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Scrum & Me
Since the declaration of Agile Manifesto in 2001, Agile Methods (AMs) have become a very popular way of developing software. The momentum does not seem to be ceasing as more and more companies are adopting AMs today and Scrum is the most popular of them at present. Scrum is a project management approach and a software development framework meant for empirical adoption to suit individual organization’s needs and its circumstances.
Certified ScrumMaster course gave me a good introduction to Scrum. It gave me a foundation to build on by engaging in and reading discussions on experiences and implementation of Scrum by industry professionals in groups. One of the special features about Scrum is the concept of Product Backlog (PB). PB always provides a prioritized list of requirements which is maintained and prioritized by the Product Owner (PO). But the core of Scrum's efficiency lies in the fact that the Scrum Team enjoys autonomy to function in any manner required to successfully deliver working software at the end of each iteration. Scrum Master (SM) ensures that any impediments faced by the Scrum Team like external interferences or any other issues are taken care of.
My two years Master's research on AMs, particularly Scrum has allowed me to understand not just what Scrum is but also how it is being actually implemented in the industry. Scrum is being combined with other AMs, such as XP. While, XP provides some good practices for software development, Scrum provides a good framework for managing the development and the project as a whole. Many companies are adopting such a hybrid approach today.
For my research solution, I used a Sprint Zero mainly to gather requirements for the PB. This initial sprint mostly involved ascertaining Project goal, problem background brainstorming session and ID activities such Personas, Persona goals and Scenarios development. The research showed following benefits of Sprint Zero and Product Backlog:
• Brainstorming session helped to understand the problem background of the project.
• Brainstorming session helped all stake holders to arrive at a common understanding of the problem background.
• Project goal provided a common goal for the all the stakeholders.
• PB could make managing of requirements easier.
• Dividing the Backlog into three sections i.e. Work-to-do, Work-in-Progress and DONE provided a good overview of the progress of the project.
Personas & Me
I am passionate about integrating Interaction Design (ID) with Agile Methods (AMs). Despite their differences, I think both User Experience community and Agile Community can work together as a team and benefit from each other's skills. But they need to understand and appreciate each other's skills and importance in a project. As AMs and ID are based on different philosophies - particularly with regard to the amount of work needed upfront, some changes are required in both to successfully integrate them.
My two years’ research provided that ID’s persona techniques can be combined with AMs, to improve the requirements management of an internet project which was implemented by final year computing students. Persona is a great tool to represent the end users. A large number of end users can be personified into a couple of personas whose needs are then considered by the developers for translation into software. The developers now have to deal with only a manageable set of personas having manageable or distinct set of needs, rather than with an unspecified or a large number of end users having unclear or overlapping needs. In this way, personas can also help provide coherence to the final system. It must be understood that the requirements are eventually converted into a single software system no matter how large the end users might be.
The amount of user research done before persona creation should be reduced to successfully integrate ID with AMs. One way of doing that can be organizing a brainstorming sessions or a JAD session with all the stakeholders at the start of the project during which different stakeholders' perspectives on the project should be discussed. This can provide useful information for developing distinct personas and their goals.
My research showed the following benefits of Personas when used in Scrum, the most popular AM:
• Personas provided a good basis for determining user requirements.
• Personas helped to consider different user expectations when writing user stories.
• Persona assisted in making requirements decisions when the Customer is unavailable.
• Personas assisted in decision making of the PO to prioritize or reprioritize user stories.
• Personas simplified the detailed process of requirements gathering and elicitation.
• Personas together with the initial brainstorming activities assisted developers in understanding the project background.
Programming & Me
When I was an undergraduate, I always thought I will work as a programmer someday. But today, I am not sure if I will work as a programmer or management or ID. Anyway, I enjoyed programming in Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP, AJAX & WML, Ms - SQL Server 2000, Ms Access. During my Masters, I enjoyed teaching a couple of Java tutorials to undergraduate students which was the main programming language throughout my undergraduate degree.
I designed and developed an online campaigning application for Tibetan Community in Ireland using HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, AJAX on its website. The online campaign which was launched before the Beijing Olympic to campaign for the release of all political prisoners of Tibet turned out to be a reasonable success as many people around the world participated in it. As the administrator of the website, I was responsible for updating news articles, pictures etc on it for two years.
Tibet & Me
As a Tibetan, I feel it is my moral responsibility to work for the cause of Tibetan people living under Chinese occupation in every little way possible. I believe that every human being is born with the right to have the basic human rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly. Over 50 years now, Tibetans in Tibet have been going through immense suffering and difficulty under a brutal regime which resorts to the use of force as the main method to resolve issues.
Under this regime, Chinese people are currently denied free access to information on the internet through strict censorships - popularly known as the Great Firewall of China. I am trying to reach out to Chinese people whenever possible. Currently, I am running a Facebook group called “Friendship Group for Tibetan & Chinese People” with almost 2000 members including Chinese and Tibetans. Through this group, I disseminate information on friendship events and news of mutual interests happening around the world to the members and also encourage them to take part in discussions to promote better understanding between each other.
During my two years Chairmanship of the Tibetan Community in Ireland, I worked for the cause of Tibet in Ireland from 2007-2009. Particularly, during 2008 uprising of Tibetan people all over Tibet, a number of events such as protests march, standing protests, candle light vigils, torch relays were organized to highlight the sufferings of the Tibetan people. During those events I represented the Community in interviews with a number of news radio stations, news TVs, news papers based mostly in Ireland and some in US and India. A Tibet Film Festival was organized in Dublin in July-August, 2009 in collaboration with the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama which is based in India.
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