Sprint 1

[JenLys]

This is the retro board for Sprint 1. All retrospectives and discussions should be posted here

Sprint 1 Retrospective

Sprint: 1
Dates: 2026-01-12 → 2026-01-25
Participants: @benjaminsunliu @JenLys @CanadianMaple-Syrup @Strange4 @Marian-Hristov @Vinuyans @SaraH6734 @SacciadisG @YehJordan @DallaliRim @sasha-klnd

Welcome to the Sprint 1 retrospective.
The goal is to reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and identify concrete improvements for the next sprint.

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📌 How to Participate

• Add one comment per idea under the relevant section
• Use 👍 reactions to vote on comments you agree with
• Top-voted items will be reviewed and converted into GitHub Issues

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🎯 Sprint Goal

What was the intended goal of this sprint?

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✅ What Went Well

What worked well this sprint? What should we keep doing?

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⚠️ What Could Be Improved

What didn’t go well? What caused friction or delays?

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💡 Ideas & Action Items

Concrete, actionable improvements for next sprint.

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🧩 Action Items

Action	Owner	Due

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⏭️ Next Steps

• Top-voted items will be converted into GitHub Issues
• Action items will be added to the next sprint backlog

[DallaliRim]

Sprint Goal

• To lay a strong foundation in order to make the future sprints easier
• To make sure everyone has a clear idea of what the project is and their role within it

What went well

• Everyone in the team was reliable and were able to accomplish their tasks with little supervision
• Many people were taking smart initiatives that were bettering the process

What could be improved

• TBD

Ideas & Action Items

• We could schedule a short weekly online meeting

[YehJordan]

Sprint Goal

The goal of this sprint was to research and understand the project and the associated technologies, and to plan out the flow of our next sprints.

What went well

Everyone has worked their part really well, and help and discussions were done whenever assistance was needed. We should keep the same momentum for the next sprints.

What could be improved?

It was hard to organize meetings at times everyone could agree on. We should try and come up with a fix period where a meeting is supposed to happen.

Ideas/Action Items

We can set up a fixed meeting period (while accommodating to any emergencies or unforeseen circumstances of course)

[Vinuyans]

Sprint Goal

The goal of the sprint was to setup tools that will be helpful long-term for the project as well as research our tech stack and the various libraries offered. This was also the time to start planning the architecture of our app.

What went well

There was clear communication between team members and everyone was doing their work well

What could be improved

It was difficult to find a meeting time that worked for all of us

##Ideas/Action Items
We should still try to find a meeting time that fits all of us, but on the chance that's not possible, it should be considered to do sub-team meetings where people who are working on specific aspects of the project meet with the goal of solely discussing a specific task. These could be short 10 min zoom meetings.

[Marian-Hristov]

agree with the sub-team stuff, we should divide stuff like that from now on. makes scheduling and keeping track of the status of the project much easier

[CanadianMaple-Syrup]

Sprint Goal

• The goal of the sprint was to figure out all of the base requirements needed for upcoming sprints. This includes the overall architecture and tech stack of our project, as well as defining all of our user stories so that we are on the same page with the PO.
• Another goal of this sprint is to addequately prepare us for the upcoming sprints so that we can work cohesively as a group.

What went well

• There was overall good communication on what people were working on, and whenever someone needed help with something they would ask and someone would reply.
• A majority of the team would accomplish their tasks ahead of time to relieve the stress/pressure of rushing at the end (some exceptions like restrospective and implementing PO feedback can only be finished at the end)

What could be improved

• Whenever someone would finish a task depending on when/how they communicated that they would like a review, it would either be done later rather than sooner or possibly forgotten alltogether (ex. reviewing the UI mockups)
• We left story points on tasks to the end (we didn't know we needed/were allowed them at the start) which gave us an innacurate sprint velocity

Ideas & Action Items

• When requesting a review in the future, we should request a review from specific people that way we won't run into the bystandard problem where everyone assumes someone else will perform the review.
• We should make use of accurate story points fromt the start of the sprint (already planned/implemented)
• Since the meeitng with the PO is only once every two weeks, we can use the week off as a regular member meeting to catch up and make sure we are all on task in case the everyway text chats are not enough

[benjaminsunliu]

Yes, we should decide on who to assign for what reviews. Should we be assigning everyone on PR's? Specific people?

[CanadianMaple-Syrup]

I think assigning everyone on a PR will waste some time, but having two or three primary reviewers that will review all PR's or most of them and then rotating other people in and out will be good middle ground so everyone can be up-to-date on the codebase

[benjaminsunliu]

🎯 Sprint Goal

The goal of Sprint 1 was to set up the foundation of the project, which included aligning on the problem and requirements, defining the tech stack and initial architecture, setting up the repo, project structure and workflows as well as breaking down our issues.

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✅ What Went Well

Team members were proactive in picking up tasks and contributing to the sprint, communication was clear and effective when issues came up. Tasks breakdown was clear and helped in spreading the workload.

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⚠️ What Could Be Improved

As mentioned previously, we should setup a fixed meeting time.
There was also a bit of confusion with the wiki, I think we should just write stuff directly in the wiki's main branch. We can always just edit it. It'll make it easier for everyone to view.

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💡 Ideas & Action Items

• Issues could be created and assigned earlier in the sprint so that it is visible on the project board so work can start as soon as possible.
• We could share task status updates more often so the team knows what has been started, what is in progress, and whether there are blockers.

[SacciadisG]

🎯 Sprint Goal

The goal of Sprint 1 was to set up the foundation of the project, which included aligning on the problem and requirements, defining the tech stack and initial architecture, setting up the repo, project structure and workflows as well as breaking down our issues.

