Before I started my internship, I set a couple of personal goals I wanted to achieve or at least improve. On this page I would like to explain them, if I achieved them and how.
Flexibility
During this internship I wanted to become more flexible. With this I mean that I wanted to be more flexible to accepting other peoples’ opinions and solutions.
Up until now I have always tried fixing problem using my own solutions instead of really listening to other’s proposals and considering them as a valid candidate for solving the issue I was having.
Did I achieve this?
I feel like I did, or at least greatly improved on it. During this internship I have had numerous of meeting with Martijn, my company supervisor, but also other colleagues to discus a problem I was facing with either CP Social or a different task I was working on.
Usually I would first, propose my solution I would have prepared before the meeting and asked them for feedback. After proposing my solutions I would listen to what the other members of the meeting had as feedback.
After listening to their feedback we would start thinking on how we could, either combine my proposal with their feedback, or work on a complete new solution.
So yes, I am certain I have improved myself a lot on this personal goal!
Communication
For this goal I wanted to focus on having better and clearer communication with my colleagues about what I was working on and what problem I ran into.
Did I achieve this?
Yes! Yes I really achieved this goal. As you might have seen on CP Social’s Android, iOS and Steam service pages. Every time I finished a feature of CP Social I would let the rest of the team know by sending a video of the new feature working and how I managed to get it working.
Further more I have had a lot of meeting with Martijn about how my internship was going, usually once a week (sometimes more). During these meetings we would discus the current state of the project, any problems I was having with my current tasks or just in general.
So like I said, yes, I really feel I managed to achieve this personal goal.
Focus
What I mean by this is keeping focus on my main tasks I was working on, and not wandering of to do something else, like fix a weird bug in the project.
Did I achieve this?
Yes, I feel like I did. Due to the used way of working during my internship, i was able to let these small imperfection slide during the development of bigger tasks.
Every time I found a bug or imperfection in the project I would add it to the backlog in Jira. And at a later date when I would have finished all my tasks for a sprint I would take these issue from the backlog and fix them.
Whenever I wouldn’t have any spare time in a sprint, these issues would be carried over into the next sprint and be worked on as one of the first tasks of the new sprint.
By using this way of working I felt a lot more ‘relaxed’ when working on my tasks because I knew I would come back to the issue on a later date and not forget it because I added it to the backlog.
So yes! I have really achieved a higher level of focus during this internship.
Feedback
At the end of my internship I asked my company supervisor Martijn if he could give me feedback on how he thought I improved them. Below is an screenshot of his response (in dutch)
I also asked for feedback from Luuk Waarbroek another colleague at The Tall Ones with whom I worked a lot. This was his response to my request.
