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THE MASS BLOG
Spring
One of the key aspects of being a Project The features which make
Manager is deciding how much Project it into any given sprint are
Management is necessary, tailoring the chosen from a backlog of Can yoU Solve tHIS
techniques above to suit the size of project user stories and issues, usually stored in a tool Wordoku
being delivered. such as Atlassian’s Jira. SPRIng woRd Related
woRdoKU?
There’s no point in using a sledgehammer to Once the sprint is defined, the team meet every 2019 Issue 1
crack a nut and overburdening the team with morning for a quick stand-up meeting (Scrum)
The rules are still the same as the normal sudoku puzzles.
unnecessary plans and reporting requirements. During the daily scrum, each team member
The grid is divided into nine blocks, each containing nine squares.
At the same time, we need to know who is typically answers three questions:
The rules of the game are simple: each of the nine blocks has to
working on what, have we estimated the work
correctly, and when will they be free for the next What did I complete yesterday that contain all the words within its squares.
project. contributed to the team meeting our sprint Each word can only appear once in a row, column or box.
goal?
Be aware that working with words instead of numbers makes it much harder to solve the
It’s all about appropriate Project Management.
puzzle; it is easier to remember the low numbers rather than words!
A large part of the role involves What do I plan to complete today to
communicating with customers, initially about contribute to the team meeting our sprint
ENErgISED buDDINg SEASoNAl
their requirements, then keeping them updated goal?
florAl crISp AblooM
about delivery, together with risks and issues.
Do I see any impediment that could prevent VIbrANT chANgINg SwEET
As we’re a comparatively small organisation, me or the team from meeting our sprint goal?
and I have a background in software
development, I’m also able to help with Agile came about as a reaction to large IT
designing and documenting some of the projects taking a long time to deliver complete
requirements, as well as a test strategy and products, by which time the requirements were
process. obsolete, or the market had changed so
significantly as to make the product delivered
There is also resource management across the irrelevant.
whole team, forward planning to make sure we
have the right people on the right projects, and We have adopted some Agile techniques at
everyone is busy with something. MASS for some of the smaller projects, using Jira
for issue recording and meeting every work day
Finally, analysing how we performed, how well for a Scrum with the development team.
we estimated, and what we can learn for
projects in the future. So far it’s proving a useful technique to give
visibility to what the team are working on, avoid
Agile Methods - duplication of effort and help people
So, that’s pretty much about conventional collaborate where needed.
“waterfall” Project Management, but a lot of
software projects adopt an Agile approach
these days.

Essentially, (thinking of the “Scrum” variety) this
uses teams of 3 – 9 members, delivering
product in an iterative fashion in time-limited
sprints of 2-4 weeks.

David Perkins 20/02/2019
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