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In Dec 2023, all members of the ATT earned Scrum Master certification and began implementing the agile Scrum framework, which comprises 3 team roles, 3 artifacts (“social objects”) and 5 events, all directed toward our Product Goal.
ATT Product Goal
The team's work supports the library's ability to be strategically and operationally agile by helping to develop metrics to measure the library's work. As Alma is the main system that facilitates the library's essential operations, this team is central to the library's ability to meet patrons where they are and democratize access to knowledge. The Alma Tech Team's main goals are to:
- Ensure the Alma system is working properly;
- Provide accurate data from Alma;
- Serve as subject matter experts (SMEs) for workflow creation and refinement that involves Alma;
- Maintain batch processes that integrate with other systems; and lead projects centered on bulk data processing and analysis.
Team roles
- Product Owner: Mark Zelesky
- Scrum Master: Paul Diskin and Peter Green (alternating)
- Developers (“team”): Beck Davis, Paul Diskin, Peter Green, Cathy Weng, Mark Zelesky, Tom Ventimiglia (ad hoc guest)
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Each event is attended by the full team, whenever possible. Running notes for the review and retrospective are kept in Google Docs to document discussions and highlights.
Quarterly Maintenance Sprints ("Sprint-free Weeks")
Every three months (Feb, May, Aug, Nov) one week is set aside for explorations, housecleaning, collaborations, roadmap refinement, etc. There is no daily stand-up but there is a review and retrospective at the end of the week.
Annual Fiscal Period Close (FPC) Sprint
Each year, FPC demands our full attention, particularly during the rollover process (end of June). During this annual sprint, we maintain the structure of Scrum but allow for flexibility in meeting times and durations.
Tools
- Alma
- Drools: norm rules, merge rules
- Analytics
- Data Visualization
- Google Drive (docs, sheets, etc.)
- GitHub repos
- alma-config - general configuration and tasks
- alma-ncip - ILLiad add-on
- alma-notices - letters
- lsp-data - reports
- spine-o-matic - spine label prefixes
- Microsoft Office suite
- MarcEdit
- Ruby / iRB
- SN@P (Service Now at Princeton)*
- ZenHub (to manage tickets in GitHub repos)
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