Project Context / Purpose

Our generic objective was to add to and maintain our teacher’s website which is used throughout courses by many students. Our group’s specific task was to design and create a preferences and accessibility system into the website with the goal of improving user experience and appeal due to everyone’s unique preferences.

Team Contribution and Roles

For this sprint, and for the first time, I was actually the scrum master. It is a role I’ve been wanting for a while now, so I was extremely happy that I was able to test my skill in managing a team. This definitely was a new experience, and it also came with new challenges. At first, I was slightly bad at taking charge and leading my team on what we should be doing, but I think that I improved on that skill throughout the trimester, especially with the scrum-oriented reviews where I needed to deeply understand what my entire team was doing. Overall, being a scrum master significantly improved my leadership skills, communication skills, and time management skills.

My main contributions to my team can be divided into two parts:

Code Contributions

Feature Details
Preferences UI Base UI for preferences feature
Accessibility Contrast fixes throughout Open Coding Society
Inbox Feature Frontend UI, backend APIs & database (using existing user database), frontend-backend connection

Leadership Contributions

  • Team role management
  • Obtaining information on new tasks
  • Creating and maintaining issues and deadlines
  • Communicating information with team

Core Features of Inbox

Locked behind admin login

CRUD Functionality

Admins have the ability to post, read, edit, and eventually delete messages (currently blocked by CORS).

Admin Access Lock

Only admins are able to actually edit the messages, ideal so that users don’t send inappropriate messages or mess with required messages.

Data Collection

Admins are able to check the accounts that actually interacted with their announcements, allowing for data collection on the outreach of each message. This can also be helpful when teaching a class, as the teacher may know who is following along with messages consistently.

Reflection

I think, with all honesty, that this sprint has been a fun one. The immense creative freedom as well as the new experience of being a scrum master really allowed me to grow as a student/learner as well as a leader and communicator. There are still some things that I would change, though. For example, I still think that I could’ve communicated to my team better and also communicated with my teacher more on what I was working on so I could make sure to stay on track.

What Went Well Areas for Improvement
Creative freedom Better team communication
Scrum master experience More teacher check-ins
Growth as a leader Staying on track

View Issue #30 on GitHub