Name: Shaira Rahman Course: INFS3605

Student zID: z5059151

Team: 7

Tutorial: Tuesday 10am-12pm

Instructor(s): Dr. Michael Cahalane, Mr. Wilson Hua

Part B: Due Monday 29th July

Reflection: Critically reflect on the agile scrum role you have played during Sprints 1 and 2 during this
term. In your reflection, comment upon the team dynamic (ability to work collaboratively in the
development of a software project using Agile Scrum), the role you have played in this, and finally
present your thoughts on the competencies best suited for your role based on your personal experience.
In your reflection, make reference to 2-3 competencies listed at www.competencylibrary.com.
Remember to tie this critical reflection and discussion of competencies for your role to your knowledge
on Agile Scrum that you have studied in this course.
__________________________________________________________________________________
During Sprint 1 and 2, I played the role of UX Researcher and together with my group, we set upon
completing a set of tasks to create an Android mobile application called ‘MyDegree’. In Sprint 1, as a UX
Researcher, I oversaw using my research (from the User Journey Mapping document) to work with the UI
Designer (Cameron) and Developer (Bowen) to create wireframes as an initial skeleton design for the
‘MyDegree’ app.
In Sprint 2, along with the rest of the team, I took on a more active role in the coding aspect of the
project. From there I could work on inputting content into the app in the form of ArrayLists and create
pages for different sections of the app (i.e. the ‘Course List’ page).
During Sprint 1, the Scrum Master (Letitia) laid down a set of ground rules which were mutually agreed
upon within the rest of the team. For example, we were made to update our availabilities/commitments
for the entire term to make it easier to set up meeting times and daily scrum calls/updates. This was also
done to ensure that whenever the team was busy or otherwise occupied with another commitment, they
were to let the team know in advance so that any tasks that need to be completed could have realistic
deadlines set to them.
In Sprint 1, we were also more lenient with deadlines as we eventually figured out that there was a
problem in keeping up with same day deadlines that were assigned on several tasks. Due to this, in Sprint
2 we leaned towards sequentially spreading out the deadlines for tasks so that it could be easier to keep
up with them without being overwhelmed with too many things to do in one go. The competencies that
were best suited to this experience during the first two Sprints were ‘Initiative’ and ‘Flexible Behaviour’.
Each of the team members took on an active role in taking initiative to pick up and share tasks to ensure
fair distribution of work. For example, when tasks were delegated, each of the team members, including
myself took an initiative to self-assigned ourselves with tasks that were best suited to our role (e.g. I took
on the tasks that required a UX researchers input, including creating wireframes for each of the pages
and research what features are needed based on user needs). This also ensured that we were all actively
involved in speedy process of reaching our shared goal of defining our tasks and backlog items as ‘Done’.
We also made sure that everyone else was helping each other out whenever necessary. This meant that
we were all dynamically supporting our teammates and adapting to changes constantly thrown at us. E.g.
one of our team members, Bowen our main developer was also completing an assignment for another
subject and needed us to help with coding. We eventually solved this by having Jonathon, Nicky and
myself take up a role in coding to help even out the workload and step in to help Bowen as he had other
responsibilities to commit to.
This shows that we were more transparent in our communication amongst all our teammates and
showed willingness to flexibly adopt a proactive role in collaborative teamwork, adaptability and ability to
see a clearer vision for obscure situations when there is nothing to do (i.e. help other team members if
you have less work than them or have already finished your own work) or when faced with a difficulty on
the work assigned.
Another challenge that we encountered during Sprint 2 was setting up GitHub to find an easier way to
update, share and work more collaboratively on the app itself. The main problem that we encountered as
a team was that it became difficult to push/pull code as the app itself would become riddled with many
errors. This eventually created a bottleneck for the team as we didn’t know how to fix this problem.
Due to this, we eventually came to an impasse and returned to sending each other our newly updated
version of the app every time someone made a significant change e.g. create new pages or input new
content into the app. We compromised and decided that this was the best solution since we already
spent around 5-7 days trying to navigate through GitHub and trying to get it to work and it failed. The
core competence that best fits this scenario would be ‘Problem Analysis’.
As a team, were all affected by this problem as we were unsatisfied with the uncertainty faced with trying
to set up GitHub, despite knowing that this solution would allow us to share and update code more
seamlessly. It also had a ‘revert’ button (and ‘undo’ functions built within Android Studio) so that in case
any of us encountered errors within our work, we would be able to resolve them swiftly. Due to the
bottleneck encountered with the inability to push/pull code with GitHub, we eventually also decided as a
group that it was a better idea to use a screen-share function called ‘Team Viewer’–a feature that enables
team members such as Bowen (Developer) to see/control the screen of another team member.
This would also bridge the gap of having to physically meet up and work on the app as it would allow real-
time viewing and/or controlling of another person’s screen. This would be especially helpful in case one
person was unsure about how resolve errors within a piece of code (e.g. see which page/line the error
message directs us to) or unsure about how to code something (e.g. RecyclerView was particularly
challenging to implement so I needed the assistance of Bowen and Nicky to resolve this).
Despite these challenges encountered during the first 2 Sprint, I would say that we grew more as a team
and found more ways to adapt to various situations we encountered (i.e. the prominent one being the
fact that we were unable to successfully use GitHub). This helped us to settle with an easier solution to
adapt to our time-crunch and we also ended up completing more of our backlog items by the end of
Sprint 2 (8 out of 13) compared to Sprint 1 (3 out of 11).

Word Count: 1038

References for Core Competencies:
1. TMA 2019, Flexible Behavior, TMA Method, accessed 30 July 2019,
<https://www.competencylibrary.com/en/Competency/Flexible%20Behavior>
2. TMA 2019, Initiative, TMA Method, accessed 30 July 2019,
<https://www.competencylibrary.com/en/Competency/Initiative>
3. TMA 2019, Problem Analysis, TMA Method, accessed 30 July 2019,
<https://www.competencylibrary.com/en/Competency/Problem%20Analysis>