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Fall 2007 > J03 9-14-07  

J03 9-14-07

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Journal for Sept. 14, 2007
   
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1. Name

 Brad Dodson
 1 (8%) 
 
 Hube
 1 (8%) 
 
 Jeeyun Lim
 1 (8%) 
 
 Derek Sessions
 1 (8%) 
 
 Kevin Le
 1 (8%) 
 
 Yuan Gao
 1 (8%) 
 
 Aaron Cottle
 1 (8%) 
 
 Sohum Misra
 1 (8%) 
 
 Rae Alty
 1 (8%) 
 
 Felipe Serrano
 1 (8%) 
 
 Matt Freeburg
 1 (8%) 
 
 Corey Shaw
 1 (8%) 
 
 Dave Eng
 1 (8%) 
 
Total: 13

2. Milestone Status: Gains made (If possible, include hyperlinks to what you mention here.)

 
Some of this may read like development process stuff, but as I PM I feel like Development Process gains are part of my milestones.
 
Firstly, my objectives for this week were:
  • Get a picture of the software that we're developing
  • Get a sense of what the customer is looking for
  • Incorporate a lot of creative thinking and group problem solving in the process of defining our problem and possible solutions.
  • Continuing to improve the bonding between team members.

I feel like we've met most of these goals. We are much closer to a picture of what the final product will involve than we were even two days ago, and today's brainstorming session produced a copious supply of ideas to launch from and design a framework and platform to support.

Links to brainstorming session minutes? Also, this format is fine for you as PM. --Chelsea
 1 (8%) 
 
 

  • Finished the warm-up project.

  • Met with our customer and got some initial ideas to work with  ...which are...???  Be specific!   -- SW

  • Held another meeting to brainstorm ideas for where to bring the project (minutes are not currently available)

  • Split into sub-groups to investigate specific portions of the project (I will be investigating content generation (what exactly does this mean?  -- SW)  with Kevin, Aaron, and Felipe)
Your last bullet point is closest to what we're looking for--your personal task/contribution. --Chelsea
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We had our meeting with our customer. He was willing to give us more concrete idea of what he wanted us to produce, what problem our product will solve, how it's supposed to be used (user scenarios). We had a productive meeting today where we brainstormed ideas of features we'd like to have on our product and broke up in to teams as follows:

Team 1: Authoring
Aaron, Kevin, Felipe, Hubert

Team 2: Data Gathering/Searching/Navigation
Jeeyun, Rae, Dave, Yuan

Team 3: Content/Pages
Matt, Derek, Corey, Sohum
This is great information, perhaps the type of thing that should be posted somewhere more persistent and then linked to. --Chelsea
How do you feel about this team organization? This is really helpful information, but remember to discuss your own personal achievements and thoughts as well.
But the customer meeting was on Thursday, the 6'th day of the journal week--what happened on the other 5 days from the last journal?  -- SW
 
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We chose a project manager (Brad) by democratic vote on Wednesday. Thursday we met with the customer for the first time and got a far better understanding of what our project will be. Friday, we met together as a group for a brainstorming and organizational meeting, splitting up into smaller teams to work out specifics of UI design in certain areas. Personally, I will be working on presentation of information to the user with Corey and Matt.
What happened from Friday->Wed.?  You left out most of the week!   -- SW
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  • Attended first customer meeting: got a more concrete understanding of what the customer wanted which is, tentatively, a way for people to obtain and pass on knowledge in different formats
  • Elected a project manager: Brad Dodson. May his reign be a long and glorious one.
  • Attended the brainstorm session where we offered as many concepts as possible and then split off into groups to more actively explore specifics. I am in the group which is focused on how the user inputs information into the website.
  • Attended focus group meeting: Discussed what we feel the layout of the site should be including the portal, how things look when you are registered as opposed to not. Brought up the idea of a tiered user system to accommodate users who are unwilling to undergo identity verification. Sketched out the visual look and feel of how a user manages content, uploads it, and maintains it. Hopefully the notes of the meeting will be posted so I can link to it.

Great detail.

What happened Fri --> Thurs?  -- SW  

 1 (8%) 
 
 
- Finished the warmup project (What happened?  -- SW)
- Attend the customer meeting [link]
Get the idea of what the customer is looking for and what are the special features of our course project. The customer emphasized on the accuracy of the search and would like to see a mock-up of the UI next week.
- Attend the meeting to brainstorm ideas of features of the course project.
- We are split into teams of four people to look into different directions.
Any details on your specific team?
 1 (8%) 
 
 
A lot has happened since last Friday. I mostly finished my warmup project on Saturday during the day-long meeting, leaving with full functionality in almost all aspects. On Sunday I worked out all the bugs fairly quickly and spent the rest of the day helping other people get their programs finished.

We presented very successfully on Monday; it took Dr. Wong several tests to find places where the network didn't work.

On Wednesday we held elections between Brad and Matt for PM. Both would have been very good leaders, but Brad ended up winning by a single vote. Derek created a very clever voting mechanismto speed the process.

On Thursday we met with Mr. Scanlon for the first time. The meeting went on for a very long time, but I think we eventually absorbed his visionfor the project as much as we could.

Today we met during lunch through class to brainstorm ideas. Brad based this on the way IDEO operates, where no idea is wrong during a brainstorming session. We generated a whole lot of features that we'd really like to see in the project; I think about 10% of them are feasible for us. I don't think the minutes from this meeting have yet been uploaded. We broke up into smaller teams at the end of the day to create mockups for various features of the site. Felipe, Kevin, Hubert, and I are responsible for content authoring. Our small group met for a few hours this evening and expanded our ideas and created some mock up concepts for web pages. I'd post a link, but they're hand drawn for now.
The detail here is appreciated--I have a very clear idea of where you are. --Chelsea
I agree. Wonderful detail, and thanks for the links (that don't direct to the discussion board!).
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Warm-up Project
  • Finished up project with functional program and a few extra features
  • Everyone was able to interface with each other at some point (this tended to change every hour as people kept working)
  • The demo in class was able to demonstrate all the requirements of the specification.
  • Everyone seems to be getting the hang of C#, something that we expected would be a problem.
Real Project
  • Got a more concrete idea of the project through a meeting with the customer.
  • Conducted a brainstorming session where various ideas relating to the project were thrown around.
  • Began getting an overview of frameworks such as Silverlight, and technologies/standards such as RDF and Friend-2-Friend. No one has done anything too concrete, though, to my knowledge, apart from reading up on their respective websites and Wikipedia.
Nice detail, and thanks for the links.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Fri. --> Tues.??   -- SW
 
On Wednesday, we decided upon a project manager, Brad, by vote.


