Software Development -- Fall 2012

Overview

You will document your process through Trac, which is an online project management tool. (For more information check here.). Your trac page should include

1. Project and team information
2. Meeting
3. Weekly project assessment and plan
4. Table of deliverables
5. Work logs
6. Customer updates

Collectively these form your management plan. The management plan must be updated regularly and will be graded based on its status as indicated by the Calendar. We will use the mgmt rubric to evaluate your Trac.

Meetings

You should have at least one regularly scheduled meeting a week for planning and assessment. The project week will end each Sunday evening. You must document all of your meetings with notes that include when and where the meeting took place, who was in attendance (you should explain any absences), who was scribe for the meeting, and a summary of your discussion and decisions reached.

Weekly project assessment and plan

We will use an Agile and Behavior Based Design development methodologyies. There are many variations of both Agile and BDD, so there is some flexibility in how your team functions. You will maintain a prioritized goal stack. At your weekly project meeting you will assess results for the week, update the stack, and create a plan for the coming week. You are to document your discussions in a brief (summary) report. Note that some deliverables will take more than one week to prepare, so your stack should include all deliverables due in the phase.

1. Assessment of prior week's work:
   For example: What went right and what went wrong during the week? Did you achieve the tasks/goals you had set out? If not, why not? How good were your predictions on how long tasks would take to achieve? What problems did you encounter? What can you do to avoid similar problems in the future? Is the project on track? If not, what will you do to get it back on track? Is the team working effectively? If not, what will you do to improve its functioning?
2. Reassessment of goals:
   What are the remaining goals (including deliverables) for the current phase? What are the major risks for this phase and how can you mitigate those risks? How are goals prioritized? Are high priority goals broken down into tasks that can be achieved in less than 3 hours of work? (If not, according to Agile you should clarify the goals.) What will be the concrete outcome of each task and how long is it expected to take?
3. Plan for the week:
   Which high priority goals (including deliverables) must be achieved this week? Which ones should be achieved? Who is responsible for each task? Are there dependencies between tasks; i.e. task A must finished before task B can be started. If there are dependencies what intermediate deadlines are required? Have you issued tickets for all tasks?

Table of deliverables

The Trac template includes a deliverables table for each phase of the project. Each week you should link your deliverables into this table.

Tracking individual contributions

Customer updates

You MUST maintain weekly contact (Piazza blog) with your customer. Each week this activity is equal to half the management points. We will have occasional Skype calls but each week you should send the teacher a weekly update via Piazza. When Skype happens, you will add appropriate notes to your Piazza blog. The grutors and I are on each blog. Be sure to compose the blog in appropriate language for your audience (avoid technical details and jargon).

Mike Erlinger