✅ What Went Well

The gem of this first sprint was everyone's continuous communication in the discord chat. Very few, if any, people were MIA for more than 2-3 days at a time.

⚠️ What Could Be Improved

Sometimes, deliverables were updated in predictable text channels, but other times, they were discussed about or informed of in unrelated text channels or simply the general chat.
Perhaps, per sprint, text channels can be dedicated (as was done), but the contributors to those project elements can be @'d & pinned at the very start of the text channel to emphasize who to speak to / where to post the deliverables per sprint.

💡 Ideas & Action Items

• Issues could be created, assigned earlier in the sprint, and organized in separate text channels (very similarly to what was already done, but on a per-sprint basis) to increase visibility.
• An inter-sprint meeting (at the end of the 1st week of the 2-week sprint) could be introduced, at the same time as our regular PO meeting.

[SaraH6734]

🎯 Sprint Goal

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The goal of this sprint was to understand and plan the project, prepare for future sprints, decide on the resources we would use and the role of each team member.

✅ What Went Well

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Communication was clear, and team members were responsive and proactive in taking on tasks.

⚠️What Could Be Improved?

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It was challenging to find a time when everyone was available to meet online.

💡Ideas & Action Items

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Schedule a weekly meeting.

[JenLys]

🎯 Sprint Goal

The goal of Sprint 1 was to create a general repository set-up that would be used for all of our sprints, create a backlog with predefined user stories (and acceptance criteria for the full project), create personas alongside other UI/UX tasks, and research to determine the structure and tech stack for the project.

✅ What Went Well

Team members communicated and collaborated well, each one fulfilled their tasks and helped out other members if needed.
User story backlog and UI/UX tasks have been finalized for the Sprint 1 delivery.
Research on the project (and tools/structure/etc) has been done.

⚠️ What Could Be Improved

We are 11 people in a team, and each person has different availabilities making it harder to mobilize everyone to meet at the same time. I agree with @Vinuyans's suggestion of having sub meetings.

Personally, I found the PO's UI feedback a bit vague and unclear, in the future another person needs to be helping me out with this in order to be aware. I was absent during the PO meeting and reading over his feedback is not obvious (it would've been better to receive it in person).

💡 Ideas & Action Items

Besides scheduling meetings, it would be great to ask more questions to the PO in order to demystify the expected deliverables. For example, I made mockups for the full projects, assuming that just like with the user stories, it had to be done fully. Asking the PO for clarifications would've saved a lot of time and prevented the mockups from being done in full.

[sasha-klnd]

Sprint Goal

The goal of this sprint was to fully set up the project. This involved creating the repository, researching the available technologies and choosing which ones to use, making UI/UX decisions based on accessibility and inclusive design principles, and generating software architecture artifacts to model the system operation.

What went well

Tasks were allocated across the team and all the team members participated well. There was consistent communication between the team members to coordinate the work. Overall we managed to complete the required tasks before the deadline for Sprint 1.

What could be improved?

It was difficult to schedule meetings that worked for all 11 team members. It was also sometimes difficult to track the progress on some issues, due to discussion being spread across many different channels in the Discord.

Ideas/Action Items

I agree with the idea of having a fixed meeting time that works for everyone.

As for the problem of organizing topic discussion in the Discord, maybe we could make use of Discord's thread feature to group related discussion together.

[Marian-Hristov]

🎯 Sprint Goal

The goal of this sprint was the lay the foundations of the project. Resources were spent on setting up the project and the repository. Initial mock ups were made to get an idea of what is the feel and general UI direction for the application. On the backend side, research was done pertaining to the possible coding patterns as well as libraries and components that will get used.

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✅ What Went Well

Communication and coordination between the team members was great. The task delegation was great and quick too. The team is works very well together and discussions are constantly happening about improving processes and upcoming tasks/work

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⚠️ What Could Be Improved

Finding a time to meet with everyone. Keeping track of what are the future tasks since a lot of messages happen in our discord, it is hard to keep track of what is currently happening.

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💡 Ideas & Action Items

It would be good to divide the team into the a few categories in order to make it easier for people to meet. The people that work on the frontend shouldn't really need the feedback of the backend people, vice versa. We have structured the team into frontend and backend with @DallaliRim as frontend manager and @Strange4 as backend manager. If a decision requires the whole team, then both managers can take the issue on their separate side and converge together afterwards. This would help with both keeping track of the status of the project as each subteam's focus is much smaller. There would also be less different people to schedule a meeting with.

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🧩 Action Items

• @DallaliRim and @Strange4 need to schedule subteam and manager meetings
• Make a list of deliverables for the end of the sprint for each subteam
• Make and assign roles for subteams on Discord

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[Strange4]

🎯 Sprint Goal

My goal for this sprint was to research in detail all the technologies that will be used in our application and see how we could implement each and every feature. I also had the additional goal of making sure everybody knew what to do and collaborate on global tasks (like wiki and reviewing architecture work by other people).

✅ What Went Well

Great communication and response time from everybody.

⚠️ What Could Be Improved

Trying to keep track of what everyone is doing at all times can be overwhelming sometimes. I even changed my notification settings to see stuff better but there is some triage of attention that needs to be done in order for the team to work efficiently.

💡 Ideas & Action Items

To steal from Marian, we should divide the team into 2. Frontend and backend to have easier meeting times but also to compartmentalize the work that needs to be done. If a person is really creating a lot of domain logic they shouldn't be bothered about too many details on the UI (unless they wish). Teams should share important announcements and considerations that many people should report their attention to. The rest should be left as "their work". Each "manager" for each team should constantly be in communication with the other manager to coordinate greater tasks in the app.