Week 1 Post 3

 

• Today, we dedicated the entire day, from 9 AM to 4:30 PM with breaks, to engage in agile/scrum training. The training session involved a series of interactive games aimed at familiarizing us with the principles and ideologies of an Agile work environment. At WillowTree, Agile is embraced as a team management strategy that emphasizes breaking down development into manageable chunks, showcasing the immediate value to clients. This approach diverges from the traditional linear development process, where we typically proceed from design to planning, coding, and eventually the final product. Agile, on the other hand, enables clients to witness the incremental addition of features and even experience public releases prior to the full product launch. I found this concept to be truly eye-opening, particularly in the context of developing large-scale enterprise-level applications.

• One notable game we engaged in was centered around sketching a product idea pitched by one of our organizers. The organizer would describe an animal, providing general characteristics like a "cute nose" or "detachable wings," and we would receive feedback after each iteration for a total of four rounds. This exercise effectively demonstrated that product owners often lack a clear vision of what they want to build. To address the common issue of a final product deviating from the client's original vision, Agile employs prototyping through sprints, delivering workable chunks that can be presented to the client for feedback and refinement.

• Throughout this whole training, I kept thinking that I had learned this earlier so I could utilize such effective methodologies to develop some of my larger projects. The training has been adequate for me to utilize agile development strategy in my personal projects to guide me and make sure I am making adequate and measured progress.