Product Management Chronicles: Creating a Direct Messaging App
Busy Bees Buzzing...
Another week into the SideHustle 7.0 boot camp, and as is tradition, we were served our second product management task.
So, what is this week's menu, you might wonder? Well, we were to create a 'direct messaging app' project on Jira, prioritize and organize our backlog into sprints, and run scrum ceremonies, all on Jira. Juicy, right? Omo, e choke! This task in particular brought us further out of our comfort zones.
As daunting as it seemed, we drank enough water and got right to work. On Monday, we were asked by our team lead to sign up on the Jira software, make necessary research on the task given, and also familiarize ourselves with the interface. We had our first meeting on Tuesday using google meet, where we got to understand and define the task, brainstorm ideas and goals, share our findings from the research previously conducted, and encourage ourselves. At the end of the meeting, we had more clarity and were more inclined to do the task. The fog surrounding the task which made it initially scary started clearing out, helping us see better. Gosh, I love my team! Cheers to us the 'Amazons of PM + Vincent' clinks water glasses together!
OUR FIRST RETROSPECTIVE MEETING
We had our first daily stand-up meeting on Wednesday at 8 am. The meeting was anchored by our Team Lead on a Slack huddle. Each person delivered a progress report on the discoveries they had made based on what we had managed to accomplish since the last meeting. Then, our Team Lead dropped an unsuspecting bomb on us, saying that we also needed to produce a PRD for the ongoing task. I mean what were we thinking? We're PMs after all!
Soon we got to work, with our Team Lead creating and adding us all to our Jira workspace. Although we were all new to Jira, everyone was extremely supportive and would share resources almost every day to help us understand it better. #GoTeamSpirit!
However, before we could go any further, we had to decide on the name of our messaging app. We converged a meeting for this purpose - and it turned into a naming ceremony, no jokes. After many suggestions, deliberations, and voting with INEC & K-pop behaviors, we unanimously agreed on 'CHATTA!'
As in the first week, we were assigned various tasks on our Jira workspace as well as our Trello workspace, which ranged from defining CHATTA, and its features, to conducting a market survey, to more research, competitive analysis, documentation, technical requirements, and more. We started working on the Product Requirement Document for CHATTA, which helped to better guide our sprints & backlogs, and also make our work more excellent - well, I guess the bombshell wasn't so bad after all.
OUR SECOND RETROSPECTIVE MEETING
On Thursday by 8 am as has now become our culture, we had our second daily stand-up where we got to discuss our progress so far since the previous meetings, the challenges faced, and new findings made. We finally decided on CHATTA's unique features which are; multilingual functionality, local payment integration & offline messaging. Our major focus in developing CHATTA is to create a messaging app that is uniquely for Nigerians and would redefine the world of chatting in the country.
We created a list of issues and arranged them into sprints on the backlog. Each sprint was made of five issues that had a range of 2 weeks and we used it to draw up CHATTA's roadmap. The more we worked on Jira, the more we discovered new features. We were able to track our sprint completion progress with the use of Jira insights which showed our sprint burndown.
OUR THIRD RETROSPECTIVE MEETING
Our final stand-up was held on Friday morning in a Slack huddle to do a final review of the week's task, and also discuss the finishing touches to be made. Interestingly, a new guy joined the team. We were all pleased to welcome Daniel to our midst, especially Vincent, who now has a fellow guy on the team.
Indeed we have been busy bees this week, and just like our honey-giving friends, we have learned collaboration and teamwork a lot more. We've given 100% of ourselves and have had each other's backs more than we did when we first started out. We carried out scrum ceremonies throughout the week which helped us track our progress to ensure the successful completion of the task. We're so excited to see what else we can achieve together as a team in the coming weeks.
2 down, 2 more to go!💪
Team Members: