Week 6: Retrospective

11th July 2021

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I have used the reading week to catch up on reading and consolidate my critical reflective journal. It has been nice to have time to reflect after the first six weeks, especially after my first rapid ideation session. The User Experience Design Masters has been an incredible journey so far. I have been learning new content and getting hands-on experience with the activities with my peers. What I have enjoyed the most is the bespoke journey this Master’s has allowed me to pursue. I have learnt a lot about myself and will continue to develop my knowledge and skills as the course progresses.

One of the most important topics I have learnt is time and project management. To start a project, you need to organise and prioritise your time and tasks accordingly. I have implemented time and project management well with tools such as Gantt chart and Trello.

I have also learnt the techniques for boosting my creativity. Although I haven’t managed to practice all the techniques, I hope to implement more of them in the future.

I am proud that I have created an interactive prototype in Figma for the first time. I have watched the tutorials to learn how to use the features in Figma, such as components, constraints and interactivity. I am still learning the software and hoping to get better with each activity.

Retrospective

Retrospectives are meetings that happen at the end of each sprint held by the Scrum Master. The sprint is reviewed and the team collaborates their ideas and opinions of how well it went. Testing can be carried out on the prototypes by experts and end users to identify any issues (Delgado et al., 2015). It is an opportunity for the teams to improve the “product quality, their productivity, and estimation capability” (Erdoğan et al., 2018).

The retrospective structure has three topics: what went well, what went wrong and improvements in the project. The room must be a safe place for all members to take part and put their ideas across. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable, they can choose to listen or not take part. The key takeaway from the retrospective is to analyse the previous sprints and identify factors that can improve the next one.

Continue (What went well)

• Continue to use project and time management tools to organise time and tasks.

• Continue to practice tutorials to advance my skills in Figma.

• Continue to attend all webinars and study pod sessions.

Stop (What went wrong)

• Stop using the same creativity method, for example, brainstorm and SCAMPER.

• Stop being afraid and push yourself out of your comfort zone by trying new things.

Start (What can be improved)

• To start implementing different creativity methods, for example, Crazy eights.

• To start incorporating advanced interactivity in my prototypes.

• To start additional reading each week.

• Look into how I can animate graphics in an app.

I have experienced retrospectives at my job on large projects or to improve our team and processes. Sometimes I get anxious when I voice my concerns. However, I realise it is a safe place, and the team welcomes feedback. There have been positive outcomes in the retrospectives that have greatly improved current processes that are no longer working. I look forward to taking part in many more as the course progresses and hope to learn from each one.

References

Erdoğan, O., Pekkaya, M.E., Gök, H. 2018. ‘More Effective Sprint Retrospective with Statistical Analysis’. Journal of software : evolution and process 30(5), e1933–n/a.

Delgado, T., Antonio, P., Muñoz-Cruz, V., and González-González, C.S. 2015. ‘Agile Human Centered Methodologies to Develop Educational Software’. Dyna (Medellín, Colombia) 82(193), 187–94.

Images

Thought Catalog. 2018. Woman reading a book with tea and flowers. [image] Available at: <https://unsplash.com/photos/OJZB0VUQKKc> [Accessed 11 July 2021].