S1E2 w/c 25 March

This week marked my last week at Reason Digital, which was an action packed final 4 days.

So my second instalment of week notes feels rather work heavy for obvious reasons.

Monday = release / Thursday = reflect

After running a 2 week sprint with a client to deploy feature improvements to a site we had a release on Monday.

Which after a final end of sprint push to close off all bugs and confirm scope for release we had a pretty smooth go live process. I finished off with a retro on Thursday to capture the teams learnings and suggestions to improve our processes and some pertinent points around design to FED handovers were raised as well as the challenge of keeping Acceptance criteria and tests up to date based on changes that inevitably crop up.

Question – I’d be interested to know how other teams manage keeping AC and AT up to date during an active sprint?

The power of physical planning boards

As part of my final week at Reason I had a trip down to my main client of the last 8 months to do a sprint planning session. The team had collated all of the internal teams tasks and mapped them to the wall over 6 weeks with a column for each week. To see their progress and implementation of a physical artefact was great to see. We were all interacting and engaging with post its and deciding what was most important. This is when agile principles and approaches are at their best. People collaborating and having conversations rather than sitting at laptops moving tickets around is something thats so more engaging and inclusive.

Thank yous and goodbyes

As a delivery manager I think its crucial to always recognise and praise the team, and weirdly its no different when you leave a company. As a team who’ve been formed since last August we’ve been through a lot and a significant update is just around the corner. So I took the time to hand write them all a little thank you card and give them a little keep sake. As well as thanking the clients i’ve worked with, the Reason team and my manager. I’ve said to a few people this week that the way we close projects and indeed manage our own departures is as much part of the project process as initiation is. It’s just the harder part. My manager gave a lovely send off speech and I’d written a nice thank you to the team as well.

Holiday – it’s time to celebrate! (sang like the Madonna single)

I’ve now got a little bit of leave as a much needed break ahead of my move to the Co-Op which to say i’m excited about is an understatement. Having some time to rest and reflect ahead of this next adventure is a luxury i’m going to savour.