Hi there! I am Tendayi Mutangadura from Cape Town, South Africa, and previously worked OpenMRS Rwanda EMR upgrade assisting with QA and manuals documentation reviews. I am excited to be working with Grace Potma and the community at large as a Product Management fellow.
Through the advice of my mentor, I began to have a clear idea of what needed to be done during my second month as a product management fellow. I was given the task of reviewing and improving the OpenMRS user personas and site profiles. This was a fun assignment since I got to show off what I know about writing personalities and I got to meet with my mentor for review meetings. These revision sessions with Grace were quite beneficial in teaching me how to create personas in a clear and concise manner.
I kept attending OpenMRS 3.0 Product & Design sessions as well as 0.3 Backlog Review & Priorities Escalations meetings. The sessions helped me improve my sprint review activities and Jira ticket prioritization skills. Aside from our weekly meetings with my mentor, Iāve been attending 3.X Frontend calls, which have been interesting to hear about other peopleās use cases and what theyāve been working on in terms of the frontend.
Thanks and watch the space for my next blog. Cheers
As I finish my second month as an OpenMRS product management fellow, Iād like to tell you about my recent activities during this chilly month of June. I was able to complete my OpenMRS personas and site profiles with the help of my mentor in preparation for a presentation during one of our forthcoming product design calls.
I was giving an opportunity to be involved in QA activities for OpenMRS 0.3. Before beginning the QA efforts, I had the chance to review a brief pattern documentation that described what should be expected from the user interface. I started writing test cases and testing the development environment for the OpenMRS 0.3 QA activities. Actually, Iām loving the 0.3 test drive and getting good advice from my mentor.
In addition to the aforementioned activities, each week I attended the OpenMRS 0.3 backlog and escalation calls as well as product and design meetings.
I canāt believe I am already in the third month of the fellowship, and the learning experience is amazing because I am constantly learning new things. My mentor made the decision for me to concentrate on QA tasks for the offline mode as I continued to work on the QA for OpenMRS x 3.
I was excited to attend the OpenMRS fellows all hands meeting at the beginning of this month with the other fellowship fellows. It was a terrific chance to hear what other people were working on in their specialized fields and gain insight from them. I was able to learn so much from speaking with the individuals working on those initiatives and getting information personally.
In addition to the aforementioned activities, I continued to participate in the weekly squad calls and one-on-one meetings with my mentor to learn from her.
Wooow!! Time flies, and I canāt believe July is almost over. I was thrilled to plan an OpenMRS fellow check-in meeting with my mentor and the program officers in the end of July. I had the chance to reflect on my experience, sharing my accomplishments and the difficulties I had so far faced while pursuing my fellowship.
Another noteworthy development this month is that I met with my mentor and was given the chance to take the reins in charge of the OpenMRS x 3.0 offline mode QA efforts. She formally introduced me to the community members and developers in charge of the offline mode feature. Leading the QA testing and sustaining the project is what I am loving. QA testing along with keeping up with the product management side of this project, such as keeping up with the backlog, logging issues, sprint planning, etc. on the JIRA board.
This month was a busy one for me because I got to participate in webinars on product management that were hosted by some of the top professionals in the globe. Time zones made it difficult for me to participate in the webinars because some of them were held at midnight, but it was worth it. I must offer credit to my mentor Grace Potma for planning all of this and keeping an eye out for these events.
August has arrived, and my fellowship journey is almost over. Iām quite happy that Iām still going strong as I get closer to the end of the fellowship program. I had the chance to attend webinars organized by my mentor in addition to our weekly squad meetings. And it was a great event because I learned about product management from professionals in the field.
I was able to hold an introduction meeting with the Mekom engineers at the beginning of this month to launch the OpenMRS 3X offline mode. In addition to coordinating with the engineers on bug fixes, tickets, issues, etc., I am in charge of the QA activities. As the exerciseās leader, itās providing me an opportunity to collaborate closely with other members of the community in testing the offline features of OpenMRS 3x.
At the moment, I am also busy working on my project as well as preparing my presentation ahead of the upcoming Design Conference at the end of the month.
Iām getting closer to the end of my fellowship adventure as August comes to a close. Iām still excited and really impressed with the program as I get closer to the evening of my fellowship program and constantly picking up new skills. In the latter days of August, my mentor encouraged me to sign up for an online project management course that would lead to certification at the end. Since this course is an online self-paced course, I am enjoying upgrading my skills.
Iām overjoyed to have the chance to reflect on my fellowship experience and share it with the larger community at the current Design conference. Iām still working on my project in addition to the offline QA tasks for OpenMRS 3x. Iām loving this activity because it gives me the chance to oversee the Jira board and offer feedback on the offline mode QA operations during our weekly Backlog meetings. Iām gaining so much knowledge and skills in product management thanks to this.
