Performance Reviews
Welcome to our performance review page! It's like our progress report card, showing how we're doing and where we're headed. Check out our reviewsâit's all about celebrating successes and planning for what comes next.
Sprint 1
| Date: | 30-11-2023 |
|---|---|
| Sprint number: | 1 |
| Stakeholder: | Marianne Bossema |
| Assignment: | Human-Robot Collaborative Drawing |
| Team members: | Mario Tzouvelekis Susant Budhatoki Calvin Nessen Mike Tool Ralph Adrichem |
What went well?
Our team was highly productive thanks to a few practices that worked like a charm. We all put in solid work hours without overdoing it, maintaining a good balance. The team spirit was good, making the atmosphere enjoyable and boosting our motivation to achieve our goals.
We were efficient in meeting our targets, often going the extra mile. Each team member completed their assigned tasks well, ensuring we covered all our bases. Plus, everyone was consistently engaged, so there was never a moment of downtime.
It was a mix of balanced work hours, good teamwork, hitting our goals, completing tasks effectively, and staying actively resulting in a good first sprint!
What could we have done better?
For the next sprint, we could aim to be physically present on-site more often, but that depends on fixing our current Wi-Fi issues. Another improvement would involve better workload distribution and clarifying who's handling which tasks.
We definitely need to step up our game in communicating about the tasks we pick up and keeping everyone updated.
What will we try next?
We're planning to amp up our focus on daily standups to bring more clarity to our project. Additionally, we're aiming to beef up our documentation on the Mkdocs site to better showcase our progress.
Our next move is to ensure everyone's on the same page regarding each other's tasks and expected outcomes. We'll also establish a documentation standard to maintain consistency across our records.
In essence, our next steps involve emphasizing daily standups, enriching Mkdocs documentation, enhancing team awareness of tasks, expectations, and implementing a standardized documentation approach.
What questions do we have?
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When can we expect to acquire the Camera and Raspberry Pi required for our project?
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Could the diode be the factor limiting the speed increment of the step motor to a maximum of 500?
Sprint 2
What went well?
After having a proper meeting halfway through the sprint we talked about what each member was thinking about the teamwork process which resulted in a new plan on how we were going forward. This resulted in us more actively using the git board and having more motivation to check what other members were doing. Our overall progress was far greater than the previous sprint. We are fairly sure that, if we keep up this pace, we will deliver a good, finished endproduct.
What could we have done better?
There wasn't always a clear image of when who was going to be present at school. We should keep track of who wasnât present or notified us in time of their absence and after three times we will notify the person in question. This is relevant to ensure we work as a team on the relevant location. We will check the absences at the end of the week. The issue board was not always kept up to date, which created confusion among the team. Some of us wouldnât know what issue wasnât done or was in progress.
What will we try next?
To properly finish up the project and leave this project with more knowledge than when we started it as well as being clearer on when who is going to be present at school. We will measure this with the amount of learning stories you have made. The acceptance is when you meet the required learning stories to get an as expected. This is relevant for the project because youâll be learning how to improve the final product. The time limit is the next three weeks.
We will continue to use daily stand-ups to be able keep the communication and clarity among the team. We will measure this by logging the number of daily stand-ups we held. The acceptance will be when we do four daily stand-ups every week. This is relevant to keep the team up to date with everyoneâs progress. The time limit for this will be the next three weeks.
What questions do we have?
How can we as team keep the gitboard consistent and up to date? We as a team will have a meeting where we will note down the issues that are not updated correctly. At the end of the day we will check all the labels which we noted down, if theyâve been updated. This is relevant as this will create a clear picture of what needs to be done for the project. The time limit is the end of the week.
Sprint 3
What went well?
In the latest sprint, our team experienced several positive developments. The mid-sprint meeting proved to be a pivotal moment, fostering open discussions among team members about the teamwork process. This resulted in a revised plan and increased motivation, leading to more active use of the Git board. Consequently, our overall progress surpassed that of the previous sprint. We successfully showcased our project at the Digital Creators Expo at HvA, receiving positive feedback and generating interest. This, coupled with effective communication, contributed to meeting the client's expectations for the final sprint. Documentation is in good shape for the next team to build upon.
What could we have done better?
Despite the improvements, there's a conscious effort to further refine certain areas. Notably, attendance tracking, which was occasionally unclear, has become a focus for enhancement. The team has initiated a proactive plan to monitor attendance systematically and promptly notify consistently absent members. This initiative is showing positive progress. Additionally, in addressing the occasional lapses in consistency, the commitment to improving the maintenance of the issue board is yielding positive results. Efforts are underway to ensure regular updates, reducing confusion within the team. These proactive measures signify the team's dedication to continuous improvement, with early signs indicating success in refining our processes.
What will we try next?
During future projects we will try to improve our communication by holding weekly face-to-face or online meetings with teachers and clients to make sure that everyone is constantly on the same page and to prevent miscommunication. We will do this during the first sprint and hopefully our other new teammates will find this amount of communication usefull. We'll measure success through participation rates and based on how the sprint went.
What questions do we have? How can we as a team have better communication with the team, client and coach? We as a team will continue doing our meeting at eleven o clock, this worked really well in improving our communication. During this meeting we talked about what everybody was doing and what they were going to do for the next week, this brought clarity in what everyone was doing. For communication with the client we will share more of our progress in the Teams channel. Right now we hardly use the team channel, so if we can share our achievements there and directly ask for feedback, this could help us with communicating and making sure that the client is also up-to-date with the progress. This also helps with the communication with the coach as they will see our progress without having to ask.
