The TDL software development team held a sprint review on Friday, August 6, to demonstrate work completed in a two-week sprint focused on internal projects.
During the roughly two-week development period that began July 21, the team transferred all code, documentation, and other material related to the development of the TDL Preservation Network into JIRA Studio, a hosted software tool that facilitates more efficient software development.
Among its advantages, JIRA Studio includes a number of features that correspond with the scrum development methodology that the TDL team uses, including virtual “story cards” and a “scrum board” for tracking the development process. According to developer Joe Devries who led the sprint review, these features will make remote collaboration among members of the development and production teams in Austin, College Station, and Lubbock much easier.
JIRA Studio also includes a code repository and code review features, as well as a documentation wiki. And because it is remotely hosted, the burden of maintaining these features is taken off of TDL staff.
Additionally, all bugs and feature requests related to TDL technologies will be logged in JIRA Studio and will be publicly viewable by TDL members. A further announcement will be made when public viewing of the JIRA backlog is operational.
Although the sprint was internally focused, the move to JIRA Studio should have significant benefits to work on PresNet and other development projects, as it makes development more efficient and collaboration easier. And because members will be able to check on the status of requests and bug fixes, it will also make the development process more transparent.