On Thursday, we met with the customer for the first official meeting. At the meeting we were able to figure out some of the specifics of what he desired for the project, and what could work.


We learned that a big part of his desired plan is for educational purposes, and that the users could "sell" their expertise and information through the application. We learned a bit more of the desire for personal user pages, and the thought of a ranking of trust of users, from which results can be ranked.


For a very specific record of the meeting, see Sohum's notes in the Meeting Agendas, Minutes documents, found here.



Then, today, we had a brainstorming meeting. There, we came up with many possibilities, not limiting our ideas. These ideas are good because it helps us to keep in mind possible expansions to the product, places it can go, and allows us to better include such extensibility.
At the meeting we also split up into three groups of four, each with a leader. The groups each have a different main goal to research and find more information on, and begin to plan out.


The groups are:
-"Authoring" (how people get information into the site), lead by Felipe and includes Aaron, Kevin and Hubert.
-"Navigating Information" (how to search and navigate, how history is stored and how recommendations work), lead by me and includes Dave, Yuan and JeeYun (all three girls!)
-"Content Pages" (how does it look when a user looks at the information), lead by Corey and includes Derek, Matt and Sohum.
Good detail, and thanks for the links.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Finished the warm-up project with stunning success (not only for Dr. Wong but also for us :-)).

I think we succeeded in finally forcing out of the customer what the project is supposed to be like.  That's a very dangerous attitude.  It presumes that the customer actually knows a priori exactly what he wants.   Did you uncover something he was "hiding" or did you coerce him into making rash statements about his project?   -- SW

The group in charge of "Authoring content" -- basically how the "source of information" (for lack a of a better term) will interact with the site met today and we made very good progress on defining what we'd like to see and how we'd like to see it presented.

Once I finish the document that specifies what we talked about, I'll post it in the documents section and update this journal.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Fri --> Wed ??  -- SW
 
We accomplished several things this week. We began to create a leadership structure for our team by electing a project manager. We formally met with the customer and began to establish our relationship with him, as well holding an initial discussion with him that brought a lot more details of the project to light. We learned that finding information that the user didn't know they needed is a central theme for the project, and the educational model (both traditional and untraditional, formal and infromal) is also very important. Other big components are accuracy of information, trust network, and the relationship between information.

We also held a brainstorming meeting that generated a lot of ideas. The most valuable thing though was that we started to come up with an understanding of what this project is about, the kind of things the application will be used for. Since the initial concept was very nebulous, this was a big development.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
My last journal was quite late (Sunday night), so I was already done with the warmup project and I feel like we have only started making progress on the current project in the last two days (Mon-Wed were sort of wasted, but I suppose we deserved the break after the warmup).

The gains we have made are categorically grouped into three areas: team organization, the customer meeting, and the brainstorming/planning meeting.

For team organization, we elected a PM (apparently a COMP 410 first), and everyone seems to be filling various roles. Some people, including myself, have been more vocal in coming up with ideas and steering the team - these people I think will make good team leaders, and I plan on putting myself out there for such a position. Those who are more quiet will be good team players, as they have input but need perhaps a smaller and more engaging environment to demonstrate their abilities. I also have fallen into a role of the person who is worried about getting stuff done, and tries to plan things out as quickly as possible.I'm not sure that you should be painting quieter members as wallflowers just yet (ever?)--maybe it would be a better idea to encourage them to be more vocal instead. --Chelsea

During the customer meeting, it took a while but we finally managed to extract what exactly he was looking for.(Were you "extracting" something the customer was hiding or were you forcing the customer to say things he wasn't prepared to say?  -- SW)     I feel that the meeting was long, but productive in the sense that we actually have an idea of what we're doing, and how we can make it novel. We now have a better idea of this project from multiple angles, including the marketing and business angle, and the user side of things.

I feel that during the brainstorming meeting there were a huge number of amazing yet unreasonable (Be sure to clearly articulate these reasons because they will be very helpful in narrowing down the scope of the project. -- SW) ideas suggested, but I suppose that we should try and aim for the stars, and then narrow down our requirements as we see what we can do given our limited time and resources, leaving the ability to easily add new features later as necessary.

(Note: I know this is more development stuff, since it is more team oriented, but this is all we really did this week. I'm also terrible at organizing my thoughts and breaking them down into sections like these. This will be a recurring theme for the rest of my journals. I apologize in advance.)
People don't just start 410 with the innate ability to compartmentalize their thoughts into "individual" and "team development." The idea is to work on it, not just claim you aren't good at it and give up.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  1. Finish the warm-up project and help out people if I can.
  2. Start making progress towards learning information about what Lucas Scanlon wants us to do.   Such as...?  Be specific.  -- SW

  1. The warm-up project was finished handily (moreso than I had thought). The work done on Saturday took me through the majority of the project, and Sunday was left polishing it up. This part took some three hours, but was nothing all too difficult (though Aaron helped me out with some problems I was having with ListBox's misbehaving).
  2. After meeting with Lucas Scanlon (notes here), we have a better understanding of what exactly we need to do. My impressions are that we need to create something close to the Memex thought of by Vannevar Bush (linky linky), that is to say a way to research and learn information through the internet but by using links to find out the information that one may not necessarily know that they needed to know. It should also allow the user to interface with multiple types of data, and even interact with viable authors. Trust is a key issue in that we want to make sure authors are accredited authors, or if they are not that they gain trust through accredited authors. This much, at least is my understanding of it. We later had a meeting and discussed some ideas, notes can be found here
Thanks for the links, and good detail on exactly what you feel is going on; this is helpful to your teammates to make sure that everyone is on (relatively) the same page.
 1 (8%) 
 
Total: 13

3. Milestone Status: Obstacles Encountered

 
The main obstacles were getting a clear definition of what the consumer was looking for, which needless to say was harder than it seemed like it ought to have been, and involved a bit of thrashing during the customer meeting. Additionally, there's still a tremendous looming problem of dividing work up, getting the team to run in parallel, and avoiding a situation where team members are waiting on archetecture design decisions, tools, or other pieces to be complete before they can work.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Application and session variables apparently don't work as I might have thought they did.  (Be specific and complete here.   Exactly how did you think they worked and how did they in fact work?   Did you document this issue anywhere, because it will come up again this semester.  -- SW)  I ran into a lot of problems when I made some minor changes to my webservice after I had already completed it. I'm still not sure what broke, but my assumptions about application and session variables as well what methods are called when pages are loaded were apparently wrong.

