The EMBL-EBI Training Team tells us about their experience.
The EMBL-EBI Training Team and Web Development Team work together on the EMBL-EBI training website and the EMBL-EBI Competency Hub. The work follows the Agile Scrum methodology. In this online staff visit with the Alan Turing Institute we shared our experience in running development sprints with this methodology. During the session, the EMBL-EBI teams explained what it consisted of and how they actually implemented it. The Skills team at the Alan Turing Institute wanted to employ this methodology in their collaborative work with the Research Engineering Group, so templates were shared with them: to follow progress on the tasks, to create user stories, to collect feedback from users.
The EMBL-EBI teams shared the main lessons that they learnt working in this way, which include the importance of planning and communication, having open conversations about how to improve, and clearly defining roles and responsibilities during the work. An interesting discussion among all the participants followed, and the staff from the Alan Turing Institute left the visit with good ideas on how to implement the methodology and the templates in their own work. This was a valuable opportunity for EMBL-EBI to share best practices with a relevant actor and potential collaborator in the field at the same time that the discussions and questions raised can improve the processes used.