The Product Management Teams were tasked with managing Engineering Teams to develope a music app and document process, challenges, lessons, and retrospective. The Engineering Team comprised of the Front End and Back End Developers with varying levels of experience.
In this post, I'd share the experience of the Product Management Team in managing Developers to develop a music app.
PROCESS
The Product Management Team began by defining the requirements for the music app. The team held several meetings to gather input and feedback on what would be in the music app. The team then prioritized the requirements and created a backlog that would guide the development process. In order to efficiently cordinate the processes involved, the entire team were onboarded on Trello and various tasks were assigned to the engineering teams with the progress/status of each task recorded from (To Do, In progress, to Done).
Purpose
These processes were carried out to ensure timely implemention by the Engineering Teams in delivering the given design of the music application and also to ensure the launch of a web version of a music application with core functionality including user authentication, music playback, and a responsive user interface.
CHALLENGES
The Product Management Team 8 faced several challenges during the development of the music app including; conflicting requirements from all the teams involved. Our team had to work with three other Product Management Teams to align requirements and ensure that we were all working towards a common goal.
1. Limited access to the Back End Team members: The Back End team were assigned to two separate groups of Product Managers and had to work collaboratively with both groups with very low participation from it's team members.
2. Poor communication between the Developers and the Product Managers. The Product Management Teams struggled with gaining adequate information and update on development process as the Front End team were mostly behind schedule as a result of inactive members and the Back End had to work with separate groups comprising of 8 Product Management Teams.
3. Shortage of Front End Team members: The Front End developers also had the issue of low participation from it's team members. The Teamlead was left in most cases to work on the project alone. Being a University student, he had to struggle between keeping up with bookwork and meeting up with the product requirements, this in turn slowed down the development process.
4. Timeline Constraints. The Engineering Teams had to work within a tight timeline to complete the project, which added additional pressure to the development process.
LESSONS
The Product Management Team 8 learnt several lessons during the development of the music app, including:
1. The importance of clear communication between the Product Management Teams and the Engineering Teams. The Team realized that clear communication was key to ensuring that requirements are met in developing the music application.
2. The importance of using efficient project management tools. The Team realized that using efficient project management tools was essential in tracking the development process and ensuring that the project is completed on time.
3. The importance of collaboration between Product Managers. The team realized that collaboration between Product Manager was essential to ensure that everyone was aligned on the project's requirements and timeline.
RETROSPECTIVE
A retrospective meeting was held to reflect on the development process. The team identified several areas for improvement including:
*Better communication between the product management team and the engineering team. The team identified that there were instances where the engineering team was unclear on the requirements or the timeline for the project.
* Improved project management tools. The team identified that the tools they used for project management were not efficient and could be improved to better track the development process.
Yet another week of drama but quite insightful. What stood out for me the most was the lessons learnt from the collaboration. Team Collaboration is KEY to any Successful project.
