One of my old teachers used to tell us that organization was the key to success. 16 year old me found this cheesy and annoying. 46 year old me knows it’s true.
I chose an Agile-like structure for a variety of reasons, the first of which, is that Agile is familiar to me. Agile is a methodology/framework (although purists resist calling it either) commonly used in corporate IT organizations.
So…How are we applying Agile concepts to historic research?
Daily Stand-Ups or Scrums: As a start-up non-profit, we don’t have physical space. With the pandemic still raging (two-thirds of our small, mighty team contracted COVID within our first two weeks), a remote internship was a no-brainer. Most days, we have two stand-up meetings. In Agile, the morning stand-up or scrum meeting is an opportunity to set goals for the day, share our progress and things that we have learned, and ask questions. During our afternoon check-in, we talk about how our plans from the morning turned out.
Another key component of the Agile structure is a periodic retrospective, or lessons learned exercise. We do this every Friday afternoon. Since we have such a short time together (and honestly, even if we had decades), it is critical to flag things that aren’t working so that we can fix them AND to flag things that are working so that we can keep doing them.
Evelynn and Amani have heard this about a million times: Every day, I am so impressed by how well our interns have adapted to this format. They’re holding themselves and each-other accountable. They’re balancing their other roles and responsibilities. I am so grateful for both of our interns and this healthy, nurturing work environment that we have co-created.
Black history research collective 