Week 14 Blog

  This last blog post I decided to revisit an important topic in class: Agile Project Management. This topic initially piqued my interest due to my lack of prior knowledge about how crucial project management can affect the product of a project. The blog post I chose highlights the Agile Manifesto and the twelve key principles to Agile. In addition, the post discusses the benefits of having a project management, for example, structured project management plans remove the fear of making a bad decision when a problem arises. Agile in particular helps improve collaboration and productivity between parties, in turn, producing a better/more refined final product.

  You might ask yourself, “These benefits sound great, but you haven’t told us how to implement Agile”, luckily this blog post dives into various tools that make project management easier. The first tool, Workast, provides features that let you create tasks for the team, set due dates, assign tasks to certain people, and even host meetings through Slack. Similar to lists in GitLab, Workast allows team members to group tasks into lists and move them according to its completion status. This tool is a great way to visualize project progression and productivity. The second tool mentioned is Trello, similarly, Trello allows teams to create to-do tasks and post them on a timeline. Lastly, we have a program called ClickUp which allows users to select a scrum workflow style. Managing sprints, tracking sprint progress, and creating daily scrum boards are just some of the features ClickUp offers.

  One thing that is the most important is having a place to manage your sprints. Having easy access to information like total estimation of the sprint and spillover tasks are crucial to analyzing project progression. After researching the three tools that the blog mentions, I believe ClickUp gears more towards an agile/scrum workflow.

  After reading the blog post, I’m curious to learn about other types of project management techniques and guides. It is no doubt that Agile is an effective approach to optimize project production, however, the Agile methodology does come with its disadvantages: poor long-term planning, dependency on the customer, greater demand on development team. Because the Agile methodology is flexible with its timelines, it’s difficult to predict when a project will be finished. Agile also utilizes feedback from the customer to ensure a product is beneficial to a customer. Team members are expected to meet daily at the same time, putting pressure on developers to stick to one schedule despite a having a duties that are constantly changing.

  Blog Post: https://www.workast.com/blog/guide-to-agile-project-management/

Week 14 Blog

This week’s blog post I decided to research more about linting for non-inclusive language. The medium I selected is a blog post by Michael Bachand, an engineer at Airbnb. “Building an Inclusive Codebase” dives into the techniques engineers at Airbnb are taking to make their work environment more inclusive for everyone. In order to create a more inclusive platform, the development team must also be inclusive. To start, the team has increased the diversity in their teams to accommodate every demographic. Bachand emphasizes that building a diverse team will help empower both Airbnb’s hosts and guests. Inclusivity goes beyond forming a diverse team however.

The team at Airbnb discovered an issue with non-inclusive language in their codebase. After working with employees affected by these terms, the team presented a proposal to the Chief Technology Officer of Airbnb and got the approval to refactor the code to be more inclusive. Michael Bachand stresses that “acknowledgement and resourcing from the highest levels of management legitimized this effort”. The support from management and the CTO prioritizing the task produced a healthier working culture across all teams.

Airbnb’s development team broke down this problem into two key parts: preventing the use of this language and eliminating the existing language. One essential tool that was utilized was the woke linter which checked each pole request for non-inclusive terminology and suggested alternative terms to promote belonging. The team now had a proper tool to use, however, they didn’t send the tool to every developer immediately. The team took a unique approach by slowly distributing the tool to expert developers. These developers decided which directories the linter should access and which should be excluded.

Before our in-class activity on this topic, I never thought about how my sentences might unintentionally offend or upset someone. This topic has opened my eyes to how crucial having a linter tool is. Many of these non-inclusive terms sound offensive without the right context which is why every developer should utilize a linter of sort. Reflecting on the problem addressed by Airbnb, having the support from the CTO is reassuring to know that your work is valued by the company. I believe all companies should strive to create a sense of belonging in their work environment, no matter how big or small. I can confidently say that the information I learned today will stick with me for the rest of my career.

Blog Post: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/building-an-inclusive-codebase-bbaa2315e5b8