Every software development project needs to communicate with a variety of stakeholders for multiple purposes across many aspects of the project. This lesson will discuss the stakeholders and the project aspects. It will be important to know what is of importance to each stakeholder. You will use some tools to facilitate your internal team communications.
For your study of this topic, use some of these resources.
UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED by your INSTRUCTOR you are ONLY to read the instructions but NOT CREATE neither a Slack (or Discord!) for communications.
A SPECIFIC Slack enterprise workspace may have already been created for you, so all you need to do for now is FAMILIARIZE but NOT execute the following instructions in relation to the team's Slack workspace and corresponding use of future channels for virtual standups and your team contract.
Teams should get into the habit of doing very quick standups when you meet to work on the project. This let's everyone know how well the team is moving toward the sprint goal and focus on identifying impediments and pairing members to work an impediment off-line. In retrospective discussions with teams in previous terms, the number one issue that team's say hindered their performance on the term project was a lack of communication within the team. Don't let your team fall prey to that by not communicating.
In-person standup meetings work the best. There will be some class sessions that may end a little before the end time. Your instructor will indicate that each team should do a standup meeting then. Your schedules might allow you to arrive 10 minutes before the class session starts and use that as a time for an in-person standup meeting also. You might also have work sessions where everyone is on an audio/video channel and you can do your standup synchronously, but not face-to-face.
Standups can also happen asynchronously in a virtual environment. The instructions you followed to create your team's Slack workspacehad you create a #virtual_standups channel. Get into the habit of checking in on that channel on days when your team does not have an in-person or other synchronous standup meeting to provide your progress on Sprint work and see the progress others are making. In that channel, each of the members of our team can quickly answer the three standup questions:
You all do not have to checkin in the same time period. Each team member can when their schedule provides two or three minutes of time to do it.
When you hold an in-person or other synchronous standup meeting, one team member will make an entry in the #virtual_standups channel indicating when and where the meeting took place, and who participated in the meeting.
Remember that your instructor will be looking at your team's Slack workspace for indications of participation in project discussions. Your presence in the team's Slack workspace will be evidence of your participation and contributions to your team's project work. Little or no presence in the team's Slack workspace will be one indication of your lack of participation in the project work. It will be OK for you to occasionally miss a checkin but between in-person and synchronous standup meetings and checking in on your #virtual_standups channel you should be present at least four times a week.