Situation report, Sprint 2

A big (the biggest?) part of running an agile project is a commitment to ship working code on a regular basis. We're now through the very early set-up phase for the project and have settled into a cadence that feels right for us: a fortnightly sprint cycle with major versions deployed every other Friday.From here on out on I'll post an update after each sprint with a summary of what's done and what's next. Technically the last couple of weeks were Sprint 2, so on this occasion I'll recap Sprint 0 and Sprint 1 for the record.

Sprint 0

Done (technical):

• Proof-of-concept running on a local and remote LAMP stack
• Explored / evaluated Azure environment
• Explored / evaluated Amazon Web Services environment

Done (non-technical):

• First pass at our strategy template and business model canvas

Sprint 1

Done (technical):

• Refactored front end using Twitter Bootstrap and Angular.js
• Abstracted database calls to an API layer
• Initialised a project repository on GitHub (private for now)
• Deployed a prototype version to a test environment

Done (non-technical):

• Reviewed existing platforms for (a) reviews / ratings and (b) charities / good causes
• First iteration of user personas

Sprint 2

Done (technical):

• Refactored back end using Node.js
• Migrated from a relational database to a graph database
• Implemented sign in via Twitter / OAuth
• Migrated CSS to SASS and implemented first visual design
• Acquired a production domain and implemented TLS
• Deployed a pre-release version to a production environment

Done (non-technical):

• Iterated our strategy template and business model canvas
• Second iteration of user personas
• Fieldwork with general public on core concept

Next:

• Face-to-face conversations with various stakeholders to get their input and reactions to the pre-release product
• A whole bunch of refinements, bug fixes and stress-testing on the product to get it ready for an Alpha release
• Prep for further rounds of user research and user testing

Our lead developer is off on (well deserved) leave for a week now, so we've got a short hiatus before Sprint 3 begins later this month.