Computer Science 121 - Project #5

Introduction

You now have a module design, and plan for how to test it. You have made them as good as you know how to. It is time to submit them to a formal design review, so that other eyes have an opportunity to look over your work and find things that you might have missed.

In this project, you will:

• as individuals, prepare a review package for your module design and test plan.
• as a team, select a module to actually be reviewed.
• as individuals, you will review and prepare comments for the selected modules.
• as a team, you will conduct a complete review meeting in which both the design and test plan are reviewed, and prepare a written report.

• to give you practical experience preparing and reviewing designs and test plans.
• to have you participate in a formal design review.

Teams and project

Nobody will be allowed to prepare comments for, or participate in a review for a module that they wrote. This means that there will be an exchange of people and/or modules between teams for this project. I give you broad latitude to rearrange yourselves for this project. For example ...

• your whole team can select a module from another team (assuming you can get the owner of that module to have it prepared for review 72 hours before your scheduled review).
• the owner of the module being reviewed can move to another team for the purposes of this project.
• a small team (3 people) can join with another small team, or spread its members out among other 3 and 4 person teams.

However you arrange your work, each student needs to be a member of one team for the entire duration of this project. If you need changes to repository permissions, please let me know.

The Assignment

1. As a team, develop a schedule for this process, put it into your repository, and submit it to me by midnight, Tue 4/24. (no late days can be used for this part of the assignment)

2. As individuals, prepare a review package for your module and test plan. This package must include:
   • a table of contents for the package
   • any background materials that the reviewers might need in order to understand the materials to be reviewed.
   • the design to be reviewed ... which might be exactly as prepared for project 3, or enhanced for improved understandability.
   • the test plan to be reviewed ... which might be exactly as prepared for project 4, or enhanced for improved understandability.
   • a suggested order in which elements of the submitted materials should be studied and reviewed.
   • a list of problems or issues that warrant special attention in the review process, or standards against which the products should be judged.

3. As a team, select a module to be reviewed. You should balance the size and complexity so that you have the opportunity to find problems, but don't have to spend multiple hours doing it.

   You should also select a review leader and scribe. They will each have the opportunity to earn extra credit (above 100%). Realize, however, that you will all be graded on the quality of their work, so you should choose these people carefully.

4. As individuals, you will each review the selected module (unless you are the author, in which case you should prepare comments on another module). These comments can/should include:
   • problems, clearly expressed and rated for importance.
   • questions about how things work or what would happen.
   • issues to be explored.
   • advice to be passed on, but not discussed in the review.
   These too will be checked in to your repository ... and you will be graded on doing so well in advance of the review.

5. As a team, schedule a time with me (or if that is not possible, with your grader/tutor) when your review will be conducted. This must be a mutually acceptable date on or before 5/11. (late days cannot be used to defer this). You will conduct a formal review, as described in the reading and lecture.

6. The team scribe will (help from other team members is allowed) write up a formal report of the review, detailing all issues raised and resolutions.

7. As a team, you will conduct and write up a post-mortem for this project. It will cover:
   • the process of developing the review package
   • the process of individually reviewing it
   • the review itself
   • the reasonableness of your schedule and your ability to follow it.
   • this project as an educational exercise

In doing all of the above, I suggest that you review the reading and lecture notes on design reviews to make sure that you follow all of the rules for reviews, and include all of the necessary information in your prepared packages, your pre-prepared coments, and review report.

The deliverable work products should include:

1. an index of work products
2. your schedule
3. a review package for each individual
4. notes on the selected module, from each individual
5. the formal report of the review results
6. the post mortem

I am not specifying formats for any of these work products, and will accept them in any combination of ASCII text, html, word, powerpoint, and standard graphics formats. Part of the exercise is for you to review what we've said about the purposes of these work products, and to figure out what information each should contain, and a way to effectively convey that information. I believe that forcing you to work this out for yourselves will have greater educational value than giving you forms to fill in.

Rules, Submissions and Grading

NOTE there are three submissions for this project:

• each team owes a schedule by midnight 4/24, no slip days allowed
• each individual owes a review package for your own module.

  If your module is to be reviewed, it your prepared materials are due 72 hours prior to the scheduled review for your module (which might be done by another team). There are no slip days allowed here.

  If your module is not to be reviewed, it is due 72 hours before the review that your team will be conducting. Slip days can be used here.

• each team owes a final submission (including the review report and post-mortem). This is due midnight Friday 5/11, and can be extended (with slip-days) to midnight Sunday 5/13.

This is both a team and individual project. You are free to talk to team members about how to go about performing all parts of the project, but ...

You must prepare your own review package,

You must prepare your own commments on the modules being reviewed, and you must not discuss these comments with others (or look at others' comments) until the formal review is actually conducted. I want your comments to be the product of your own analysis.

All other reports can be worked on individually or jointly. Just make sure that all contributors (and their contribution shares) are listed in the index of work products.

You are free to do additional research on reviews, but if you copy such material in your own work products, you must cite your source.

You may not include (uncited) material written by anyone else in a work-product for which you have primary responsibility.

You may not share your work products with members of any other team ... other than to provide a prepared module package for their review. It should be sufficiently complete to enable them to conduct their review without further assistance from you.

All of your primary work-products will be developed, maintained, and submitted in subdirectories of the subversion repositories that have already been created for your team. I expect the primary work products to evolve as you gain experience, and to see that evolution reflected in the svn commits and comments.

If restructuring teams necessitates adding more people to the access control list for a team repository, please let me know and I will make these changes as quickly as possible.

When you are done, package together:

1. the URL for your subversion repository
2. an index of your work products, briefly enumerating and describing each.

And send all of these things to me in an e-mail with the subject "cs121 - proj5".

Because grades are due on the 17th, you cannot use slip days to delay your final submission beyond midnight on Sunday 5/13.

So that you will know exactly what I expect to see, here is a pointer to the grading guidelines that will be used to score your submissions.