Individual reflection on the project.
Ralph Adrichem
Looking back at the project, I realized it had its ups and downs. Sometimes, I focused a lot on my own tasks instead of working closely with the team. In hindsight, I see that I could have been more involved.
Thinking about future projects, I've learned how crucial it is to set clear rules from the start. Having clear guidelines helps everyone know what to expect and makes teamwork smoother.
In the next projects, I want to be more active in working towards the team's goals right from the beginning. Learning from this experience, I understand that open communication early on is key to success.
Despite the initial challenges, I'm happy with how the project turned out. It feels good to see the end result, and the lessons I learned along the way make me satisfied with what we achieved. This experience will guide how I approach future \ projects in school.
Mairo Tzouvelekis
Looking back at this project a lot of the problems we faced were due to the fact that our communication, with each other as well as school, could have gone better. I have never had the feeling that I had a clear image of what school wanted from me nor what all of my group mates were doing. However, I did learn a lot! When I started this project I had never written anything in python, and now I can kind of understand how it works. I also enjoyed working with MQTT for the first time.
In future projects I would focus more on correctly creating issues from the start. I thought they would be evaluated at the end of each sprint and I quickly learned that that wasnât the case. I would also try to work more as a team,however, that was fairly difficult with the project that we were given.
I also think I would drop problems earlier, during this project Iâve had a situation where I was stuck for 2 weeks on a problem and, even though I asked multiple teachers for help, this resulted in me getting lower grades for my weekly reviews as I pushed less code to git. In hindsight, I could have filmed the whole thing and made documentation about not working things as I was later informed by Mats.
Susant Budhathoki
During this project I learned a lot of different things, what I could have done better was try to communicate a bit more. I wasnât really communicating much with the team other than Mike which resulted in me not being able to follow everything everyone was doing. The next coming sprints I was able to communicate better with the team and follow what everyone was doing. During the project I was also stuck with trying to move the cart and I couldnât figure out why the cart wasnât working as it should be. This took a lot of time and I didnât ask for much help which resulted in me losing even more time.
For the next project I want to be able to work more flexibly and try to work on other things when Iâm stuck on something instead of wasting all my time. During the later phases of the project I was able to work on user stories a bit better, but I still spent 3 days trying to get a feature to work. I managed to get the user story done, but that was almost a whole school week.
I made the most progress during the last sprint, I tried to contribute more because I wasnât really happy with the result of the last two sprint. This sprint I Tried to have more commits and user stories. I believe that I have done the most that I couldâve done during the last sprint. In the future I want to go into new projects with the amount of work I did the last sprint or even more.
Calvin Nessen
Reflecting on the project, we encountered a few challenges that consumed a significant amount of our time. Initially, I concentrated on my own tasks without closely monitoring the progress of others. It wasn't until later that I began to notice some team members spending too much time on the same tasks without reaching out for assistance when needed.
During the final sprint after our mid-sprint meeting with the client, we discussed the remaining tasks, and at that point, the cart still wasn't moving. Ralph and I asked Mike and Susant if they were going to make it work this last week. After a short conversation Ralph and I forced them to abandon this issue and I took on the responsibility of fixing the cart in the last week so that we could showcase something at the creators' fair. I delved into the code to identify the issue and found that it was consistently skipping the part related to the motors.
To address this, I decided to replace the motors with DC motors, which I picked up from a friend the night before the fair. I then worked on building the cart with the new motors, but they were too low, so I had to add blocks in between to be able to glue the motors to the base plate. I had to 3D print these blocks. Afterward, I rewrote all the code, conducting numerous tests to ensure the cart would move when receiving a command from the server.
On the morning of the fair, I soldered a board together to get rid of a breadboard and start using a circuit board, making everything a cohesive unit.
I've come to realize the importance of communication from every team member in achieving a successful outcome. In future projects, I plan to inquire more about the progress of others to ensure everyone is on track. Despite these obstacles, I am pleased that we ultimately reached our end goal and were able to showcase our achievements.
Mike Tool
Looking back, we started a bit rocky both with teamwork and certain parts of the actual project. I would tend to work mostly on my own without asking for much assistance during the first sprints which would end up getting me stuck on parts, with no overall progress. As Well as that, I did take away some of my time focusing more on helping a teammate than doing my own work which increased the amount of time I would be spending on my own user stories.
I also tend to focus and pay more attention to the parts that interest me more, So I was working a lot quicker on physical design elements while letting the cart things rest and take longer than needed.
It didnât help that throughout the project that most of the previously given parts needed to have been completely replaced as they wouldnât work for our goal. Both the stepper motors who weâve replaced with dc motors in the final version, Aswell as changing the functionality of the camera using a laptop with a webcam instead of a raspberry pi with camera. This created a lot of lost time in figuring out those functionalities and lost user stories of working on that hardware.
Our rocky start was refined during the rest of the sprints, and we were working together as a team more and more, Although during our second sprint everything wasnât fully combined. During the final sprint we managed to get everything together and get all the documentation in order.
I was glad during the final sprint Calvin took over the motors and got it finished off well enough for the expo. I shouldâve let it go earlier and work on something else earlier to maybe get the rest of the project working smoother, but I'm happy with the results and also managed to get a WebPortal running, While also getting the cart and everything required running in perfect order.
For future projects I should ask help a lot quicker and get work together with my team and get trough user stories quicker