After spring break, everything changed.

Due to the current COVID-19 situation, CMU decided to move to remote learning. For the project, it means that instead of working together in our project room at ETC, we will work separately in our home, and collaborate remotely.

This is a big change and challenge for the project team. When we work together at the same space, if we need anything from other teammates, or have a question, we can just go to their desk and ask them. And we can have meetings/standups everyday face to face. Programmers can do pair programming very easily. But now we need to do everything remotely.

We totally understand the measures the school has taken, we know how scary the coronavirus is. This can be a very interesting and great learning experience. I know many companies on the west coast are requiring employees to work from home because of the virus. Now we have a chance to see how it’s like. 

On Tuesday, the team picked up our stuff from ETC one by one. We checked out some testing devices and some teammates checked out their desktop and took it home. We took our personal belongings and cleaned the room. This might be the last time we see our project room. It’s just all very sudden.

To prepare our second half of the semester, we made some changes to our routine and plans.

Scrum Meeting

Before the lockdown, the team will do a scrum meeting every day at 9:30, just to check in and see everyone’s progress, and if there are any blocks.

We are still doing the meetings, but instead of doing it face to face, we are doing it via Zoom.

We created a daily folder in our shared google drive, and document our progress using google sheets. 

Zoom Stream Plan

To create the mindset that “we are still in the same room”, we came up with a “Zoom Stream” plan. We have 20 core hours each week, which we are supposed to be at our project room at ETC together. 

We created a Zoom room and decided that during core hour, we need to open the Zoom stream, and if anyone has question, they can just talk and everyone else can hear.

We tried this for two days. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for the team. It’s just weird and a little scary that sometimes your teammate’s voice comes out of your computer when you are focusing on something. It’s a little disturbing for us.

Instead, we decided that during core hours, we must have Slack open, and we can just talk on Slack about things. And if it’s something that needs discussion, we can open a Zoom room and talk about it.

Weekly Plans

We also update our weekly plans after halves.

Again, this remote working thing is both a challenge and a great learning experience. There will be more things we need to figure out, like how to remote testing, but our goal for the project doesn’t change, the team will work our best and deliver what we promised at the beginning of the semester.