M i c a e l a S o u c y

Context

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This was a project completed in collaboration with my ENG311: Publishing course. At the start of the course we were tasked with the (very Inception-like) project of publishing an eBook about how to publish an eBook. In order to do this, we first needed to learn about the history of books and the publishing process. The first half of the course was dedicated to such research. The second portion was dedicated to the content creation.

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Scrum/Agile Methodology

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Decisions about the content for this project were made using Scrum/Agile Methodology and Project Management. This methodology begins with an idea, which in our case was writing a book about how to write an eBook. The team then brainstorms a list of things that need to be accomplished to complete the project. These are categorized based on the size of the task into epics, stories or tasks. This is called the backlog. Here is a slideshow of pictures of our project’s initial backlog.

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When the backlog is planned out, the team then goes through a “sprint,” which has a certain amount of time dedicated to it, to accomplish the tasks. This project was completed in approximately three weeks. During the sprint, the team held daily scrum meetings, at which each member answered three questions: “What have I done to help us achieve our goals since we last met?” “What am I going to do today to help us achieve our goals?” and “What might I be having trouble with or where do I need some help?” These meetings were used to assess our progress and update the backlog based on group members’ answers.

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During the daily scrum meetings, group members determine what things need to be done that day and what things have already been accomplished. Three columns are created in order to move tasks around — “backlog” for the things that still need to be done, “WIP” (work in progress) for the tasks being worked on that day and “done” for everything that has been accomplished. Below is a picture of our scrum board after a few days of work.

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Evaluation

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This process taught me a lot about the difference between collaboration and cooperation. Before taking this class, most of my group project work was based on cooperation, or working together while accomplishing selfish yet common goals. Tasks would be split up and designated to certain people in the group. Little to no communication would occur between group members and the final product would be a compilation of each individual’s work. However, this project was a collaborative effort where we worked together to accomplish a single shared goal. This allowed us to all work on every aspect of the project and regularly communicate where we were doing well and where we were doing not so well. Since then, I have strived to work like this on more of my group projects. Sometimes this is difficult because of scheduling constrictions, but more often than not, my peers have been open minded about learning a new way to work together.

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