Our customer remains vague about his specifications, but he has enough in mind to reject many of the ideas we come up with. This makes it hard to get a grasp on what exactly our customer is looking for.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We made our meeting with the customer unnecessarily longer by jumping to different topics and asking questions that are unrelated to each other. We also assumed that the customer had all the answers (in terms of what he wants in the product, how it should be implemented, etc) and it turned out that he doesn't have all the answers and is looking for our inputs as well.

All the features we'd like to have + all the features the customer wants to have are nice, but given the time constraint it is not likely that we'll be able to implement all of them by the end of the semester. Therefore, we need to narrow it down to the features we will implement for sure.
This is good information, but it seems more related to the development process (though this is a tough week to tell the difference, given that the class does not yet seem to have individual tasks).
 1 (8%) 
 
 
The largest obstacle we encountered has been just getting everyone together at the same time for our customer and other meetings. This has been worked out, however, without too much difficulty. Otherwise, the largest obstacle was getting information out of the customer and trying to understand what he wants. This also was solved when he finally broke down and just told us what he was thinking of (briefly speaking, a site sort of mirroring the education system where people can supply services and help for money through multiple mediums.)
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  • I thought our first customer meeting got off to a bad start. It seemed like people were getting frustrated that their suggestions were getting shot down. Oftentimes it seemed as though we were at odds with the customer which is definitely not the way to maintain our relationship. We also spent too much time discussing technicalities of the project that was best left until after the customer left. The customer does not need to know the little idiosyncrasies involved in creating our solution.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
1. Now we have lots of ideas, but which of them are practical are still unknown. It takes time to explore everything. But we don't have time to explore all these fantastic ideas.
2. Although we have three teams to explore there directions, the detailed tasks for each team member are still unclear.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Mr. Scanlon has a vast number of things he wants the program to be able to do. I'm sorta intimidated by it. I know we can't get everything working in the time we have, but even getting a skeleton is going to be an effort.

It also took a long time for us to actually figure out what Mr. Scanlon wanted. I know that he didn't want to bias us in our solution to the problem, but as soon as he told us the vision he had of a teacher-student model, everything crystallized for me. There's a happy medium between "I want the computer to tell you what you don't know you need to know" and "here are all of the technologies and framework I want for you."
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Warm-up Project
None  Really!  I find that hard to believe.   -- SW
In hindsight, I did write that from a personal perspective. :P -Sohum

Real Project
  1. The monstrosity of the project itself. It looks like a huge mixture of some of the most popular websites today and something that still needs to have an X-factor.
  2. A lack of understanding about technologies that can be used. The customer seemed surprised to find that we did not know about RDF and Friend-2-Friend networks.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
The main obstacle seemed to be getting information out of the customer. He seemed very reluctant to give us what he saw for the project, probably for the reason of not limiting us to his idea.


Another big obstacle is organizing the project itself. We have a huge task in front of us, with countless possible features. It is unlikely that we can include every desired feature, but either way we need to focus on what's important. We need to figure out what is absolutely essential, and make a plan for how to make sure that is done first.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
I think the main obstacle encountered was the difficulty in understanding exactly what the project is about. And although the general feeling among everyone is that we now pretty much get it and we're coming up with great ideas, more than likely we'll come to the customer meeting next week to realize that we still haven't narrowed down exactly what the customer wants.
Good point.  And don't throw out the possibility that you're heading in the wrong direction completely.   -- SW
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We had some obstacles with the customer meeting. The biggest problem was that we wandered both off topic and into realms that didn't need to be discussed with the customer. Both the team and the leadership need to work on this. The other big problem in this meeting was that an adversarial relationship began to develop between the customer and a few team members. The team needs to discuss and work through these issues so that it doesn't happen again.

The project manager election was also somewhat of an obstacle for me since I lost a close contest. However, Brad is the person I would want in that position if it weren't me, so I am confident he will do well.
Since the margin of victory was well below any statistical variations, consider this issue:  Does Brad really have a mandate from the class?  If not, what can be done about it?   Since you lost the election, what sorts of obstacles, if only psychological, do you think might hamper your interactions with him?   -- SW
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Mr. Scanlon has a habit of not really telling us what he wants. Perhaps he doesn't really know and wants us to figure it out for him, but I get the sense that he just isn't telling us.   I figure some part of that is him not wanting to limit us right off the bat, but if we don't get a good idea, and soon, we will get nowhere on this project. Right now he's giving us mostly dreams and little reality.
Again, one of the goals of this class--being able to come up with your own ideas and presenting them to the customer, rather than waiting for them to be spoon-fed to you.
Perhaps Mr. Scanlon is doing what a good customer should do: delegate the technical issues to those that are better suited to assessing them, namely the developers.  And in some sense, he has hired you to create his dreams.  -- SW
 
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  1. With regards to problems with the Listbox, I was having problems getting server adding and dropping to work properly in the Web App. This was shown to be a problem of over-reloading and Application/Server variables combined. This, in total, was solved with Aaron's help and the use(slash learning) of properties in C#.
  2. Dealing with Mr. Scanlon was...tough. The first hour, at least seemed extremely unproductive because it felt like we were trying to find something without any sort of knowledge on what we were trying to find. (That would be true in general the first time you ever meet a customer. -- SW) I suppose that the first hour seemed like a guessing game. We were able to bypass this though afterwards when we sort of confronted him (Bad move.   Always work with, not against your customer.  -- SW) on it and we started playing a more straight game.
 1 (8%) 
 
Total: 13

4. Milestone Status: Proposed Solutions

 
I feel the curent path that we're on, given appropriate definition of expectations is on track to get us to a clear definition of the problem, which is really our launching point into true development. It's not entirely clear how "the path you're on" will get you past current obstacles...
I don't really see a clear articulation here of "the path you're on" -- SW
It's also become time for me to really examine our teams strengths and weaknesses and consider how to divide both our talents and our problems into manageable chunks.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Not much we can do about our customer, but I guess we'll just have to come up with more ideas ourselves and present them in a way that might be more acceptable to him.
Expand a little more on how you might implement this solution. What might make an idea appealing to your particular customer?
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We need to have a clearer direction in the future meetings. We didn't get to cover all of our meeting agenda despite the fact that the meeting was 2.5 hrs long. I think that in the future we'll have more specific questions to ask now that we have a better idea of what this product is.
And how are you proposing that this "clearer direction" be achieved?  -- SW

In terms of features to include, more research needs to be done on what is feasible and what is harder to implement. I think that our subgroups that we formed today will get that done over the weekend so that by the time we meet again as a group we will know which features are likely to be implemented. We also need to communicate with our customer further and see what are vital features he'd like to see in the final product. More than that though, it is highly important that we design a product that's highly extensible that what we can't have by the end of the semester can easily be added.
Your first point is centered on the development process, but your second point is a bit more in line with how individuals can contribute to task completion.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
There are no visible problems right now, so I cannot provide suggested solutions. I'm sure plenty of problems will appear, however.
You mentioned that it's difficult to get information out of the customer; surely you'll be meeting with him again. Any ideas on how to improve communication? --Chelsea
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  • Take a more open stance towards the customer might help our relationship. We need to hear him out, come up with solutions, and then do our best to convince him of the effectiveness of our solutions. If he is not willing to accept them, then we have to consider the possibility that our solution might not be a good fit. If we present our work in a coherent and digestible package, we increase our chances of convincing the customer we have the right solution.
Excellent insight into the problem and maturity in your suggested solutions. Very well done! --Chelsea
 1 (8%) 
 
 
1. We could select some of them and research, and make our project flexible enough for further extension in the future.
2. We are working on this. We could have meetings in the weekend and work out the subjects we first want to try.
 
Be very wary of undirected research.   Vague goals lead to vague results.   -- SW
 
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I feel a lot better about our project after the end of Thursday's meeting, but I'm sure there are still a lot of questions. I think that having weekly meetings with our customer should be a good thing. It'll keep us on our toes and make sure we're both thinking about the same things. The only downside I could see is that we might spend too much time throughout the semester preparing things for him to look at.
How might you make customer meetings a good thing? What will a good customer meeting look like?
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Real Project
  1. We will have to think hard and collaboratively about the designing of the system. Since we will not be able to deliver all the proposed features, we have to make something extensible that has the ability to eventually deliver those features. To do this, we will have to have our program design experts put their heads together, with input from others, of course.
  2. RDF, Friend-2-Friend, Silverlight, etc. must be investigated by the teams. One will basically have to look up tutorials, articles, and examples and follow up on those technologies.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We seem to have made a breakthrough with the customer, at least a little, as discussed above.


As for the organization, I think the first step is just what we are doing: researching the options. As soon as able though, we need to meet and iron out what is necesary, what is highly desired, and what is fluff. I think the best way to do this is for someone (perhaps Brad as PM) to come up with what they think is right. I like Dr. Wong's comment on rather than just freely trying to get people to come up with a solution, beginning with a proposed solution. That will allow people to say what they do/do not like about the proposed solution, and modify it, rather than trying to start from scratch.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
I think we need to keep thinking of vast possibilities for this project. The brainstorming sessions that Aaron and Brad led today was an excellent way to keep the creative juices flowing and I think the more options that we have for the project that less stuck we'll be if the customer doesn't like what he sees.
You have a different take on this subject than a lot of your classmates. Most people want to narrow the scope, so be prepared to defend yourself in this area. I'm pretty sure this topic will come up at some point, and it will help everyone if you have some convincing reasons as to why you should keep things broad. Things may go your way, or the may not--regardless, it's important to at least get your ideas out there so others know where you're coming from and why. --Chelsea
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For meetings, the leadership needs to hold the group to the agenda. We also need to focus on what needs to be accomplished in the meeting, and what can be saved for a small group to research. We should pay special attention in customer meetings to mark technical details for later discussion rather than using the customer's time for that. What we need to do is create specific agendas, expect everyone to prepare for the agenda beforehand, and then hold the team to the agenda during the meeting (with time for general questions later).
How will you accomplish these goals? Creating specific agendas and deciding what qualifies as a legitimate talking point are nontrivial tasks. --Chelsea


Secondly, we need to prevent situations from becoming adversarial with the customer. Maybe we need to spend some time role-playing various customer scenarios.
You could, but is this really feasible? Will you have time to do this as the semester rolls on and customer-team relations get more strained?
This is where it is important for people to realize that one of the most important things that can be said during a meeting is "Whoa!  Let's back up(off) here a bit.".   -- SW
 
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I think we should be harder on Mr. Scanlon in the board room. He can't give us nothing and expect us to come up with exactly what we're thinking - we're not mind readers. I know that Brad is good-natured, but if he's not going to push our agenda, ideas, and force the information out of the customer then I will.
Absolutely not the attitude you should have. The customer might be an obstacle, but that doesn't mean he should be bulldozed over. It is much more productive for the class to start looking at itself as the problem rather than blaming it on the customer. He's the boss, not you.
Your customer is never someone to be bullied.   Your job is to work with him to clarify and implement his desires.   Never treat the customer as if he has some sort of hidden agenda.   -- SW
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Currently there are no ongoing problems, but it's only been one meeting, and there's absolutely no way to tell if anything will go wrong.
Suppose the customer continues his pattern of ambiguity. How will the class deal with that obstacle? --Chelsea
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Total: 13

5. Development Process: What seems to be working and why?

 
As we're becoming more comfortable as a group, we're having more input from more different voices, which is a good thing. We still have a few people who remain quiet, but I hope we're moving toward a situation where all voices can be heard.
 
I'm excited about the way that a better definition of what we'll be doing is getting the class pumped about what can be done. This was especially good today as I think a lot of people got involved in coming up with wild ideas about how we can extend our framework to do a lot of things. I think we can use this energy to drive us forward to get solid designs for how the system will be broken into pieces and how the pieces will interact with one another.
 
I also get the sense that the class's overall confidence level is rising, and I hope this means individuals will be more willing to take ownership and responsibility for seeing everything through.
 
This is also a weakness, but I've chosen to try to avoid defining a lot of things too quickly so that we can explore more options and have more freedom to come up with unique and innovative solutions, and even though it feels like Dr. Wong is pressuring me to address technical issues quickly, I'd personally rather see what directions we can go before nailing too many things down.
It's fine that you're choosing your path, but make sure to consider why Dr. Wong might be, shall we say, "encouraging" a new approach.
Once you decide on exactly what you want to be doing, will you be ready to actually do it?   Technical capability does not simply appear at one's desire, it takes time, some times a long time, to develop.   How does this impact your planning?   -- SW
 
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Our meetings are productive. We got a lot out of our most recent brainstorming session in terms of how we see potential users interacting with our service, what features we might want (now or in the future), and possible technologies to look into.
You're missing the why here.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We discovered from our warm-up project that we are much more productive when we break up into smaller groups and work on subtasks. This is efficient time-wise because as a group we are able to spend more time on each topic and it's also efficient because each group can focus on the topic that they are working on. Prior to this class I have not experienced much of collaboration amongst CS students so it's definitely a new experience for me.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
The customer meeting went well overall (although a bit long.) We were able to get out the necessary information about the project and get a good idea of what we need to do, plenty to get started. The brainstorming session on Friday worked very well in my opinion, and was quite useful in fleshing out the project.
You're missing the why here.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  • The group is definitely becoming more connected. We definitely understand each other much better in terms of personality and the backgrounds we come from. By this point, it seems like almost everyone seems comfortable speaking out to the group about their views.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
- The meetings are great and we have lots of ideas in the brainstorming meeting.
This is a bit vague--why are the meetings going well, and how have you transferred from silent meetings to lively discussion? --Chelsea

- It's good to divide the whole class into small groups. I believe that will make communication and technical discussions more efficient.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We're becoming much more familiar as a group. As a result, more people are voicing opinions, which is good, especially during the brainstorming process.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  • We have managed to elect a project manager (Brad) after a well contested vote that ended 6-5 to Brad.
  • Two useful meetings have been had--one with the customer to get a proper understanding of the project and another with the team to brainstorm ideas about the project. Both meetings were useful, though the customer one was a little frustrating.
  • We have broken into smaller teams immediately to investigate the three initially primary areas:
    • Authoring: Aaron, Kevin, Felipe, Hubert (Felipe is the liaison)
    • Searching/Navigating: Yuan, Rae, Jeeyun, Dave (Rae is the liaison)
    • Content: Derek, Corey, Matt, Sohum (Corey is the liaison)
  • The above groups will initially be investigating their subjects from a UI point of view since that is of primary interest to the customer in the short-term.
  • We seem to have a good number of people in the team who are interested in/knowledgable about AI which could help since our search algorithm will have to be intelligent.
  • We have finally shifted over to the documents section of Sharepoint rather than the dysfunctional discussion board. (YAY!)
 1 (8%) 
 
 
I think its already been very helpful to have Brad as designated PM. He allowed the customer meeting to be a little more organized, and I like the way he organized the brainstorming, for what it was. I like that the brainstorming was relatively free-form, as that's exactly what it was.


By splitting into groups, I think it will help to get everyone involved in specifics, as specifics are easier to look at than broad guidelines. Its good that each group has a leader, but we have yet to see how well it all works out, as the groups haven't met yet (that I'm aware of)
You have an entirely different perspective on how meetings are run than pretty much everyone else. You seem to like the free-form and low-level aspects of the class's discussions, and these are the largest complaints (judging by others' journals). It will be extremely beneficial to the class if you take some time to think about why you like this type of discussion, because then the class as a whole can dialog about the issue rather than simply going by a majority vote. Having reasons ready ahead of time will help you get your voice heard if the issue is ever discussed, which I feel it will at some point. --Chelsea
 1 (8%) 
 
 
After working together on the warmup project, everyone seems more comfortable with everyone else, and it seems that a few more people are speaking up.

Although at first this didn't seem the case either at the customer meeting or the brainstorming session, all 4 of us at the "Authoring Content" meeting had a lot of really good stuff to contribute and it made the meeting that much more enjoyable.

So even though we may still have to work a little bit on big group dynamics, I'm kind of excited about the interaction within small groups.

Along those lines, I think we did a good job splitting up into groups. These don't have to be final or anything, but the fact that we're already splitting up responsibilities and some of us are making good progress is a good sign for working together in the future.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
As we have begun to formalize our leadership structure, our meetings have become much more productive. This is providing both direction and morale to the team. I think that having objectives defined, both by leadership and from the customer, is helping to generate more energy in our meetings and brainstorming.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
I think Brad will make a good PM, though I think Matt would have been an excellent choice as well, and I think once we do some more official organization, he should be given an Assistant title, and can fill in for Brad where necessary. The brainstorming meeting we had today was good and fun, but my pessimistic nature leads me to believe we won't even be able to do 10% of the ideas that were suggested. That's taking into consideration that we were trying to come up with new ideas on top of what was asked for and presented to us yesterday - and I feel we'll already have a tough time building just that in a semester. In any case, it got us thinking, which is a good thing. If we can pull off even 2 of the crazy ideas we had today, then this project has some serious potential.
Ahh...but which 2 ideas?  -- SW

Also, I think everyone did a good job with the warmup project. I was actually pretty convinced that it was going to be a massive failure, and I was pleasantly surprised. Let's hope the main project goes like that as well.

Further, I'm pleased that we chose 1 PM. We'll actually have some decisions made in a timely manner. (Although you should be aware of the fact that having a PM isn't the magic solution to all decision-making issues.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We've had a brainstorming session which seeemed to work very nicely. People were contributing ideas and we were able to break into smaller groups to handle load. Altogether we were able to work together well, and the breaking into smaller groups will certainly help to get everybody working more eh...group-like cohesiveness as well as get everybody to contribute more about a more specific thing.
 1 (8%) 
 
Total: 13

6. Development Process:  What does not seem to be working and why?

 
So much is still undefined. Very quickly we need to set up organizational structures to create personal goals for members of the class, so that each member gets a picture of what he or she should be working on for the week. We need to find a way to parallelize the process of making design decisions.
By the end of next week, we should be ready to begin coding the framework of how the major systems in our application will interact.
 
As far as interpersonal problems, the only thing I can see is that I'd like to get the last bit of the class speaking up and expressing ideas, concerns, etc with the group. I'd also like to improve the overall confidence of our group since I know there are a number of talented developers who are mostly flying under the radar.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
At the end of our customer meeting we seemed to start drifting off-topic onto a discussion of problems we might encounter implementing certain features that were brought up. This is something the customer is not interested in at this stage and is just a waste of the customer's time.
Good insight! Again, consider why this phenomenon is occurring; it may help you to solve the problem.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We have a lot of great ideas but I think we do not know what we want done (by that I mean concretely) by our next customer meeting. Today, e had some discussions about back-end logics and design issues that may not pertain to what we need to achieve in this upcoming week. I don't mean to say that we shouldn't talk about future issues/topics. I think they are great discussions and relevant to the project as a whole; but I want us to be able to iron out the top-priority issues first.
Since these future issue what were discussed were indeed valuable, though perhaps not immediately useful, how did you record the ideas so that you don't waste time in the future rehashing the same thing?   -- SW
 
 1 (8%) 
 
 
I think we need a bit better organization and need to try to be far more efficient in meetings. Organizationally, right now, it's just Brad on top with no middle management, which makes organization and delegation a bit more difficult. However, it is still so early on that it isn't really necessary yet, and no problems have really arisen from its absence. (Or is it that you just aren't noticing the things that are going wrong? -- SW) In terms of meetings, we just need a better plan of where to go, and be more succinct about things. Right now all meetings take a long time to do small things, such as scheduling the next meeting. Hopefully this can be streamlined as we move on and as a larger hierarchy is introduced.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  • Collectively we have a bad sense of timing and priorities. This project is beyond the scope of several years, and when we continue to push our meetings beyond a reasonable timeline, some people have to sacrifice time for other classes. Today, when we had our lunch meeting, and class was supposed to have ended, people were still discussing views and concerns and the most important thing (forming groups) had not been accomplished yet.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We talked about too much technical issues in the customer meeting, which the customer doesn't care about.
We lack the sense of time in the meetings. The customer meeting is too long and we split the groups in a hurry at the end of today's meeting.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Overall Brad is doing a good job in his two-day tenure as PM, but I think he needs to keep meetings more on track. In general, technical details, internal organizing, and other things Mr. Scanlon shouldn't care or know about shouldn't be a part of customer meetings; those should be only an opportunity to show what we have to him and to get answers to questions we have about what he wants.

