Bootcamp Week 11 – Wrapping Up With a Retrospective

This week began with the final presentations of our full-stack project, RareKind. During the presentations, we highlighted our group’s approach, key frontend and backend features, and discussed both our successes and the areas that didn’t go as well.

After the presentations, our class held a full retrospective to reflect on the project as a whole.

What is a Retrospective?

Retrospectives are a principle from the Agile Manifesto: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.” In practice, this means that at the end of each sprint, the team comes together to discuss what went well, what didn’t, and how they can improve their approach moving forward. Ultimately, retrospectives can help provide continuous improvement and uncover underlying issues to help with workflow.

What we covered in our retrospective

As a class, we had 10 minutes for each point below to share our thoughts. I’ve added a few of my own reflections:

• What are you most proud of? - I was most proud of the UI for RareKind, as it was nearly pixel-perfect compared to the Figma design. I’m also proud of the UX improvements on the “Edit Animals” and “Collections” features, which made a noticeable difference in how users could edit content.
• Appreciation for others - I really appreciated my partner Matt, who worked on the front end with me. He was incredibly hard-working and dedicated to producing a final product we could both be proud of. His work ethic aligned perfectly with how I wanted the project to progress.
• What went well - The frontend had all the required functionality implemented—and more. As a team, we had a clear understanding of our responsibilities, which prevented duplicated work and kept our workflow efficient.
• What didn't go so well - Communication between the frontend and backend teams was sometimes lacking. At times, we were working too independently, which caused confusion about the data requirements and structure. For example, data was being joined by IDs instead of being provided as objects or arrays, which made it harder to retrieve and reuse data cleanly across multiple components.
• What could you do better next time? Improve communication between the frontend and backend teams to ensure clarity on data structures and expectations.
• What have you learned? -I learned a lot about Redux and how effective it can be for handling data from an API. I also gained valuable insight into working with a backend and now have several resources I can use to continue learning more about backend development.

Overall Thoughts on this Week

Overall, this week was both a relief, as we finished the final project, and a realisation of how much we’ve learned as a class over the past 11 weeks. The skills and knowledge gained from prior projects and masterclasses had a positive impact on the work we produced. Without them, we wouldn’t have been as effective in delivering a project we could truly be proud of. Additionally, it provided further insight into how to apply these workflows in a real workplace setting.