The Weekly Scrum series takes you in the kitchen of VMware Bulgaria dev teams. Learn what their work process looks like and what makes them stick around.
I’m Alexander and I’ve been part of the Workspace ONE Access team for about a year. I love travelling but currently I’m staying mostly at home because of our little daughter who was born in the middle of our COVID crisis in Bulgaria. When I’m not working you can see me changing dippers and spending time with my family.
I work for microservices based application – Workspace ONE. It is a digital workspace platform that simply and securely delivers and manages any app on any device by integrating access control, application management and multi-platform endpoint management. It is available as a cloud service or for on-prem deployment.
Here’s how a typical week of mine looks like.
Monday – start the day enjoying the view towards Vitosha mountain with a cup of coffee.With my first coffee for the day I check my email and Slack channels to see if there is anything urgent that needs to be done. I also check the review requests for comments because new sprint is knocking on the door. We have a grooming session today and tasks from current iteration need to be merged. I think we are all good and I have some time during lunch break for a quick workout. Doing grooming with our colleagues from Palo Alto and we are all good for next sprint session on Tuesday.
Tuesday – plan the priorities
The day starts with my usual espresso cup. Yesterday changes are merged and there are no tasks left for next sprint. But my baby is crying and her mom can’t calm her. Then it is time for me to hug her. 10 minutes later everything is OK. We could do our demo and retrospective sessions and at the end of the day it is time for planning the groomed stories.
Wednesday – expect the unexpected
Again my favorite specialty espresso. I’m ready to take upon new tasks. I start with the one with highest priority. Oh no, there is problem with one of the Jenkins jobs. Build failed. I have to find the problem. I’ll postpone my workout for later. After the problem is resolved, I have to join a Zoom session to interview a candidate for our team. At the end of the day we have to sync up with our colleagues from Palo Alto.
Thursday – let’s slow down a bit
After my morning espresso (maybe you’ve noticed that I’m an espresso fan) I deal with yesterday’s task because it was interrupted by the Jenkins fault. Maybe today will be an easy going day. At the end of the day all tasks are completed and I could go to walk with my family and then the workout time. I love the opportunity to be able to balance between my work tasks and my family.
Friday – the weekend is coming
I think you know how Friday starts. Then I take the next task and spend some time on the technologies we use and could be useful to make our life easier. In the afternoon I could use a cup of cappuccino and spend some time on my balcony. I think we are good to finalize the week.
