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Fall 2007

Fall 2007 > J04 9-21-07 > View Response #1

J04 9-21-07: View Response #1

Name	Brad Dodson
Milestone Status: Gains made (If possible, include hyperlinks to what you mention here.)	We've made a lot of gains since last Friday: - We split into a more complete team organization structure - We created a leadership structure - We split the design task into manageable pieces. It would be a great help to the staff if this info could be posted somewhere and linked to. --Chelsea And we did this without skimping on exploring the problem space, brainstorming, and innovating. At the same time, we also created teams to deal with certain tasks not directly related to development: - Customer Relations (headed by Matt) - Technology Research (headed by Derek) And probably biggest of all, we got the first piece of code into the repository
Milestone Status: Obstacles Encountered	We've had a little bit of trouble getting off the ground I think. The biggest thing that's happening is that we need a few central pieces of code (mostly interface definitions) to start working before we can get everyone making productive progress on the project. (Are you sure this is a property of the project? Or is it a property of your approach to the problem? Establishing important interfaces is almost always a major step in the right direction. You just need to be careful that it doesn't take too much time and you don't waste resources. --Barnaby)
Milestone Status: Proposed Solutions	What we're doing will work I think, although I'm continuing to monitor the situation as is's evolving rapidly. I expect to have the full team functioning at a much higher level (What do you mean by this? Being specific about your expectations is key to achieving them.) next week, and writing substantial amounts of code soon. If you have a problem, it's unlikely that it will solve itself without changing what you're doing. I'd like to see a more proactive solution here.
Development Process: What seems to be working and why?	Splitting into teams has been quite effective I think. To me the clearest instances of this so far are centered around the way that we were able to have team leaders focus on development issues while others took care of customer relations problems. In the same way, I am comforted by the fact that there are people looking forward to the technologies we'll need to use in a couple of weeks.
Development Process: What does not seem to be working and why?	It's taking us a bit to long to get rolling. Most of that is my fault, both for not setting a standard appropriately, and for putting a bit too much on Aaron. Nevertheless, writing the interface code is something really only one person, or a couple of like-minded people can do. I don't think this is necessarily true. A team could design this as long as there is one person to make final decisions. It is/has proved to be a lot for one person. -Matt I agree with Matt here--as long as you maintain your organizational structure, several people should be able to contribute. Also keep in mind that it may not hurt to have the people who will be implementing the interfaces offer input in designing them. Before you go off writing interfaces, do you know what you are interfacing? That is, where in your system do you need interfaces and for what purposes? Have you skipped over a development step here? -- SW If we don't get a substantial part of the team making substantive coding contributions soon though, we'll have serious problems. Yes, especially if, as pointed out above, only one or two people design the interfaces that everyone will be using. Even if additional people don't contribute much to the actual code, it is good to get their input and let them start getting familiar with what they'll be working with for the rest of the semester.
Development Process: Proposals for change--issues addressed and why the change will help.	We need to make sure the current evolution continues, and that we have a working system as soon as is possible. From there I have no doubt that people will be able to accomplish a lot. It's hard to build the building before you have a foundation though, so we need to make sure we can get all the pieces communicating, and then progress will come a lot faster I think. Again, this is a pretty vague solution--what steps will you take to make it happen?
Peer review: Positive or negative feedback for other class members	The team leaders (Felipe, Corey, Rae, Aaron) have been very flexible and helpful in driving us forward. Derek has been tremendously useful in exploring technologies, especially Silverlight - this is extremely important, and we don't have enough time to all do it. I agree. This was true in the "brainstorm" group over the weekend. It's really helpful to have someone, and now a whole group, figuring these technologies out. Matt did a great job at the customer meeting yesterday, and I think it was a great help to split off the responsibilities like this. Everyone else is doing pretty well as far as I can tell, but I'd like them to speak up a bit more, take ownership and really be useful.
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