Project

This team project developed a prototype of an innovative mobile banking application for our client. I acted as the project manager and Scrum master for the project. This project is under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Client: Global consulting firm
Project Type: Team School Project
Team: Tatyana Budantsev, Scott Furlong, Susan Tacker
Timeline: October - December 2012
Methods & Deliverables: Survey, Interviews, Personas, Prototype, Project Plan, Design Report, Presentation
Tools: Pivotal Tracker, Survey Monkey, Balsamiq

Process

Preliminary Research and Planning. We reviewed research to understand the current state of mobile banking and future needs. Also, we planned how to break up the project into sprints and used Pivotal Tracker to track our progress.

Survey. We began our week-long sprints with our survey task. We used our research to develop the questions of our online survey on Survey Monkey. Our survey received 60 individual responses. After analyzing the data with our client, we identified trends and areas to investigate for our interviews.

Interview. We identified 4 individuals from our survey that matched our target audience and prepared an interview script. Then, we performed one hour interviews with each individual to gain further insight.

Personas. We used the data we gathered from the survey and interviews to create two personas. These personas were used to provide focus on features to include in our prototype.

Prototype. Due to time constraints, we created a low-fidelity prototype. The team sketched ideas on paper and then we translated our refined prototype using Balsamiq.

Result

Report. We delivered our finalized project plan and client report. Then, we presented our findings and recommendations to the client. The client was pleased with the findings from our research.

Lessons Learned.

Require team members to document progress prior to daily Scrum meetings, especially if they cannot be present for the meeting.
Following the Scrum methodology can be difficult with part-time team members since their other commitments can impede on the project's progress.
Use feedback from retrospectives to continuously improve subsequent sprints.

Photo: money by khrawlings, used by CC BY 2.0