Agile Practice

We foster on-going communication between team members and the client through the use of Agile methodologies. One of the Agile Manifesto’s tenets is that the “most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” Often our meetings with CFPB are actually by live video, but we use the following techniques to create virtuous cycles of build, measure, learn through our online collaboration.

We most closely adhere to the Scrum style of agile. We maximize our development time through cycles of research, design and development with sprints.

Cadence

Planning

We will work in two-week sprints. Milestone will consist of three sprints be planned out every 6 weeks. Milestone planning is relative, defines the milestone goal, and puts the user story/issues in three upcoming sprints. Milestone retro refines the relativeness. Spring planning will define the sprint goal and discuss each issue to be included in the sprint. Before we close out the sprint planning, team members are assigned to each issue and, confirm: (1) Everyone understands what work they are responsible for and (2) The right amount of work is assigned.

Daily Scrums: This daily meeting is the heart of all of our projects. They are short. The only item on the agenda is that each member of the team reports on their work:

• their progress on work from the previous day
• their plans for the next day
• any obstacles they anticipate

There are many advantages to this but we have seen, as a top benefit, that the team develops regular shared understandings of all aspects of the effort.

Sprint Retrospective

We end the sprint with a sprint retrospective meeting, also an hour in length. Included in this meeting is a review of all items that were included in the backlog and any trouble areas that arise. This is an opportunity to ask ask clarifying questions present progress on the project. Both the Raft team and the CFPB team are participants in these meetings also.

Other meetings and workshops

• We have a placeholder each week to schedule any workshop or meeting with CFPB. These could also be updates or "touch base" on issues that may require more time to explore.
• We expect to have one to two more, topic specific meetings within our team. Some of those meetings have been used as brainstorming sessions, design studios, and other types of collaborative thinking that requires more time than than is available in the more structured meetings described above.