problem was that some people worked at different paces than others. While it's not 100% fair, I think I would have divided up each individual chunk of code and had people take them off the top at their own pace.
- How does retro function in a team project?
The goal of a retro is to check in with the team and see where they're at (wins and struggles), and to look forward and plan out the next segment of the project. From what I've seen, it's helpful to have it weekly.
- In your team retro, how did you engage in the feedback process? What principles of feedback did you use in these conversations?
I wrote out feedback for each team member while following an outline, and used that for reference when I gave feedback in person using non-violent 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 have a hard time giving critical feedback, I'm a non-confrontational person. I understand that I need to give feedback on things that need to be improved, but I tend to only give encouragement and feedback on good things.