I'm not sure yet, but I think we might be focusing too much on really really cool but really really difficult things to add to the project. It's good to keep future possibilities in mind so that we can be sure we add enough extensibility into the system, but I think there might be some people right now who are actually exploring how to implement impossible features right now. Very good point.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  1. Interacting with the customer has been a little blunt. We didn't really look organized in the first meeting since questions were bouncing out of everywhere. This was okay since it was the first meeting and we did not really have a good idea of the project. However, in future meetings will have to be more organized.
  2. Respecting the customer's time. We will have to use our time more efficiently. The customer looked a little peeved towards the end of the previous meeting as we began discussing team issues which were not of relevance to him.
  3. Lack of communication about the Sharepoint vs. Discussion Board issue
    • I'm a little uncertain as to what the status is of the Sharepoint Discussion Board vs. the little forum I set up.
    • The course staff and PM seem to have come to a conclusion that the project is not discussion-based and hence Sharepoint should suffice. I believe that it is not discussion-based yet because we haven't really done anything of programming nature. I can see how a real discussion board could be useful if you just solved a problem/had a question at 4 AM. (We don't have a problem with using a discussion board, as long as it is not the only means of communication and any important decisions made there are documented somewhere where they can be found by other team members and the staff!)
    • There also seem to be qualms because there would be no "archiving" of discussion on the forum. I think this is a small concern that can be easily dealt with because the board uses a popular open-source client and a port could be written given some time, to convert the forum into something that could plugin to Sharepoint (though I'm not sure why anyone would want to go in that direction). In addition, it seems like the most productive discussion-based resource we've had thus far is Corey's IRC server. This has allowed people to get immediate attention to their problems. The only problem is that the logger was installed a few days late and also searching through that information is a little difficult.
A few thoughts on the Sharepoint/forum topic: consider why discussion has died down on the issue--perhaps class members are realizing that group meetings/email/phone calls are sufficient to solve those 3 am problems. Also, given the scope of the project itself, give some serious thought as to whether anyone really has even "a little time" to port another tool into Sharepoint...and if so, whether that time wouldn't be better spent elsewhere. --Chelsea As I noted above, the need for such a system may not be evident yet, because we have barely touched the surface of the project. The reason why there is no discussion is simply because there is nothing to discuss. -Sohum
The issue of archiving is because when you graduate, or just decide to change your server, the information in the discussion boards will be lost.   It is important to keep a record of the class's activities that persists for many years.   -- SW
 1 (8%) 
 
 
I think we are still lacking a bit in organization. I often go into things not sure what has and has not been done in preparation. I think a lot of this thinking on my part is my fault, as I havent kept a close enough eye on the website and updates.
Do you think there is a well-defined notion of where exactly people should be looking to be properly informed and updated?   Of is it just a vague, "Look through the Sharepoint site with its gigabytes of disorganized information and hopefully everything you need to know will be in there somewhere"?   -- SW
 1 (8%) 
 
 
As I said above, I think the biggest lack we have right now is input from EVERYONE. It seemed to me that the brainstorming session today was ran by a total of at most 5 or 6 people who were throwing ideas out there. And although the ideas were in general good ones, or at least can lead to good solutions, it would be infinitely better if everyone would throw out their opinion out there.

Also, although the split of groups right now is working well for some of us so far, we need to be very careful how exactly we split up work. We need to make sure that the group that has a lot of work has a lot of people and viceversa and we also should make sure that people who are technically versed in a certain important subject are split up across groups. We probably don't need to worry about this right now, but I'm just trying to think ahead.
Very good point.
Proper distribution of manpower capabilities is crucial in a small organization.   The last thing you want is for one group to be zooming ahead while another simply flounders.  -- SW 
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We have a big problem with staying on topic and making a decision. (This seems to be a restatement of what you put in your milestone sections, although I will say that it fits much better here.) We did not accomplish a lot of our meeting objectives this week. (Since this is a markedly different opinion than most others, be sure to bring this up in the next class meeting. -- SW)  While we talked about structure and many possible different roles within the team, we didn't decide on anything except for project manager. While we didn't need to decide all of them yet, there were others we could have chosen. A customer relations position (or a clear decision if we are giving this to the PM to do) would have been good to decide on this week.

We also didn't make a final decision on what discussion boards we will be using (since there is a question of whether or not non-sharepoint boards can be archived). This needs to happen very soon.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
I actually have little complaints for this week, but that's mainly because there isn't much to go on. We'll see where we are 7 days from now.
If you didn't get all the information you needed from the customer, I would say there's probably some sort of parallel to the behavior of the class. Suggestion for future journals: anytime you sya there's no problem, you're guaranteed to be wrong (and lose points. Look at the Journal Grading Guidelines for more detail.)
 1 (8%) 
 
 
There doesn't seem to be any problems...yet. But it is a little early in the game to fully predict anything.
Hint: there will never be a week where you can correctly say there are no problems.
(Check out the Journal Grading Guidelines that Chelsea posted.)
 1 (8%) 
 
Total: 13

7. Development Process: Proposals for change--issues addressed and why the change will help.

 
This is big: We need to define a more solid organization structure within the next week.
 
What this will entail isn't fully determined yet, but I'm guessing it will represent a division of labor between a number of groups:
  • Back-end systems: data representation, middleware, databases, etc.
  • Front-end systems: authoring and searching interfaces, branding/profile management, etc.

This amounts to about 4 or 5 teams I believe. I kind of like the idea of 4 teams of 3, but we can be more flexible than that. The key issues in all of this will be defining exactly what's expected of each team, setting up good communications channels for inter-team standards making (It's good that this is one of your goals, as inter-team communication was one of our major downfalls last year), and identifying key milestones, as well as drawing up a timeline that uses our resources to get a working product in a reasonable amount of time.

