Discussions with Groups, How do they feel?

Last week I had meetings with the groups that I have been monitoring to see what they have been up to and if they feel that the management techniques that they are using are working for them. I have been following 5 groups for this blog I will be referring to them as Group 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Group 1

The first group that I spoke too looked as though everything was okay from what I had been tracking and when I got to speak with the group things where going relatively well, apart from a group member not completing work that is being set however that member was escalated and the issue was resolved. The team felt that it would be beneficial to them to increase the hours that they are working on the game. However they have also simplified their project as they thought that they where over scoping. The team feel that weekly sprints work for them as they have the time to do the tasks that they have been set before the sprint ends. I asked the group if they had had any tutorials on how to use the software that they are using for their management and this team had had a tutorial and they feel that the software is good.

Group 2

This group do not look good on the JIRA tracking however this is not effecting the group themselves as all group members are doing work on time, their files are easy to find on GitHub. However they are forgetting to move over their tasks to in progress and are just moving them over to verify on JIRA, this means that when tracking if work is being done that we do not know until the work is finished, this does not reflect good on the group all the time as I may look at the JIRA see no tasks are in progress and then assume that work is not being done. It was only when I met with the group that I could see that work was being done it was just that the team had been forgetting to log their tasks into in progress via JIRA. This group did not have a tutorial on the software that they are using, however they knew how to use it from previous work.

Group 3

This group had the same issue as group 2 with their tasks not being moved to in progress, however the communication from this group has been okay. They have had to escalate a member and as they are only a three person team this means that loosing the work from one member can cause serious set backs for the whole project. The members of this group are doing something we call Tuesday sprinting, as the sprint finishes on a Wednesday all work is being done on the Tuesday which means that it may be rushed or to a standard that the project manager doesn't agree to, if I had met with this group before I would of suggested to them to do daily sprinting, this is where a sprint is set up and has to be finished the next day and this is done for the week, instead of setting all tasks at the start of the week.

Group 4

This group started of the project very strong, however communication and work from group members has been decreasing at an alarming rate. Some of the members are logging time to their JIRA tasks and saying that they have been completed but they are then not committing them to the GitHub to be added to the game, this means that when just tracking  JIRA the team look like they are making good progress however when the game is being shown it has not made a lot of progress as it is falling to one member to do tasks that are important.This group has escalated a number of times, however this has not helped them get back on track. This would be another case where if I had spoken to the team sooner that I would of suggested that they try daily sprints instead of weekly sprints as this may of helped them get back on task.  

Group 5

The final group that I had spoken too have had good communication, and good use of JIRA. This group are emailing updates to each other constantly so that each member knows what is happening with tasks. Their GitHub is tidy and everything is easy to find. Even though they are emailing and correctly updating JIRA the team does suffer from some Monday/Tuesday sprints, however they feel that the work is still up to a standard that they feel is good.

Looking at these groups it is easy to see that using Agile can go wrong, but it can also work extremely well. I will be comparing the agile methodology with other methods to see if there is anything that can be done differently to make groups work better. I will be doing this in a later blog.

Thank you for reading. I hope you found it insightful.