Work-Based Project
2,000-word assignment (+/-10%)
You will need to analyse how your placement relates to the theories and concepts you learn at university, (please read the WBP intro – June 2019 PDF for more information) which involves:
– Applying theories to a ‘real-world’ context
– Coming up with your own question
Some information about my placement:
Company: Thoughtworks (Software company)
It is a privately owned, global technology company with 42 offices in 15 countries. It provides software design and delivery, and tools and consulting services. The company is closely associated with the movement for agile software development and has contributed to a range of open source products.
My role during the summer internship: Project Manager’s assistant and Business analyst. (I have also attended Project and Management lectures during university in Second year before my summer intership.)
My responsibilities during the summer internship: The team I worked with was ‘IKEA’ Asia APP development. There were around 12 people in the team including:
1 Business Analysts,
1 Business analyst assistant,
3 IOS software developers,
2 Android software developers,
2 front-end developers,
3 back-end developers.
– Every morning, we had group standing-meeting where everyone needed to report at what stage he/she is doing, whether they can complete the tasks set by the managers today and if not, what they are going to do. Everyone had less than 2 minutes to speak, which was a quick and effective group meeting method. During the first few days, I did not have any contributions towards the meeting, however, after I settled in for a few days then I was confident enough to report my tasks too.
– I helped the team to checked whether the shopping app was feasible on both Android and Apple test-phones when it is needed around 3 times a week.
– I have also developed a future-sustainable business PowerPoint to pitch to IKEA and to encourage them to use our app-maintenance and development services in the future.
– Whilst I was checking the feasibility of the app and looked for improvements, I did some marketing content for the APP, such as, to develop a function on the app where if the client is browsing the furniture categories just for fun, they can also have a look at other designers/ bloggers home-designing ideas and get inspired to decorate their own homes in the same way, which would encourage them to buy the products…
Every individual employees must read a book when starting in Thoughtworks, its called: ‘’scrum and xp from the trenches ’ written by Henrik Kniberg. This book aims to give you a head start by providing a detailed down-to-earth account of how one Swedish company implemented Scrum and XP with a team of approximately 40 people and how they continuously improved their process over a year’s time. Under the leadership of Henrik Kniberg they experimented with different team sizes, different sprint lengths, different ways of defining “done”, different formats for product backlogs and sprint backlogs, different testing strategies, different ways of doing demos, different ways of synchronizing multiple Scrum teams, etc. They also experimented with XP practices – different ways of doing continuous build, pair programming, test driven development, etc, and how to combine this with Scrum.
THE WBP needs to:
So perhaps you can link it to my day-to-day activities and Business Management Degree and the Project Management Lectures I have attended, if you think this is easier than link to organisations/ sector overall. (I will also attach some Project management lecture notes just for references, if you need it.)
Introduction (around 200 words):
Write a clear, concise introduction, around 10% of the total word count:
1. Opening: make your ‘pitch’; draw the read in’ state the question
2. What you have done: say something about your placement (briefy)
3. Link it: how this experience caused you to reflect upon something you had studied on your degree course and how you made a link to a specific literature (‘discrete academic literature’) you have encountered on your degree programme.
4. Signpost: give the reader / marker a general idea of your argument and justification (i.e. roadmap)