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Fall 2007

Fall 2007 > J04 9-21-07 > View Response #6

J04 9-21-07: View Response #6

Name	Felipe Serrano
Milestone Status: Gains made (If possible, include hyperlinks to what you mention here.)	On Sunday, Aaron, Kevin, Hubert and I met and created mockups for the content authoring group. I presented these mockups on class on Monday in about 3 minutes so I rushed through a lot of the material but got most of it out. The mockups are here Wow, that's a long link... In addition to that, I met with Kevin and Yuan to talk about the interface requirements for content authoring. We created a document that lists all the methods that we think are required (so far...). The document was uploaded by Kevin and it's here. We have also scheduled another meeting for tomorrow afternoon so we can get started on the requirements that Brad gave us. I also gave a presentation to the customer talking alittle about the project in general and giving an overview of how we understand the different aspects of the project. I think it went fairly well although I always tend to speak quickly in front of people (or actually in general:) ).
Milestone Status: Obstacles Encountered	We really haven't done much of real substance so far. The problem is that we hadn't really fleshed out yet what the teams were doing exactly so we were working on getting that started Now that Brad has posted milestones I think we can get cranking. I've also been very busy with other classes this week (Sadly 482 is not super fun) so I've not seen as good at organizing any team as I'd like.
Milestone Status: Proposed Solutions	The honest to God truth is that I was procrastinating so I realize that if I'm going to be a useful team leader I need to step it up and catch up with what I need to do earlier than the night before. I tenon that's easy to say and hard to do but my hope is that the more I tell myself the better I'll be. This is not a very concrete solution. It's like saying "We have a problem, what do we do?--Just fix it!". What can you do to help you not procrastinate and to keep on track? -- SW
Development Process: What seems to be working and why?	I think we did agood job of satisfying the customer's requests for this second meeting and I think we did a good job of both presenting our ideas clearly and keeping the meeting on track. In addition my small meetings with both Aaron, Kevin and Hubert and with keving and Yuan have gone really well. We may not be doing very hard stuff right now but I think we've done a good job of keeping the meetings reasonably short and productive
Development Process: What does not seem to be working and why?	That on the other hand was a very big problem during the team leaders meeting we spent almost 3 hours discussing parts of the project that we shouldn't be worrying about yet and we had very little concrete material come out of the discussion. Also, I'm a little worried about creating milestones for my team I still don't know how I want to divide the labor and I don't want to give someone a lot more work than somebody else. Maybe you shouldn't be doing this alone and in a vacuum. Don't "assign", instead, assist in dividing up the work. -- SW I'm also very very worried about integrating things together with the other teams. We sorta have some standards and we sorta have a stub backend but in reality it feels like we've been sent out to work on 3 completely separate projects where we come up with our own ideas and then we try to mush them together later. Exactly why it is not a good idea for one or two people to be doing the interfaces and other important parts of the project that will help to tie it all together.
Development Process: Proposals for change--issues addressed and why the change will help.	We definitely need to keep the team leader meetings on track and on topic. This is definitely one of the most important parts of communicating between teams and keeping some sort of team collaboration going. These are really the only times when we can find out what the teams are doing so I think the format of these meetings needs to become something like the the following: Each team gives an update of what they've done that week Then an idea of what they're doing this next week (with input from Brad from his master plan) And finally, what "blockers" have they run into (similar to the journal) Then the team leaders plus Brad can discuss SHORT-TERM plans for moving forward or solving issues if any I don't think these meetings are necessarily the place to take about pie in the sky ideas if we don't even know what we're doing tomorrow. Good suggestions! -- SW As far as creating milestones for my team I think this maybe a result of we needing to get the project up and running and I think it should get easier as we get more clear and concise stuff to do.. Finally, I REALLY REALLY think we need some sort of global Spec from the team leaders so we know EXACTLY what the goals are and where we want to end up. Even if this spec just talks about the minimal functionality we need we need to collaborate more closely. We can always add things later. These are useful and constructive steps to be taken. --Chelsea And steps that should be discussed/implemented sooner rather than later.
Peer review: Positive or negative feedback for other class members	I think everyone seems to be doing a good job of trying to give feedback except possibly during the customer's meeting. That is partly the customer's fault since he seems to want to interact mostly with Brad while still complaining about us being quiet. It's very hard with a setup like that for the people sitting faraway to contribute very much. How about seating the customer more in the middle? -- SW
Additional Comments	Formatting note: please shorten any links that elicit the response "Wow that's a long link..."