By Manish Rathi, Engineering Team

The team just released the first Iteration Release of Workstreamr this Monday and I was amazed at the terrific job they did. As I told all of them - this is probably the first time in my working experience that I have a seen a relatively functionally stable product released by the Development Team after the first iteration. Typically in my past experience, the first iteration release to the QA was when all the hell would break loose (sorry, there is a slight exaggeration here). QA cursing Developers for what they have handed them, Developers passing the buck to the Requirements Engineers for unverified requirements, and so on. It used to take few iterations and multiple patches to make the product stable for functional testing. In this case, the product was put to actual usage after the first iteration. It was a perfect synchronized dance between all the members.

The team sat down for an interesting retrospective meet yesterday.

Some key things which the team claimed worked very well for them were:

• Well defined and understood Iteration Goals. Goals were kept in an achievable format. (Team had spent substantial time at the start of the iteration to talk amongst themselves about the goals and success criteria)
• Requirements in visualized formats (from wire-frames and prototypes).
• Good team coordination and quick turn-around for queries. (Team uses Velocity Methodology & Platform)
• Test Automation

Areas of improvement which the team suggested:

• Branding Planning & Design should happen before the engineering starts.
• In Iteration Planning Meets - plan for things beyond the next iteration.
• Although it worked in the current iteration, Iteration Planning & Estimation process needs to be more rigorous.

There are three more iterations left for the release. I am sure the team would have excellent opportunity to implement these improvements. At this time, however, they should savor their achievements. And yes, a pizza is due on me!

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Tags: Engineering, india, manish rathi, pre-launch, team