It is only the first week but I already felt left behind by everyone else. Growing up in Indonesia, it is a bit challenging to get accustomed to the western's education system, where the student's voice matters, and having a critical mindset and sharing our own opinion is important. Not to mention that I have to do all that not in my first language. In Indonesia, students are given questions where the answers are only the right answer or wrong answer, there's no in-between. So it is very interesting to be able to share my own view about what I've learned throughout the course through this Critical Reflective Journal. Before going to the main content, please excuse my imperfect English. Hopefully, I can get feedback and be better and better next time.
This week, we are introduced to Agile development and why it is a good fit to be used in the course. First of all, as a former network engineer and a student that graduated from telecommunication engineering, this topic is very new to me. Later in this journal, I will also compare the agile framework method vs the method that I used back in my previous job.
In the first section, the Waterfall Methods were explained. It is basically a one-way process where it starts from planning, defining, designing, building, testing, deploying, and finally, maintaining. I created a summary that I can picture after from the course material and a little bit of reading.
*Figure 1: Waterfall Method*
When planning, we basically have to know our goal and options to achieve it along with its strengths and weaknesses. We then define the statement of requirements in order to achieve the goal. After that, we can process to the designing and building the product and then do beta testing of the built product. Once it has passed the testing stage, we can start to deploy the product and even add more features to it. And the most important part is maintaining, as we need to make sure the performance or maybe the lifespan of the product is just as defined in the early process.
The pros of using the waterfall method is that it is easy to schedule the stages and it leads to a high discipline because the start and endpoints of each stage are determined. But the downside of it is that there is no room for reflection, no accommodation for change over time, longer delivery time, and it is difficult to determine the requirements since the desired outcome of the project must be defined early on in the process. (Eby, 2016)
In the next section, the Agile Methods were explained. Agile, by definition, means moving quickly and easily. Meaning that it has the ability to adjust in response to a change quickly. There are several methods that are included in the agile methods. But the one method covered in this course is Scrum.
Scrum originated from a play in rugby, where equal numbers from each team pack together to compete for the ball by passing it forward. Just like rugby, the main objective of scrum is to pass the ball forward, where the ball is a metaphor of the project and the team playing is a metaphor of a group of experts who work together to push the project forward with a similar unified vision.
*Figure 2: Scrum*
In scrum, there are two unique roles a scrum team needs to accommodate. These roles are Scrum Master, someone who is responsible for maintaining the project to keep moving forward and be the shield of the team from distraction by creating a solution once an obstacle occurs, and Product Owner, someone who fully understands the product and is responsible to manage and prioritize product backlogs.
The project life cycle Scrum is called Sprint. In one sprint, there are 3 key activities. The first one is Sprint Planning, where the team determines which item(s) from the backlog to work on during the sprint. The second one is Daily Standup, where each team member meets every day for about 15 minutes to tell what they have done the day before and what they intend to do today to finish the sprint. And the last one is Sprint Retrospective. This one happens at the end of the sprint, where everyone in the team reflects on what went well, what went wrong, and what could be improved from previous actions. (Agile Alliance)
In Sprint, there is a product backlog, which is a list of product features in a form of a user story, a sprint backlog, which is a collection of product backlog items selected for delivery in the sprint, and Increment, which is a collection of product backlog items that meet the team's definition of done. (Agile Alliance)
What did I learn from the course?
Compared to what I've done as a network engineer, I realized that I have always been using the waterfall method to work. This does make sense because a network topology has to be defined early on and can only be deployed once the whole system is agreed upon by all stakeholders. In network engineering, creating a network topology and network routing is also a no-going-back process and any issue is only handled in the maintenance process.
What am I going to do in the future?
As agile development is still something new to me, I am planning to try to understand the process better by applying it to my weekly schedule. With a goal to finish my study in MA UX Design at Falmouth University and MSc Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship at The University of Manchester, I will create little steps that need to be done in a time frame (e.g: a week) with a narrowed goal to achieve it. Each step will be treated as an item in a product backlog and the narrowed goals will be treated as a sprint. I think this implementation will also benefit me because I can reflect on what I've been doing and what obstacles I met with the sprint retrospective. Hopefully, the experience will also broaden my knowledge and provoke me to learn and research more as a student of User Experience Design.
Agile Alliance. 'Scrum'. Available at: https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/scrum/ [accessed 02/10/21]
EBY, Kate. 2016. 'When to Choose Waterfall Project Management Over Agile' Smartsheet. Available at: https://www.smartsheet.com/when-choose-waterfall-project-management-over-agile [accessed 02/10/21]
01 / 10 / 21
Sarah Shafira Novianti
GDO710 Development Practice
MA User Experience Design, Falmouth University