Computer Science 121

Overview

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

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. This should be updated regularly and will be graded based on its status at the start of class time Tuesday (unless otherwise indicated) using the following rubric.

Meetings

You should have at least one regularly scheduled meeting a week for planning and assessment. (The project week will start at class time on Tuesday and assignments will typically be due then, so meeting before but close to that time is preferable.) You should 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 development methodology. You will maintain a prioritized goal stack. At your weekly project assessment and planning meeting you will assess results for the week, update the stack, and create a plan for the coming week. You'll document your discussions in a brief report. Note that some deliverable will take more than one week to prepare, so your initial stack should include all deliverables due in the phase.

1. Assessment of prior week's work:
   What went right and what went wrong during the week? Did you achieve the tasks/goals you had set out? If not, why? 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 task that can be achieved in less than 3 hours of work? (If not, 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 that are due and identify the contributions (as a percentage) of each team member to each deliverable. (This will be used to help grade individual team members.)

Tracking individual contributions

Customer updates

You should maintain weekly contact with your customer. We will aim to have weekly conference calls but in lieu of that you should send them a weekly update via email. In case of conference call, you will take notes of the discussion and post to your wiki. You should cc me and your grutors on all email to the customer. In addition, once your concept is established you'll maintain a blog for the middle school students with weekly progrss updates. Be sure to compose both the email and the blog in appropriate language for your audience (avoid technical details and jargon).

Last updated Dec. 2011