MIS608 Assessment 2 (Assessment 2 - Reflection on the Roles of Agile in Teams)

Assessment: Reflection on Agile ways of working and Agile teams

mis608_Assessment_2_Brief_Reflecton

Task Summary

You are required to write and submit a 1500-word individual reflection about Agile ways of working and Agile teams in preparation for your group assignment. You will be expected to examine and reflect upon these concepts specifically: The Agile Mindset, a shift from ‘command and control culture’ to self-organised teams, how reflection is an important part of the Agile process and the concept of servant leadership and how your adoption of these will support your group’s success.

- Bear in mind that you will be working in a group for Assessment 3 and there will be a requirement to use agile ways of working in your team – this is a good opportunity for you to focus on how these will prove most useful for you and your team in achieving your assessment goals.

- The focus of this assessment is to give you an opportunity to reflect on the theoretical knowledge you have developed and how you might put it into practice for your group assessment.

- Your report will need to be 1500 words in length, although you will have the benefit of an allowance of 150 words either more or less than 1500 words.

Please refer to the Task Instructions for details on how to complete this task.

Context

In professional life while some parts of a job require individual contribution but progressively more work requires collaboration and group work.

Group learning is designed to help you to learn about the process of collaboration in preparation for your career.

Agile teams and agile ways of working are becoming more prevalent in workplaces and it is likely that you will be a part of an agile team in your career. However, agile is very different from the more traditional ‘command and control’ management methods to which many people are accustomed.

Reflective practice is a process of thinking about new experiences with a view of learning from them. It is a form of personal response to new experiences, situations, events, or information. University is the best place to learn, and reflection is considered a key part of the learning process for this course.

Gibb’s Reflective Cycle (n.d.)

The above model from Gibb shows the different learning modes of the reflective cycle. We expect you to use this model as a framework for your “Reflection on Agile ways of working and Agile teams”. You initiate your activity in this cycle with the description step where you discuss your prior group work and your group work in this subject so far: how it has made you feel, your evaluation and analysis of the group work process and your conclusions.

have examined important concepts of agile teams and ways of working.

Some of the concepts will be new to you and you will need to examine your thoughts about:

1. Describe your prior experience of group work and how it is progressing with your group to date as you work towards Assessment 3.

2. What are your current feelings? Confident? Irritated? Confused?

3. Evaluate and analyse your personal experience for working in a group before, using a personal example, to establish positive and negatives of the experience to make sense of it in the quiet of introspection.

4. Draw conclusions about how - with your newfound knowledge of how Agile teams work - you could have benefitted from doing things differently.

5. Draft a 5 step Action Plan including the following items:

a. What will you do to adopt an Agile Mindset?

b. How will you encourage the team to work in a self-organised manner?

c. How will you use Agile reflective practice to progressively improve team performance?

d. How will you bring ‘servant leadership’ to your work in the team?

e. How do you believe this will help the team to achieve their goals?

It is expected that 40% of your assessment will focus on retrospective analysis, and 60% will be forward planning to enable future success.

Reference

The University of Edinburgh (n.d.). Gibb’s reflective cycle.

Task Instructions

1. Write a 1500-word reflective report addressing the concepts of agile teams and agile ways of working with a view to selecting three practices which you plan to implement within your group in completing the group assignment.

2. Please structure your report as follows:

Title page: include a title page with the subject code and subject n ame, assignment title, student’s n ame, student n umber and lecturer’s n ame.

Introduction (100-150 words): which will also serve as your statement of purpose for this report

– this means that you will tell the reader what you are going to cover in your report. You will need to inform the reader of:

a. Your area of reflection

b. Key concepts in this reflective report

c. What the reader can expect to find in the body of the report

The body of the report (1000-1200 words): cover the concepts of agile ways of working and team roles within agile teams. Consider how these might be applicable in helping your group be successful in the group assignment which you need to complete. The following questions serve to guide you writing in this reflection with question 1 - 5 carrying 40% of the weight of your grade, and question 6 carrying 60% of the weight of your grade:

1. Describe your prior experience of group work and how it is progressing with your group to date as you work towards Assessment 3.

2. What are your current feelings? Confident? Irritated? Confused?

3. Evaluate and analyse your personal experience for working in a group before, using a personal example, to establish positive and negatives of the experience to make sense of it in the quiet of introspection.

4. Draw conclusions about how - with your newfound knowledge of how Agile teams work - you could have benefitted from doing things differently.

5. Draft a 5 step Action Plan including the following items:

a. What will you do to adopt an Agile Mindset?

b. How will you encourage the team to work in a self-organised manner?

c. How will you use Agile reflective practice to progressively improve team performance?

d. How will you bring ‘servant leadership’ to your work in the team?

e. How do you believe this will help the team to achieve their goals?

Conclusion: summarise the three most important elements you have learned from the group assignment that you have uncovered via your self-reflection.

2. Format and Layout

Please use font Arial or Calibri 11 point, should be line spaced at 1.5 for ease of reading and page n umbers on the bottom of each page.

If diagrams or tables are used, due attention should be given to pagination to avoid loss of meaning and continuity by unnecessarily splitting information over two pages. Diagrams must carry the appropriate captioning.

Referencing

It is essential that you use appropriate APA style for citing and referencing research. Please see more information on referencing here

Submission Instructions

Submit Assessment 2 via the Assessment l ink in the main navigation menu in MIS608 Agile Project Management. The Learning Facilitator will provide feedback via the Grade Centre in the L M S portal. Feedback can be viewed in My Grades.