8.0 WIMMA Lab Structure and Phases

People selected for WIMMA Lab are divided into smaller teams, ie virtual companies. Every virtual company gets its own mandate, some even more. The size of the virtual company depends entirely on the requirements of the assignment.

Progress is followed by each team's own Kanban board, which they keep up to date. The Kanban board has its own areas for various tasks:

• Pockets with sprints coming from Backlog
• To Do (unfinished) pockets with Sprint on To Do
• Doing Pockets at Doing
• Waiting for review pockets waiting for review.

According to Kanban, each team also assigns themselves a WIP number, or Work in progress. The figure tells you how many tasks can be done at the same time. Do not exceed the number. If there were too many tasks to be done, something must be moved from the Doing area back to the To Do area. Tasks can be added to the To Do list as soon as previous tasks are completed and the WIP number is given.

The most important tasks can be labeled, for example, with a Priority label (Label), ie they require immediate attention and must be done first before other tasks.

Mysticons' Kanban board at Gitlab.

The weight and the completion time (Estimate) are also assessed. The load value indicates how demanding the task is. For example, a work at load value 1 can be estimated to last less than an hour, while a load value of 5 may take several days.

WIMMA Lab is a very short project where you need to get started very quickly. Two and a half month period is divided into shorter lengths, repeat, or sprints. At the start of each sprint, the teams define their goals for the start of the sprint and at the end of the sprint, the team achievements are reviewed together.

Generally, at least the team leader, coach and, if possible, the subscriber of the work will participate in the review. The review will look at the results of the team's work and see if it is what it was. If the goals are not achieved, the reasons for this can be jointly assessed and the work adapted to respond as desired as soon as possible. After the repairs, a new review is held at the agreed time.

In WIMMA Lab in the summer of 2018, two-week sprints were in use, ie the reviews were every other Friday. On Monday after the review, the teams reached the goals of the start-up sprint and recorded them.

8.1 Getting Started

Before starting the WIMMA Lab, you should make a clear schedule for the first sprint, as the participating students may not yet know what is going to happen during WIMMA Lab. It is advisable to inform the students well in advance so that they can get to know it in peace.

It is a good idea to set up a common discussion channel, for example, at Slack, where WIMMA Labs, pilots and support staff are involved. By doing this, one can easily reach everybody if there is any important announcement. For each virtual company, it is also worthwhile to make their own channel where they can discuss matters related to the assignment.

In the summer of 2018, the coach had already created a project in the GitLab environment, which had shared tasks for all teams for the first weeks. Each virtual company copies the project to itself as a basis for getting to know GitLab. In this way, each team quickly got to the top and students learned how to use the Kanban board and share tasks.

The first sprint (Sprint 0) in WIMMA Lab was only three days in summer 2018. Its topic was "Get hold of it and team up!" Sprint's goal was to go through WIMMA Lab's overall operations, summer schedule, assignments, and the composition of virtual companies. During the Sprint, workshops were also built and computers were ready for use.

Workspace building in summer 2018.

8.1.1 WIMMA Lab General Regulations

In the orientation phase, everyone is familiar with the rules of WIMMA Lab so that they are not ambiguous to anyone.

WIMMA Lab uses normal office hours, from Monday to Friday from 8am to 6pm. The food break is 45 minutes, which is deducted from the daily working time. Each team can keep their breaks when they want, as long as they are at the time of mandatory events. Everyone keeps their own hours up and reports them in the way defined by the house.

Sick absences and other absences should be reported as soon as possible to the coach and the team leader.

As soon as you start, you will also find a coffee and cleaning cycle (read more in Chapter 6) so that the first group can start as soon as possible. In WIMMA Lab, the coffees were cooked at the teachers' premises and brought to the working area in the thermos jugs, as they were not allowed to bring the cookers for safety. It is advisable to find out in advance the safety practices of the house in advance.

8.1.2 Division into Groups

Members of virtual companies should be shared in advance on the basis of the expertise required by the assignment and the competence and interest of the participants.

A team leader should also be chosen for each virtual company. From the person you choose, you should still make sure he or she wants to do the job.

After reporting group configurations, teams can build their own working space. All team members should sit in the same group to make communication within the team as easy as possible.

If someone feels wrong in a virtual company and would like to switch to another one (for example, someone would be interested in an order), it is advisable to report it as soon as possible. Exchanges can be made, assuming that the level of competence remains roughly the same.

8.1.3 Project Presentations

It would be a good idea to get the people and contact persons involved in the assignments to visit the WIMMA Labs right from the start. It is very important to get the faces familiar and hear the order directly from the client, that you do not feel like an "unnecessary school task that never goes anywhere". Developing a solution to a real problem or need creates motivation.

At the same time, the entrusted team will be given the opportunity to ask more specific questions and contact information to agree on the appointment. The questions may not be raised at such an early stage when everything is very new and there is a lot of information.

Assignments with a common board.

8.2 Mid-term

After the orientation phase, the work itself begins, which took place at WIMMA Lab in the summer of 2018 for Sprint 1-5. The steps were divided as follows:

• The topic of Sprint 1 was “Learn and Learn” and focused mainly on grouping and concept building. Teams formed a common image of the product and started creating documentation according to the requirement definition.
• Sprint 2: The topic was "Now we're already reviewing the review" and during that time we had to get something ready to open on the open door that ended up in the sprint. Open doors presented the concept to the public and feedback was collected. After the open doors, Kettu Keter's turn was… (Read more about the event in chapter 12.)
• The topic of Sprint 3 was “You can already concentrate on it” and Sprint 4's *“Integrate! Get things done together." These sprints were used to process assignments on the basis of feedback from open doors.
• Sprint 5 was "JES!" The End Wanders ”. This Sprint no longer brought in new features, but stabilized and tested the products. The documents and instructions for use were finalized in the handover.

Work in the Overflow team.

8.3 Wrap-up

In the WIMMA Lab in the summer of 2018, Sprint 6 was set aside for just two days. Its topic was “Now you get a relata! Cleaned and documented ”.

The main objective was to release the documentation and the resulting product in the form in which they were declared by the sponsor.

Each student wrote his own learning diary to restore his / her study points from Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. Here's how the school works, so there's no need for a learning diary everywhere.

Lastly, the premises were cleaned up, that is, in practice, the workstations were dismantled and all the goods were returned where they were originally searched.

When everything has been restored and the facilities cleaned up, it is finally Kaunailla's time… (Read more about Kaunailla in chapter 12.)

WIMMA Lab sprints in the summer of 2018.