Agile in The Data Mine

Recording from July 18, 2022 - Summer Mentor Meeting Series

Dr. Terri Bui shares her insights on using Agile in The Data Mine.

All teams are encouraged to use scrum artifacts to guide their project development. The three main scrum artifacts that The Data Mine uses are the product backlog, sprint backlog, and increment. See below for detailed definitions.

The mentor’s main responsibilities pertain to the product backlog and the increment. Specifically, mentors should be directly involved in managing and maintaining the product backlog (your TA will also help with this). Mentors have the best understanding of which direction the project should move so their involvement on the product backlog is crucial for guiding the students.

Mentors are also involved with the increment. They will provide feedback on the increment and decide if sprint backlog tasks are officially completed or if they will need to rollover to the next sprint.

Scrum ceremonies offer a consistent schedule for mentors, TAs, and students to follow. Teams should stick to a repetitive sprint schedule with three key ceremonies: sprint planning, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives. See below for sample sprint schedules and important definitions.

Mentors are directly involved with the sprint planning process. TAs will lead the sprint planning meetings, but mentors are present to provide guidance on what tasks to prioritize during the sprint.

During sprint reviews, students will present their project updates. Mentors are to give feedback on their work and their presentations skills.

To clarify roles within a project team, it is helpful to consider your team a scrum team, broken into three main roles: product owner, scrum master, and development team.

Corporate partner mentors take on the role of product owner because of their direct connection to the business. They are the leader of a project and will be the decision maker for project scope and direction.

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