My philosophy is this: we need to set up an extensible, flexible and dissociated model to get it working as quickly as possible with minimal features, and then use this platform to begin to implement many of the pie-in-the-sky ideas that we've come up with. I feel that the timeline for having such a proof-of-concept system from which to continue building is approx 3 or 4 weeks (I know, crazy fast). But I consider this system to be a minimal acceptable deliverable, yet designed extensibly enough to grow into the system we want by the end.

This approach has the following benefits:

  • It allows us to begin testing ASAP.
  • It provides immediate feedback about interoperability, as in previous years teams have waited far too long to connect the pieces together.
  • With any luck it'll give us more to show the customer sooner.
  • It should also allow us to parallelize to a greater degree, as individuals will be able to contribute more of the pieces that build upon the total framework.
Working in parallel is a great way to make strides quickly, but keep in mind the ghosts of 410 past in regards to integration.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We need to stay on track during meetings, especially ones with the customer, who will not always be as available as we are. As project leader, Brad should be the one to speak out and stop us before we get too far, but at some points during the last meeting, I noticed he was leading us off-topic too.
Make sure you bring this up in front of the class, not just in the journals, before the next customer meeting.
"We need to do better"-type proposals for change aren't very helpful.  This is an obvious point.  At best, you've foisted the responsibility onto Brad, without any real concrete suggestion as to how he, or anyone else, could be helped to stay on track.   For instance, wouldn't a detailed meeting agenda be useful here?   -- SW
 
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We need to maybe have a list of goals we want to accomplish by the end of each meeting. That way we can insure that the important things are taken care of before we move onto topics that are relevant but not as top-priority. Also, I know we will be doing this very soon but coming up with very specific milestones would help.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
For now we are O.K, but I think we will need a better management/organizational system soon. Also, we really need to streamline meetings, possibly by having far stricter agendas and by having Brad make sure that we don't get side tracked and stay on schedule.
Explore your solution a little further here.
Even though Brad is the project manager, others can/should speak up if they feel the meeting is not going as planned.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  • Set stricter timelines on meetings. In meetings set definable (yes!)goals you want to have accomplished by the end of the meeting, and work towards that. We could potentially discuss this project and its possibilities for forever, but everyone has other commitments they must attend to. Being more conscientious in regards to priorities and time will go a long way in making sure we get our goals done in an efficient manner.
Again, you've hit the nail on the head in terms of an important problem and a practical solution.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
I think we could make more detailed plans before the meetings. Set more detailed agenda. We can make the timelines flexible, but we have to make sure we discussed the most important things before the end of the meeting.
Even the most detailed plans can go awry, as many of our customer meetings last year proved. Is there anything else you can do to make sure meetings don't steer towards the nonproductive? Check out some of the other journals for your classmates' opinions on this matter. --Kristin
 1 (8%) 
 
 
We need to, in our next meeting, identify the bare minimum that's necessary for a functional system. Once we implement this, we can add features, but we need to have a skeleton of the system as soon as we can.
Having something to demonstrate to the customer is always a good thing. Even if it is only minimally functional, it is better than hand-wavy promises of what it will do sometime in the future.
Think in terms of evolutionary pathways:  where are you starting and in what manner can you get to where you really want to be?   -- SW
 1 (8%) 
 
 
  1. We may consider planning a short 15-30 pre-meeting either right before or a day before the meeting so that everyone has an idea of how to conduct the meeting. I also expect Brad will settle into his role as PM and keep the meetings on target.
  2. Again, we will have to carefully make the best use of our time with the customer. This will basically mean that we have to communicate to our liaisons and the PM effectively because he will be the one setting the agenda for the customer meeting.
  3. A decision must be made and if one is made, it should be publicized appropriately. Ironically, maybe an announcement could be put up on Sharepoint. :P
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Soon we will need more management/organization. We need to talk about all those "important jobs" that we discussed Wednesday, and iron out who needs to do what, at least for now.

Clearly some things, like testing, are not necessarty at this point as we are still in the planning stage and no code is written.

Still, what about the PR/customer relations person? And who is our scribe, Sohum or Felipe? I havent seen anything posted by Felipe in a while, but I thought he was our official "scribe".
I smell a communications breakdown here.   -- SW
 1 (8%) 
 
 
As far as everyone contributing, I think that those of us that dominate the conversation may try to take a step back and force quieter people to break the silence.

Something that has worked for me before when I've had to lead discussions is directly asking someone that I see hasn't been contributing so much. And while I think this could be embarrassing for someone, it may help to bring a good idea to the table and positive reinforcement for that person. Also, I don't think that this responsibility should necessarily fall on Brad, but any of us could ask someone else for their opinion. I tried that today during the small group meeting and it worked pretty well, so I don't see why it can't help in the big meeting setting as well.
Great, practical solutions here.
I concur.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Again we need to stick to the agenda for meetings. We need to make sure that questions raised in the previous meeting are addressed and decisions made in the subsequent meeting. We need to formalize our decision making process and make sure that the decisions that need to be made in each meeting are made, and the decision clearly posted on the team site thereafter. We need to quickly make the decisions about roles within the team and about our forums, our resources postings and such, before confusion becomes a big problem.
Good ideas, but how will you accomplish them? These are more restatements of problems than implementable solutions.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
As above, no problems yet; things are going smoothly so far.

This is not what your teammates seem to think. Many of them identified problems in this area.
 1 (8%) 
 
 
Um...next time we should dress nicer for the meetings - we need to look professional, after all.
Please see your teammates' journals for what everyone else sees as a problem this week.
 1 (8%) 
 
Total: 13

8. Peer review:  Positive or negative feedback for other class members

 
This week has been mostly about the team (brainstorming is an incredibly team process), so I don't think it's fair to say much, other than Aaron did a good job directing the brainstorming, our scribes (Felipe, Sohum, and now Rae?) continue to do an excellent job.
 
As a leader, don't be afraid to directly point out those who could use some improvement, such as in speaking up more.   The trick is to cultivate a community where professional and helpful critique is welcomed.   -- SW
 
 1 (10%) 
 
 
So far Brad seems to be doing a good job as project manager. Otherwise, there isn't much to talk about this week. Oh, and Sohum, Felipe, and Rae are doing a good job as the scribes.
Are there any links to meeting minutes anywhere, or are they buried in the discussion boards?
 1 (10%) 
 
 
  • Yuan: you should speak up more! We can tell you have a great understanding based on the work you do, but we hardly get to hear your opinions, views, and ideas on what the project should be.

Very nice wording that is positive and encouraging!   -- SW

 1 (10%) 
 
 
I think we all need to refine our focus and try to look at what's possible for this semester. Other than that, I think people are doing a great job of growing into the group.
 1 (10%) 
 
 
  • I liked Hubert's UI for the warm-up project. ;)
  • Even though the project looks tough, everyone seems pumped up and ready for the task. This is dissimilar to the initial reaction last year.
 1 (10%) 
 
 
I think Brad did a good job at the customer meeting, really trying to get the necessities out of the customer. He also seems to be prepared for the meetings, as is shown by his basic outline for the customer meeting.


