The Boston University (BU), its students, and its educators could benefit from a resource-focused website. Such a website would offer students membership-based access to all the materials that are required for their studying, including books, articles, and other helpful sources. Educators could also employ this website for creating bundles of course materials. Overall, this approach would facilitate learning and educating, which is why the creation of this website became the goal of a Scrum-facilitated project. As can be seen from multiple sources on Scrum, sprint planning is a crucial aspect of this framework (Ashraf, and Aftab 20; Streule et al. 270). So far, the BU website team has been taking sprint planning very seriously, but as some cooperation problems were identified, its approach to the task may benefit from a revision.
For the completion of the BU website, three sprints have been planned. They include the creation of a prototype of the website, the integration of the website into BU’s student resources, and the design of a membership program and policies for it. Each of these sprints was supposed to involve the revision, improvement, and addition of website features. However, for these sprints to be successful, appropriate planning was necessary.
The BU website team approached its Scrum activities very seriously. By the time of sprint planning, the iterative process of product backlog updating had already been launched, which is a requirement for the rest of Scrum actions (Ashraf, and Aftab 17, 20). Furthermore, all the team members were aware of Scrum, its features, and the aim of sprint planning. The primary shared objective was understood as the development of sprint backlogs (that were supposed to be based on the product one). Furthermore, the objectives included a review of available resources, an estimation of the planned workload, and a detailed negotiation of timelines and task specifics. All these objectives and activities were chosen with the help of Scrum literature, and they reflect the elements of regular sprint planning (Streule et al. 271). As a result, it can be claimed that the team was ready for its sprint planning.
The activity was very well-structured, and all the participants generally cooperated. The meeting started with a recounting of the objectives of the sprint planning, proceeded to ensure their achievement, and ended with an overview of the plans and backlogs. A summary of the session was used to finalize the meeting, and it allowed concluding that the objectives were achieved. Some sidetracking occurred, but the goal of the session helped to direct all the processes. Therefore, the structure of the planning sessions was not a problem.
Team communication during the sessions was also rather smooth, but certain issues and downfalls were encountered. In particular, team members were not equally engaged in the planning processes. While it may have been the outcome of the team generally agreeing on most backlog items and plans, few ideas were brainstormed, and few alternative options were considered. This pattern proved to be an issue when it was discovered that one of the members was uncertain about participating in the discussion. The team is the backbone of Scrum, and its ability to communicate and work together is crucial (Streule et al. 270-271). In the future, it is important to try to engage the participants and encourage feedback and discussions without allowing much sidetracking.
To summarize, the sprint planning went rather smoothly for the BU website team, which may have been the result of the members’ preparedness. A good understanding of the goals of the meeting and the pre-prepared and iteratively updated backlog were most helpful. However, team interactions were not very active and did not involve a lot of feedback. In addition, at least one member felt uncertain about contributing his opinion, and some sidetracking was encountered. The improvement of team interaction may be required for more productive meetings in the future.
Works Cited
Ashraf, Sara, and Shabib Aftab. “Iscrum: An Improved Scrum Process Model”. International Journal of Modern Education and Computer Science, vol. 9, no. 8, 2017, pp. 16-24.
Streule, Thomas, et al. “Implementation of Scrum in the Construction Industry”. Procedia Engineering, vol. 164, 2016, pp. 269-276.