Whalesight: March came in like a lamb
Our goals for March were split between procedural improvements i.e. getting better at getting things done vs. getting some work done. In other words:
- Start planning our work in fortnightly sprints, writing the tasks down, agreeing on the tasks, and tracking them.
- Agreeing to get a prototype iPhone build done.
- Sorting out how the backend data repository would work.
How did we do? Let’s call that a D and move on the April.
Procedures, tracking
We improved dramatically on the procedural front. We set up two sprints, March A and March B. We assigned tasks we wanted to complete, and for the most part we completed them. We are using GitHub Issues for task tracking. I’m familiar with Smartsheet, Trello, JIRA, and many other tools. We decided on GitHub in that a) it kept us closer to the code and b) we didn’t know how well GitHub Issues would work for team task tracking and wanted to experiment. Summary: they work just fine although using a visualization tool like Waffle.io helps a lot.
What didn’t go as well
For a variety of reasons we spent more time on our main projects than on Whalesight and the time we did spend wasn’t as effective as we had hoped. First, we have been meeting with and discussing similar projects to Whalesight with other researchers. This gave us some reasons to rethink our approach to the backend data storage as there are a few existing systems out there and we wanted to make sure any data storage system we built was going to accomodate a broad stretch of goals. Second, we spent more time than planned on simply learning iOS development. While the language itself, Swift, is fairly straightforward the semantics around iOS development are not as comfortable to a team that spent most of their formative years using C# and Java/Android. This is analogous to being a native English speaker and learning French; you can stumble along and order a baguette but you will get lost in a conversation about politics.
What’s next for Whalesight
Our goals for April take into account what we’ve learned from February and March i.e. we won’t get as far as we’d like to. Our team is searching for paying gigs which takes a surprising amount of time and energy. You’d think the opposite “hey, job hunting is only 2–3 hours per day, what about the other hours” but this isn’t quite the case. So… April’s goals:
- Migrate our Wordpress site from Azure to Bluehost. Azure’s performance with Wordpress is simply not good enough to keep our front door there.
- Meet with two other marine mammal data providers and discuss sharing storage and APIs. No need to reinvent any wheels.
- Finish iOS classes via Udemy. The code is coming along but there are some nuances we still need to learn.
- Get the basic flow of the app done. A stretch goal is to get whale photos going from iPhone → Cloud.
It was a rough month for this project but we’re learning a lot along the way.
Give this article a 💚 recommend if you enjoyed it, and follow One Side Project Challenge for other inspiring side projects.