My schedule for the first two weeks of September was a little stressful because the power outages in South Africa kept interrupting our meetings. I was able to put my feet on the ground thanks to Grace, my mentor, who also provided me with guidance and ongoing encouragement. I continued to upskill on the product-led course I had enrolled in last month.
I was able to join our weekly calls, including the OpenMRS 3.0: Product & Design Sessions, O3 Backlog Review & Priorities Escalation, and 3.x Frontend Squad Calls. Unfortunately, due to Graceās preparations for the OpenMRS and CDC meeting, travel to Cape Town, South Africa, and my health concerns, we have missed some of our one-on-one meetings with my mentor during the past few weeks.
The OpenMRS offline mode work is still work-in progress and still need to find out with developers on its status and readiness to go-live soon in the coming weeks. I was impressed to see conversations taking place on the offline work in the Slack channels and Jira board, which I was following. I was also performing some quality assurance testing for the offline mode, and I was impressed by how quickly some of the problems that community had previously reported were being fixed.
I was impressed to meet Grace, Jennifer, and other OpenMRS board members in person on the 18th of September when they visited Cape Town, South Africa for a week-long conference with teams from the CDC, Jembi Health Systems, etc. It was an honor to finally meet these people in person, and we had some time to catch up on a number of topics pertaining to my fellowship plan and activities with Grace.
This month, several of our weekly meetings have continued to be disrupted by the ongoing power problems in South Africa. My capstone project is my main focus this month, and Iām working quite hard to finish it. My mentor is offering me a ton of help and advice to ensure the accomplishment of this objective. Grace gave me a really important book, āInspired,ā which discusses how to create tech products that customers love. I have been reading this book regularly and have learned a lot about product management, particularly about Product Discovery and Transformation techniques. Thank you very much, Grace; I am really enjoying this book.
I followed up on the OpenMRS offline mode and found that it was working flawlessly throughout this month until they just ran into a snag. When I inquired about the projectās readiness for launch in the upcoming weeks, Manu Rƶmer and Romain B responded, I quote, " we are now facing a regression and the feature is broken. This needs to be fixed asap though. Weāre trying to find some resources for this. Expecting to start UAT in 7 days. " We are just hoping they deal with the stumbling block asap so that they can start User Acceptance Testing.
This will be my final blog post about āMy Fellowship Journeyā as we near the conclusion of my fellowship. Since I began this adventure in May and continued with it through November 2022 with Grace Potma as my mentor, it has been an amazing ride. Grace has been at my side the entire time, coaching and mentoring me to become a better product manager. For that, I am incredibly grateful. Grace taught me a lot, and I pledge to put that knowledge to good use in order to advance product management across a range of technological horizons.
Time flies, and I canāt believe it has been 7 months of intensive learning and joining squad calls. This month I was finalizing my capstone project which I worked on the new 03 offline mode. I collaborated with the Mekom team on this project helping with QA activities and bug tracking. I had the opportunity to present my final fellowship presentation to the OpenMRS management team, OpenMRS fellows, and members of the community. I have created an introduction document and short clip videos about the offline mode, which I posted on OpenMRS Talk and can be accessed using the following links:
03 Offline mode introduction and explainer video
Offline tools page demo video
I have achieved a lot from this fellowship from day one up to now and here are a few examples of my achievements regarding product management:
ļ¼ Capstone Project: Supporting the O3 Offline Mode MVP development
ļ¼ Improvements to Personas
ļ¼ Creating and maintaining an exploratory QA Checklist
ļ¼ Jira Graveyarding - Learned how to do the Jira Graveyard process.
ļ¼ Reviewed a product management book āInspired by Marty Caganā
ļ¼ Product-led Certification Course
My fellowship journey was an exciting one and I enjoyed each and every moment on this learning curve. I learned new things everyday and one thing I am enjoyed the most was to be given the opportunity to work alone whilst constantly collaborating with the members of the community. The weekly squad calls were very helpful as I got feedback on different projects I worked on as part of a team. The talk channel is place where you learn and have feedback on different OpenMRS projects from the community.
My Wish List
I have an endless wish list for OpenMRS and the community at large but just to mention a few I would love to see this community grow bigger in numbers as well as an increased number of OpenMRS implementation across the globe. I would like the OpenMRS inc to continue this fellowship program which allows fellows to learn on different OpenMRS flight paths under the guidance of mentors from the community.
My links
Blog Posts
The link to all my blog post so far is as follows:
