karibassett Agile

How We Work (part 4)

We continue our discussion of applying Agile principles to historic research on this sunny Monday. Today we’re talking about lessons learned, and the Agile ritual of a regularly scheduled look-back.

The lessons learned exercise is one of my favorites. Each week, Amani, Evelynn and I take a look back at the week and hash out what worked and what did not work. Having a regular forum for the team to provide honest and constructive feedback is so important to keeping the team thriving.

We made some adjustments. We acknowledged very early on that it is tough to do a lot of heavy reading after having wrapped up a semester of rigorous academics at Grinnell College. We added some podcasts and some documentaries to our research materials. We found a google screen reader plug-in, which turned out not to be the best solution for folks who like to annotate. We tested coloring sheets. Evelynn provided outstanding insight on what information would help fill out some of our church profiles. Some of the things that needed improvement were not within our control, such as rising white supremacist Christo-fascism, but it was important to get it out there.

A lot of things went well. Our morning and afternoon check-ins were helpful in setting goals each day and holding ourselves accountable. The Trello board was a great hub for the work. Slack was a great tool for sharing articles, documentaries, podcasts, meeting schedules and links, and of course, our weekly lessons learned exercises.

I am very grateful to Amani and Evelynn for their honest and constructive feedback. I’m excited to keep building and get better.

karibassett Agile

How We Work (part 3)

In today’s edition of “How We Work,” I am going to talk about the Agile concept “Definition of Done.” What does it mean, “Definition of Done.” Well, it’s how you know you’re done. In software development, whatever you were assigned to do is supposed to do something at the end. Does the thing do what it was supposed to do? If yes, congratulations! You’re done! Does the thing do 78% of what it was supposed to do? Yes? Sorry…you are not done.

What does this mean at Black History Research Collective? One of our tasks this summer was to design a logo. Within about 2 weeks, I had a .jpg file from Amani in my hot little hands with the company name and a smooth graphic. Done! Easy-peasy.

“Definition of Done” means something entirely different when we’re deep in the newspaper archives doing historic research. For one thing, it’s history: there will always be more to uncover, therefore there is no “done.” Additionally, we don’t exactly know what we’re looking for, so it’s hard to say, “once you’ve found The Ultimate Perfect Fact, you will be done,” because I have no idea what that even means. Instead, we adopted a flexible approach, and implemented a “Done-ish” zone on our Trello board. Whether we’ve run out of steam or hit a brick wall with resources (surprisingly, we haven’t encountered this yet), we can declare ourselves “done-ish” when we feel the time is right.

The Ultimate “Done” for Black History Research Collective is to have researched and submitted a church for historic recognition. But first, we need a lot more information. Our work is not done, but this blog post is.

karibassett Agile

How We Work (part 2)

In today’s edition of How We Work, I’m going to talk about how we apply the Agile concept of “the backlog” to historic research. The backlog is basically the pile of work that is ready to be worked. Our backlog is housed in Trello, a free project management software by Atlassian, and has been a great freeware solution for our organization.

This summer, our backlog has been composed of three primary work tracks: Web + Branding, Black Churches in Des Moines built prior to 1925, and Old Congregations in New Buildings (congregations dating back to the 1800s who were displaced by interstate and hospital complex construction). A well documented, organized backlog ensures that there is enough work, and that everyone knows what to work on and where to find more work. In a corporate environment, team members select work in the order that it is presented, and stick to it. Instead, I encouraged our interns to pick what sounded interesting to them. This was the right choice. Amani jumped on the branding and created our amazing new logo. Having grown up in Bethlehem, Palestine, she was drawn to New Jerusalem Church in Des Moines. Evelynn decided to start with Mount Olive Missionary Baptist and then…

SQUIRREL! Squirrels are our fourth work track. Squirrels are topics that we bump into when we’re researching something else. Squirrels are people, events, and movements that are worth some additional research. It’s important that we enjoy the journey, and these topics help paint a more complete picture of Black life in Central Iowa during late 19th and early 20th centuries. We create a Trello card with a brief description and a link to where the squirrel was found. Back to Evelynn’s squirrels: Holy Jumpers, The Iowa Bystander, and Des Moines’ Black ministers involved in the Civil Rights Movement…and then back to the backlog for a look at Corinthian Baptist. Amani heard a rumor that the first mosque in the United States was located in Cedar Rapids. It sounded far fetched, and we were delighted to learn that it was true! My squirrel: I was reading about Bethel AME raising money for a Black women’s dormitory at Iowa State University (ISU) in 1934, went searching for the name of the dorm, came across some harsh criticisms of ISU’s poor treatment of Black students by none other than W.E.B. DuBois.

I’m so impressed by our interns’ work, and how well they’ve adapted to this odd, Agile-ish structure. Our branding + web work track is closed out, and we are making good progress creating narrative around Des Moines’ oldest Black congregations and their impact on our community.

karibassett Agile

How We Work (part 1)

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.

karibassett Uncategorized

What else do y’all do?

I was reflecting on how irregular our social media and blog posts are. It occurred to me that people might be interested in why that is and what else we are up to at the Iowa Black History Research Collective.

We have families. All of our board members have children in our lives, who we love dearly. They come first!

We have day jobs. Part of being a non-profit is not being able to pay ourselves. There’s a little more nuance to it, but that’s the deal.

We research content. It is important to provide well researched, factually accurate content. We place a strong emphasis upon primary sources and qualified secondary sources. In an age of mis-information and dis-information, we are committed to practicing and modeling information literacy.

We look for money. At this point, it still feels like throwing spaghetti at a wall identifying good funding matches to support our programming (paid student internships) and operational needs. As someone who is relatively new to grant writing, it is pretty overwhelming, but I’m confident that I’ll become more comfortable with practice.

We prepare for our interns. Interns are a key component to our organization. We won’t be able to do what we do without them. We kick off our inaugural summer internship in June. I’m thrilled to welcome two interns from my alma mater, Grinnell College. Ours will be a remote internship. Organization and preparation are critical. I’ve been busy setting up and enriching a Trello board with our work tracks. I’ve been compiling a tool box of resources + admin logins that we will be using in our research.

Thank you for joining me on this journey!