I think Sohum's notes have been good, and I'm thankful that many people are taking notes. It seems to be good that we have multiple points of view for things like brainstorming and the first customer meeting. For those, it has been easy to miss little details, and multiple people's notes allow for everything to be recorded (or at least more).


I'm excited to see how other people do as leaders in the groups, and the small group dynamics a bit more.
 1 (10%) 
 
 
I think Brad has been doing a phenomenal job as project manager and his enthusiasm has definitely got us going.

I do have one suggestion for Brad though. You're a really smart guy and your brain goes faster that probably most of us, which means that you have a lot more to contribute to a discussion. What that means during the meetings is that after someone throws out an idea you generally have something to say -- and while most of the time the comments are great, I think that part of being PM is to maybe take a step back and let others contribute, maybe with some prodding from you or the rest of us. I know it can be awkward leading a discussion where nobody's talking, but I think that that's part of what forces people to finally start contributing.
Once again, some very good suggestions.
For leaders, think in terms of supporting your group with your thoughts rather than leading them by the nose.   This means voicing your thoughts after you've heard everyone else's.   -- SW
 1 (10%) 
 
 
We had contributions in larger or smaller amounts from about 90% of the team this week, which is an improvement upon previous weeks. We can get 100% of the people talking I am sure. All the usual suspects apply here, but I was really glad that we heard more from Rae, Dave, Sohum, Jeeyun, and Kevin this week. These were contributions that helped a lot during our PM election and during the brainstorming meeting.
 1 (10%) 
 
 
I think that we have a great group of intuitive people - everyone has a unique and interesting idea to share. Even the people who are more quiet will occasionally speak up and make me think "oooh, I hadn't thought of that".

I am a little frustrated though that neither Brad nor Matt was willing to put a person back in line if they weren't doing their job. If one of them had said that, they would have easily won my vote. There's definitely a line for how much negativity can be helpful, but I believe that a swift kick in the behind is sometimes all it takes to get someone back on track.
But what exactly do you mean by "a swift kick in the behind"?   Admittedly unrealistically, you can't dock someone their pay or fire them here, soe what do you have to threaten someone with?   Fifty lashes?   To note, if there is a desire for peer-generated impact on students' grades (e.g. peer reports), that can be arranged.   -- SW
 1 (10%) 
 
 
Kudos to Brad for getting organized and keeping an up-to-date list of whose servers and apps were working. I also like how we were working together and starting to get organized during the meeting today (Friday). However, I do recognize that there was some tension during the first customer meeting, and perhaps Brad lost his cool a little bit? (Maybe not - we were all a little annoyed by the cats game we were playing -- or was what you were feeling because you were "playing" the wrong game by trying to "extract" something from the customer?  -- SW). Still, we should maybe try to be a little more formal for the next meeting (also in terms of dressing).
 1 (10%) 
 
Total: 10

9. Additional Comments

 
Good journal, with a lot of good ideas. --Kristin
Nice journal.   I hope everyone in the class stops to consider all that has been heaped upon your shoulders and as to whether or not all those things really should be in handled by you or by someone else.  -- SW
 1 (9%) 
 
 
Much improved this week.
 1 (9%) 
 
 
You've pointed out some important issues in the development process sections--don't be afraid to make sure that they are addressed.
Although, as Chelsea said, it was a bit of a hard week to distinguish between personal and group milestones, be sure to check out our grading guidelines to get a firm idea of what should go in each section of the journal. --Kristin
 1 (9%) 
 
 
Great journal! Make sure your concerns are brought up to the class.
Fantastic journal, with a lot of well thought out solutions.
 1 (9%) 
 
 
Though your journal is short, it gives excellent information. Your comments regarding the milestone in particular are accurate, clearly stated, and should be considered by the class as a whole.
 1 (9%) 
 
 
The desire to zoom out to a higher level view of the project and simplify your vision is shared by many members of the class. I highly recommend that these concerns are explicitly brought up to the class.
Very good journal, with lots of (appreciated) detail.
 
Nice journal. -- SW
 
 1 (9%) 
 
 
Seeing that the customer seems a little paranoid about preserving the uniqueness of his idea, I wonder if it would be a good idea to make the Sharepoint site inaccessible to the public. Already a simple search for my name in Google displays the Comp 410 website as the top hit.
Again, a beautifully-written journal. Your formatting scheme is excellent...in fact, you seem to have a talent for laying out information in an intuitive manner. Perhaps this can help out the class as you lay out web UIs.
Nothing I can really add to Chelsea's comment, besides another "good job." --Kristin
The issue of public vs. private on the class web sites is a very interesting one.   For the sake of the class and it's relationship to other students and other outside, particularly prospective, students and faculty, the class materials must be public.  But as you point out, it does seem that there are some things that should have controlled access.   Being an industrial product, interestingly, Sharepoint itself has problems with this issue in that it is made to be either fully public or fully private.   Out Sharepoint installation in fact, has been slightly hacked to enable it to be both public and private (it's acdtually two portals, one public and one private, running on a shared database.).     Since it is possible to remove anonymous access to lists and libraries, perhaps you might consider setting up some more secure areas of the site for sensitive materials.   -- SW
 1 (9%) 
 
 
Particularly good milestone sections. Also, please shorten your link text using hrefs (just Google "html link" to find out how). It makes the journals much easier to read.
Good journal.
 1 (9%) 
 
 
Chelsea and Kristin are going to Disney World for free. I think we should shun them.
Haha...deja jealous?
Shun the non-believer... shunnnn We're on a bridge!
Fine, shun us. That just means you won't get any Mickey Mouse souvenirs :-P
 1 (9%) 
 
 
You've successfully and specifically targeted several problems; be a little less general in regards to solutions.
 1 (9%) 
 
 
I hope more people think along the same lines as me and feel like that we should have way more than a GUI mockup for the next customer meeting (even if all of that isn't presented).
Keep in mind that the customer's expectations must be met before they are exceeded. It's good to impress the customer, but it's also important to think farther ahead than just the next meeting. Work may need to go on in the background without being presented for a few weeks.
Plus, is it really the best idea to burn yourself out working around the clock this week just to show the customer how awesome you are? Won't that just set the stage for failure when the team can't come through and have "way more" than asked for at every meeting?
P.S. - I shouldn't have waited this late to submit my journal but I have no idea what server time is - my clock shows 11:59PM right now as I'm submitting this!
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