Agenda
• Why are we doing this
• What are we building
• What should you learn?
• Other benefits
• Details
Why Do This
Today programming projects are more than
3 or 4 people
People issues are often more important
than technical issues
Computer science grad school needs to
prepare students for that
What Are We Building?
A task manager
Actually an activity manager for any
activities
Can be used by one person or an
organization
It’s flexible, involves a number of good data
modeling issues
Learning Goals
In real projects, people issues are often
more important than technical issues
If you know the right answer but can’t
persuade the group to adopt it you might as
well not have than answer
If you can’t work well with others much of
your time will be wasted in controversy
Most learning will be about people and
organizing
More Learning Goals
Translucency is valuable and we will use it
for all our security controls
There will be some learning about the
discipline needed for shared development
Key Success Ingredient
We must have frequent releases
Weekly releases on the production system
that really work
They we add capability to a working,
integrated system
At the end we are not all crazily trying to
integrate for the first time
Grades
You will be graded along the way
You will have a personal assignment that
you report on
Your team will have responsibilities
Missing deadlines is very serious for your
grade
Guidelines
Use the class email list for communication
about the project
Put “xx Team” and subject in subject line
Meet deadlines
Never criticize another project participant—
criticize an idea but not a person
Next Week
System Engineering Team will lead
development of Version 1 of the data model
Class will organize now into these teams:
1. System Engineering (done)
2. Data Model (includes translucency
and views)
3. Processing
4. User Interface
Teams
Teams must be of mixed ethnicity and
mixed experience level
Teams will develop goals for each release,
working with system engineering team
Data model releases will be limited in
number, as will view releases.
Releases
Teams install new release on test server
Teams demonstrate new release to system
engineers, who test
System engineers port to production
configuration
Professor makes final test
This must happen often
System engineers develop this CM plan
Success Criteria
The application is to meet basic
professional standards of software
ease of use
speed
freedom from errors
security
If the whole thing doesn’t work, no one can
get grade above C for the project
Next Week
System Engineers and Data Model Team
prepare data model
Class reviews it, final version is developed
Data Model team takes over Version 1 of
the data model
Following Week
Each team develops and delivers Version 1
of their code
Each team develops their Use Cases
Class will be used to review all of them