Rangle was my first internship and I didn’t know what to expect walking into my first day at work. The only thing I knew for sure was I wanted to work and learn from people a variety of different roles. Once I started, I found out that my manager Fernanda, Demand Generation manager, worked directly with the website team and I quickly expressed my interest in sitting in on meetings and taking on work in addition to my marketing tasks. Little did I know that working with a Scrum team would completely change my perspective on what I want to do and how I want to work.
Here are the 5 things I learned from working with a Scrum team:
More perspectives = more value
To create positive and meaningful experiences for users doesn’t mean creating solutions based on assumptions, but rather what the reality of their experience is. What good is a product if it only serves your own preferences? It’s important to separate your wants and needs from the client’s - they could be completely different. Having a team that’s diverse in background and discipline brings a variety of perspectives into the room that makes for a more universal product.
JIRA is very useful
Before working at Rangle, I had only used JIRA once and let me tell you, it was not a fun time. Looking back, it was definitely because we didn’t know how to effectively use it outside of creating bug tickets for our dev team. JIRA was just another platform to make to-do lists for me. While working on a Scrum team here at Rangle, it was so fascinating to see the capabilities of this task management system in an Agile environment and how helpful not only to keep track of delegated tasks but for planning future sprints as well. I like JIRA a little bit more now.
It's possible to have productive meetings
Time is so valuable and limited, there have already been too many times where I’ve sat in unproductive meetings in my career. Usually, the entirety of the 30-60 minute meeting is people arguing each position to death, and leaving feeling like the discussion didn’t go anywhere. Before booking meetings, I’ve been asking myself, “Do I need to take time out of someone’s busy day or can we talk about this over a couple of Slack messages?”
Smaller wins > big wins
Finishing a project after months of hard work is one of the most rewarding feelings. At times, it may feel like a never-ending journey of exhaustion, working towards an unachievable goal. Working in sprints and setting small, realistic goals is basically the same thing in my eyes. Being able to move tickets into “Done” is just another step closer to achieving a much bigger goal and minimizing the chance of burning out.
Time for something new
From accepting my university offer to accepting my Rangle co-op offer, I was set on pursuing marketing. Now however, I want to try my hand at design and product management! I’ve worked with designers and developers on other teams, but would stick to my role in providing a marketing perspective. Working with the Rangle website team, I was able to make contributions to the project but also observe all the different moving parts of a Scrum team. I was so fascinated by how each role interacts and depend on each other. I gained a broader perspective on roles I was already familiar with and learned about new ones too. As much as I enjoy marketing, I realized there’s so much I haven’t tried yet and now I'm ready to take on new challenges!
There’s a lot more that I’ve learned during my time at Rangle, but these were the main things that stood out to me. I’m grateful for the growth opportunities and all of the support I’ve been given. I’m excited to see where they can take me next.