Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my first week operating as a Scrum Team with everyone. I felt like communication about projects got an instant boost, and I’ve already had the chance to work with team members I normally don’t have a ton of shared tasks with, which has been really cool. It was so satisfying to see tasks, and then entire projects, get checked off as the week progressed, and I loved going into our Sprint Demo for the rest of the company feeling like our team had really delivered.
I’m finding that there’s a bit of a learning curve here when it comes to estimating the time each task will take, and therefore, how many projects we can take on during each sprint. Initially, I started off not having very much to do at all for the week. I actually ended up pulling in one more project that was just for me right after our tasking meeting so I could have something to work on until I was called on to complete my tasks in other people’s projects.
By Thursday though, I was definitely feeling busy. The tasks that my contributions were dependent on had been completed, and suddenly I had four different projects to make content for. I wouldn’t say it was too much, and I was certainly able to complete everything by the end of the sprint, but it made me think about how in the future I can better distribute my work right from the beginning.
I’m planning on taking a deeper look into the projects I have on my list and figuring out how I can include those in our team sprints so my work is evenly paced. It will mean I could potentially accomplish more each week, and it will help me move faster for other team members so we can get group projects done efficiently as well.
My time estimations were pretty accurate, but there were a couple tasks that I either over or underestimated that made me need to adjust my planning. I think we’ll all get a better feel for that side of it as we keep going and experience a “typical” week using this format.