Ride Share - Sprint 3

Our team was admittedly pushed quite a ways back for sprint 3. Having made a lot of mistakes early on, we were forced to go back and rethink a lot of our original planning. We worked out our goals with the client and this time, thankfully, moved forward with everyone having a complete understanding of what it was we were expecting to accomplish, and what the client was expecting us to accomplish. Those of us working on the back end made a great amount of progress this sprint getting all of the data models and structure in place needed to get everything linked up to the front end later on, however there were some significant snags the group ran into which significantly slowed down development and required us to push some things back until next sprint.

As for myself, I once again did work on the front end, planning out the initial wireframes, then getting their basic layout put together in the application to have final styling applied later. Unfortunately, due to a snag in back-end development, one of the pages for the application became unresponsive. Time was running short and we were not able to resolve the issue after multiple attempts, so further development on the page had to be pushed back until the conflicting issues were resolved.

All in all, our team did a good job getting development back onto the right track, and at a place where we actually understood what we were trying to accomplish, however, it was apparent come time the client presentation that we still made a major error. We definitely were trying to develop this application with the client in mind this time around, making sure that we had a clear vision agreed upon with them and the group, however, due to the fact that we had little to show at the presentation, and with the issues we were having, it's clear that we made a big mistake by gearing most of our development from the back end forwards, rather than the from the front end and working towards the back end. Clearly if the user interface isn't in place, there's nothing to see, so even if significant progress is made, it makes for a very lackluster showing to clients. I realize at this juncture that our team has made seemingly very similar mistakes over the past two sprints, but I know in my mind that there's difference enough that I've learned two very distinct, important lessons about working with clients.

1. Always ensure goals are agreed upon with the client and that client expectations are being pursued.
2. The front end is key to ensuring the client feels confident in the level of progress achieved. Front end first.