Team Lessons Learned

Expectation Setting

Becki and Netal

• Key Message (Netal):

  • Goal is to collectively look at the work done in FY24 and focus on gathering feedback on how our team works moving forward

  • Let’s focus on items within our control

  • We are not looking at current process for review - discussing specific themes

• Meeting Format

  • What are the action items to improve on these themes?

  • 5 minutes to discuss gap (Netal)

  • 15 minutes to discuss solutions/action items (Becki to Moderate)

Topics

Team

• Versioning Strategy and Accountability

  • Gaps and Problems:

    • There is not currently a defined versioning strategy that is being used

  • Questions:

    • What’s the difference between versioning and tagging?

      • Tagging

        • aliasing a pointer to a specific instance of an artifact

        • Future topic for lunch and learn?

  • Action Items

    • Team needs to define, document, and standardize:

      • Action Items for Chris Cadden and Jesús Rangel - Document Outsystems vs. Non-Outsystems, including definitions and vocabulary

    • In depth Dependencies Planning and team agreement

      • Potential idea: More frequent releases

        • Not stacking multiple releases

          • Increases amount of bugs and time pressure

        • Outsystems can slow down based on smaller releases

      • Need to determine what features can be worked on simultaneously

• Idea/Question: How do we get to the state of more frequent releases

  • Focus on this idea as we move forward - we want to get to this state

    • Action Item for Netal Patel : Define Team Strategy

  • Is branching possible?

    • This is limited within Outsystems

• Documentation and Accountability

  • Dev Documentation (Design checklist)

    • Needs to be created for OS and non-OS projects

    • Accountability needed - documentation alone is not OK, we need to commit

  • Project Management (Project Plans)

  • Testing (UAT Documentation)

  • Feedback:

    • Question: Will Grecia be involved in Design checklists?

      • Yes - Great idea

    • Outsystems' selling point is reusable components - we can leverage this

      • WebDev doesn’t have standardized component library

        • Everyone - document successful tools and reusable resources

    • Thinking point for the Devs: What is the best way to track or document shared components as more are added

      • Outsystems - Internal Forge and documentation on best practices

• Technical Debt and Accountability

  • Estimation

    • Lessons Learned from SDF and CEA

    • Where were the Gaps?

      • Team to review estimates before beginning work using the three day planning period

  • Commitments

    • Sprint Goals should be commitments from the dev team and reviewed in retrospectives

  • Roles & Responsibilities

    • Dev and QA: Responsible for meeting to discuss work breakdown

      • Everyone to take turns stepping up to help schedule work

  • Defect Reduction

    • Clarify requirements before work begins

    • Need to focus on Code Review and Unit Testing

    • QA and Dev need to communicate directly and do it right the first time

    • Idea: Separate Accessibility and Mobile into its own user story when planning?

    • QA and BA to collaborate on Test Cases ahead of the sprint

    • QA and Dev feel at odds and not part of the same team - that relationship is not working like it should

      • How should it be working?

        • Better Communication - easy to fix defects or things the team could fix together could be avoided and save a lot of time

        • Accessibility - need to work together to help get Dev team on the same page

    • QA to demonstrate the process of testing

• Deployments and Accountability

  • Versioning Strategy

    • OS vs. Non-OS

  • When will we do deployments?

    • incorporate CAB

    • Thursday Releases

• Standards and Accountability

  • Development Standards (Outsystems)

    • Design and Implementation

    • Security and Accessibility

      • All teams developing applications and testing need to be responsible and accountable for Security Planning and standards