cs262 → management → lab2

All programmers are optimists. — F.P. Brooks, The Mythical Man Month, 1975

From now own, labs will comprise two parallel activities:

Working through some technical exercises, in this case on project management tools.
Conducting a project management meeting with your (new) teammates and with us, in this case to do a preliminary visioning session for our team project. We’ll pull each team out of the main lab session for a team meeting based on a rotating schedule.

We’ll announce the teams and their members by the beginning of this lab period.

Using Project Management Tools

We’ll use Trello for project management and Slack for project communication. Your team should configure both as specified below.

Managing Your Project with Trello

Trello provides a project management service based on the general concept of Kanban boards.

Exercise 2.1

Your team should do the following.

One team member should create a central Trello board for the team to share.
1. Create a new board with your team name (e.g., cs262x-teamName where x is your team letter and teamName is your team name).
2. Add each team member and us (the instructors and assistants) to the board as administrators, with full editing rights.
3. Set up colors for the following task types:
  - management/administration: green
  - development: blue
  - quality: red
  - analysis/design: yellow
Configure your board as shown in this sample board, using x==1. Familiarize yourselves with the structure of this board before going on.
Add a card to your board named “Configure Trello Board” under the “Sprint 1: Doing” column. Make it a management task (green) and attach the appropriate team members as agents. When you’re finished with this exercise, move it to the “Sprint 1: Done” column.

Both we and your team members should see the team board in their Trello account.

Kanban teams often choose a common theme for their membership personas. For example, each team member could adopt a persona for their work (e.g., Star Wars or Harry Potter) and upload an appropriate image by which they’ll be identified on the board. Your team can do this if desired.

Do this…

Trello can be extended to support more specialized project management using Clockify.

Each team member should signup for a Clockify account, as described on the Clockify main webpage.
If you’d like to enable Clockify-Trello integration, work through the startup and practice steps specified in Trello Time Tracking Integration. Note that this is optional and may require you to allow access to your browser data.
One team member should do the following for the team.
1. Create a Clockify “Workspace” (named “cs262-teamYearLetter”, e.g., cs262-2023a).
2. Add all team members and us (the instructor and grader) to their team.

With this done, all team members should be able to clock hours using Clockify in Trello and see the log of those hours on Clockify’s website. Include all time spent on team activities, including programming, configuration, writing, team meetings, etc. Note that five team members doing these lab exercises together for one hour is five total team hours, one hour per team member.

We’ll check the hours recorded by lab 3.

Note that Clockify allows you to either run a timer as you do the task, or add task times after the fact. Use this tool to document all your work on the team project.

Exercise 2.2

Add tasks to the backlog for the current sprint (see the current project deliverable for details). Keep the following in mind as you create your tasks.

Stack the tasks in order of priority, highest priority on top.
Try not to have more tasks than you can see on the board.
Add any comments, documents, hyperlinks, images, check lists to the tasks as appropriate.

When you have the basic tasks on the sprint backlog, move the highest priority tasks to the doing column and assign them to individuals (or small groups). Keep the following in mind as you move tasks.

Each person should have no more than one or perhaps two tasks on the doing column at any one time.
You can assign people to tasks in the backlog if it makes sense to do so, but all tasks in the doing column need people.
Use the Trello board as a means of task-specific communication.

We’ll use the reports provided by Clockify to monitor your team progress.

Communicating with Slack

Slack provides a purpose-built, project communication environment.

Exercise 2.3

Create a Slack team and invite your teammates, stakeholders and us (the instructor and grader). We’ll use this tool to monitor and to participate in your team communication. We suggest using (at least) the following channels:

#general — for overview communication, e.g.: meeting planning; announcements; …
#random — for tangential but interesting or fun posts
#grading — a private channel for grading and related questions
#stakeholders — a private channel for grading and related questions

Feel free to add others for special discussions, e.g.: client; server; platform-specific hacking; …

Your team should communicate with us using Slack direct mentions (e.g., @kvlinden) rather than email. Personal emails are still fine for non-team business.

Note that your stakeholders have not yet been assigned. When they are, you should invite them to your Slack team as well. They’ll post to your #general channel only.

