We had the sprint retro for our first 2 week iteration and did not have much to show for it. The learning curve of Xamarin, plus time for planning and time stolen by other projects caused the velocity to make a major hit. Only 4 of 8 story points were completed in sprint 1, the remaining 4 story points were pushed into sprint 2. Nevertheless, we did have something to show for it, a working app, themed to meet the client’s needs with login and data retrieval functionality which was integrate with the real life backend.

There is quite a bit of learning left to do. We are working to find a good navigational flow for the app while ensuring it is visibly pleasing and meets the UI guidelines of both iOS and Android. We are planning on using the master-detail view for the Android version of the app while following the material design guidelines. For iOS the app will use a tabbed bar along the bottom of the screen and a settings icon in the navigation bar.

A couple of notes here. I am constantly working between a “test project” and a real project. The test project gives me the opportunity to experiment with various UI changes such as styles, controls, flows without impacting/polluting the real project, a way to make mistakes with little cost. Second, I have ran into this build issue with the default Xamarin.iOS project multiple times and thought it would be a good idea to share it.