i don't know that i've ever actually practiced a waterfall approach really, but i've started to see the benefits of implementing practices that are associated with agile development. It was very good for me personally and for us as a group to sit at the end of every day and take a quick look at what we'd accomplished and what we wanted to tackle for the next day. We didn't use "stand-ups" really, but having the retro notes from the day before gave us the opportunity to take a look at where we were the night before and make any shifts that needed to happen based on any changes from that day.
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.)?
As i said, we made very good use of a daily retro log, which was just a google doc that we all had access to where we made notes about what we accomplished that day and where we wanted to pick up the next day. We also made good use of github issues, which we used both as a way to make coding more efficient by adding an issue whenever we thought of something that needed to be worked on (as opposed to either stopping and working on it in the moment or forgetting it) and letting it be our touchstone when we weren't sure where to go next.
i was mostly the driver in our driver/navigator pair. (Our original third member was Hillary Stewart, who decided to audit the mod just a day or two after we were assigned the project.) This allowed me to work on my communication skills and solidify the things we were learning while also allowing my partner to learn more by doing.
As we didn't really have a team, it's hard for me to say. We tried to conduct our pairing using the same guidelines that we agreed to when we were a trio, but it's difficult to say if we had the same experience or not.
As i said above, daily retro allowed us to go over what we accomplished for the day, which served to leave the day fresh in what we had accomplished and not dwell on the problems we may have had. It also set us up for the next day, saving us the hassle of wasting time trying to decide where to start first when we had work time.
In your team retro, how did you engage in the feedback process? What principles of feedback did you use in these conversations?
i tried to be as positive and appreciative as possible, making sure to thank my partner for his hard work and his ideas. i also tried to steer the project in the direction i believed it needed to go by making suggestions and asking questions--trying not to sound to demanding.
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 am probably a little too passive about feedback, to be honest. The experience of this project has, however, improved how i work with other people in situations where i need to help the understanding of the other person. i tend to want to put my head down and tinker with the code until it does what i want it to do, but since i was not the one typing, i had to slow down (probably not enough) and guide my partner through the process.
Complete. This shows a good understanding of agile, nice work!