Your team Slack channel and Trello board should be alive with activity throughout the week. You may use other tools for the course, but we’ll be monitoring (and assessing) your work using these tools.

Developing Mobile Applications

Work in teams of two for this exercise.

Exercise 2.4

Do Expo’s Tutorial: Introduction, including all sections under “Get started” through “Use an image picker”. Notes:

We suggest doing this on your own, appropriately configured computer (rather than on Snack).
If you’re working on either Windows WSL2 or on the lab machines, use tunneling (see Developing React Native Apps With Expo and WSL2).
As time allows, feel free to complete the sections that we’re skipping. They could be useful for your team project (e.g., the modal, status bar, splash screen, and app icon sections).

As you are building your app, create a text file (README.md) in the root of your lab directory that documents the application and includes one-sentence or one-phrase answers to the following questions:

What does the main component function in this application return?
What is the value of using core components? Note that these components are not standard ReactJS components.
Do you see any of the technologies from last unit’s guide that are used here to specify the styling of the application?
How are curly braces ({}) used in the JSX code.
What is the purpose of the asynchronous (async) methods?
Does this application code use hooks? If so, explain where; if not, explain why not.
Identify one anonymous function in the code.

Be prepared to submit your application’s app.js and README.md files.

Working with your Team

Visioning and Planning Your Team Project

In this part of the lab, you will meet with your project team and us for the first time time. Try to determine:

The nature of your team project application.
Who your customer is and what they’re likely to want.
Tasks for your first week as a team.

This meeting will kick off a semester-long process of software engineering. Be creative, diligent and gracious. Your immediate goal is to produce the deliverables specified in Project #1 (see the course schedule for due dates).

Exercise 2.5

Participate actively in your team’s visioning session. Your attendance and participation will contribute to your lab score.

Please update your Moodle "Project Teams" entry to use your real team name, and add hyperlinks for your Trello and Slack pages.

For the Trello links, please use this form: https://trello.com/../your-trelloboard-name
For the Slack links, please use this form: https://your-slackboard-name.slack.com

We will check that each of you are listed on the Trello and Slack links as evidence that you participated in the lab.

Over time, your team will have to address the following issues:

Distinguishing Characteristics - In the end, successful project teams distinguish themselves the others by pursuing unique avenues that give them a voice and legs. Ask yourselves these questions:
- What are the unique gifts and strengths of your team members?
- Do any of you have contacts or experiences that could form the basis of a unique project?
- Is there a project that any of you cares deeply about?
- Do you see any confluence of circumstances that would suggest a particular project?
Think about these issues before settling on a project. The projects that found their way into the CS 262 Hall of Fame weren’t just “neat” and well-built, they had vision.
Programming Team Roles - Large programming projects comprise different types of work:
- Vision & Analysis - visionary sorts of people who generate and specify the intended features and behavior of the system
- Design - creative, constructive people who specify the structure of a software system that satisfies the requirements
- Interface Design - people-oriented people who work with potential users to specify the user interface
- Programming - logical, creative people who can code like the wind
- Testing - destructive sorts of people who find it natural to hack into systems to expose their weaknesses
- Documentation - eloquent people who can present the system clearly in writing
- Presentation - charismatic people who are comfortable in front of people and can make a colorful and compelling case for the application
- Management - people who have a knack for keeping others motivated and working together efficiently
- Configuration Management - detail-oriented people who can keep tabs on a project’s code modules
- Training - teachers who understand the system deeply and can train others to use it
Your team is not large enough for each member to specialize in only one role; be prepared serve in several roles.
Team Administration - Good administration makes good things happen. Address the following issues as a team:
- Get the right people doing the right jobs.
- Set and maintain a mutually convenient time outside of class at which you can all meet.
- Determine how your team will communicate.
- Get things rolling quickly. Time spent now in the relative ease of the beginning of the semester will pay off when the crunch comes.
Do not underestimate the importance of this (sociological) aspect of the team project.
Most Importantly - Come up with a good team name! See the 262 Hall of Fame for ideas.

Checking in

20% — Trello
20% — Slack
30% — Application & read-me files
30% — Team meeting