Fall 2007

• Split up into small temporary groups to investigate a high-level portion of the project - I was assigned to the content authoring group
• Brainstormed ideas for content authoring - our ideas can be found here
• Presented our findings at the Monday class meeting - minutes here
• Assigned the role of time tzar - now I need to make sure meetings stay on track
• Met with our customer to present our view of how the project will turn out - minutes here
• Assigned new small groups - I am now a part of the Advanced Research and the Data Management/Shared Services (back-end) groups - group assignments can be found here  That document tells what groups exist but not who's in them.   Do you have documentation of exactly who is in what group anywhere?  -- SW
• Experimented with TFS (version control) and Microsoft SQL
• TABLETS HAVE ARRIVED! (possibly the biggest gain this week ;P)

1. We split up into smallish groups to help with planning and development - the idea was to have a good GUI mockup of different parts by Monday. I was put into a group with Rae, Jee Yun, and Yuan. Together, we developed some ideas as to how to make searching and navigating more intuitive - (we went with a more question-based system like ask.com), and drew up some diagrams (notes here).
2. We split up into still smaller groups - I am part of the searching and navigation team as well as the advanced research team.
3. The Advanced Research Team met after class on Monday, and then on Tuesday: we explored a little bit about Silverlight and Jquery. I believe we decided that JQuery is very viable, and Silverlight might have some compatibility issues so going with Flash might be a better alternative (though Silverlight would be a very nice addendum). We need to see about getting a Silverlight dev kit to help with this - and we need to gain access to a Flash dev kit as well most likely (e-mail already sent to Dr. Wong about this). We looked, played around, and figured out source control in Visual Studio, and each of us should be able to help our respective teams with this aspect of Visual Studio. Beyond this week, I am to look into jQuery along with Yuan.
4. The searching team had a quick meet on Wednesday during class (the delay was due to the team leaders not having met until Tuesday late at night). The essential thing was to get some information compiled and understand how searching is done in other applications before the meeting on Thursday. I researched on Ebay - found that most likely they're using some sort of rdf indexing to aid when doing larger searches (for example searching description as well). I did some background research on RDF and RDDL and sent the info to Rae to compile.
5. We conducted our second customer meeting with Luke Scanlon (minutes located here. This meeting seemed to go a lot better because we were able to demonstrate that we had direction, ideas, and some GUI mockups. There were some hiccups and things that we did not fully address, as well as other items that Luke (I'm pretty sure that's what he wanted us to call him) wanted us to address if not that meeting then the meeting next. These are detailed in the next section.
6. Tablet laptops for everyone! (Which I am writing this on now)

• Attended two of the Customer Prep Team meetings where we discussed, laid out, and finalized the GUI mockups to present to the customer.
  
• Attended the Authoring Team meeting where we fleshed out a list of method signatures that satisfied our current and possible future needs. A system architecture is a lot more than just a list of method signatures.  Does anyone have a clear notion of what any given piece of the system is supposed to be doing?  -- SW
  
• Attended the first customer meeting where we discussed views on project direction, presented our current progress, and received the request for next week's deliverables (mockups of how trust works and data input).

1. When presenting on Monday for our smaller "development" groups, I feel like the presentations were a bit rushed due to a lack of time. Of course that's to be expected as not everyone can stay past, we didn't decide to meet earlier, etc. We didn't have a prepared presentation so our material came out very hashed and jumbled to the rest of the group.
2. We need either Flash or Silverlight (definitely one if not the other at some point in the project). As said before, an e-mail was sent out about this, so not a huge problem.
3. Meeting structure could use some more um...reinforcement, but this is better suited for the development section.
4. When we met with Luke Scanlon, he was fond of our GUI (as far as I could tell), but was afraid of two things (strictly interface-wise) - That the interface was very dry and stale, and that we're not bringing anything entirely innovative. Well for the first part, we only have mockups so it's too early to assess that fully (although a good note to keep in mind is that we do want to make using the system fun and entertaining), but for the second part he wanted some focus on our more innovative graph-like design for navigating between related and suggested articles. Proposed solution below.
5. Encountered a problem installing Visual Studio on new tablet
   
   -The installer complained that Rmt9x.mst was unable to be copied
   IF YOU GET THIS PROBLEM, SOLUTION IS BELOW
6. It's hard to get used to the nub mouse meh
7. Dr. Wong wants to know if we like the carrying cases for the laptops. I find that it's functional...but I don't like it.

• Due to lack of communication, missed the customer prep team meeting where the core of the work was done. I found out about the meeting after it took place when mockups were posted on owlnet. I was not told about the meeting because they knew I was busy and didn't want to bother me. While this miscommunication had very little impact (had I heard about the meeting, I would have gone, but would not have been able to offer much in terms of core work as I have no experience with Photoshop), I feel this lack of communication will have more dire consequences when the project gets into full swing in the months to come.
  
• Was officially the worst dressed at the customer meeting.
  

1. Deciding on a final design was difficult because almost everyone had differing points of view.
2. Working with Photoshop was difficult because computer did not have enough RAM.
3. Trouble with Photoshop smart objects because we didn't really know what they were. The problem was that if the canvas size of a smart object was changed, it did not automatically update in the original document.
4. Trying to create designs and work together was inefficient because development almost had to take place in only one computer.
5. We ran out of time creating the designs which is why they may not have been as well thought out or as good as they could have been.

1. I had advised Rae to, when she talked with Brad, advise him that the meeting would be (with three different groups presenting a lot of info at least) either very long, or very crammed unless we officially decided to run over. Whether or not that was done I'm not entirely sure, and given that we were to present the following day, this is understandable for nothing to happen at such short notice. However, this still falls in line with our shortcomings on meetings in general - but as said before this should (and will) be detailed in the development process section.
2. If Mr. Scanlon wants more detail on innovative navigation, then we should do it by all means. It would be great if we could show a tech demo in flash or silverlight even of such a thing - it would serve to accomplish at least two things:
   1. We would consecrate what our navigation idea is (in terms of what needs to be displayed and how to display it.
   2. We could better impress and sell Mr. Scanlon our idea
   There may be more, it's hard to tell really, but so far that's something at least, and it wouldn't be all that much difficult since we don't have to construct actual pages, just a representation of how such a system might work.
3. Rmt9x.mst SOLUTION To work around this, simply explore the contents of the CD, go into {drive directory}:\Setup and run the Setup executable in there as an administrator - that should hopefully override the problem. I also had this issue. I solved it by switching to a different iso mounting software (daemon tools).- brad

• In the future, we can avoid communication problems by communicating in a much more concrete way, via sharepoint or email. Verbal agreements should not be the only basis for communicating information, and at the very least should be supported by email/sharepoint which is much less likely to be misconstrued.  "AVO" = Avoid Verbal Orders  -- SW
  
• I will be getting a set of dress shirts and slacks this weekend (currently I only have a tuxedo which is definitely overkill). Underlying this is my taking the customer-client relationship less seriously than the rest of the class, which means I'll definitely be realigning my priorities in terms of treating this project not in terms of just another class.  Good!

• Our customer meetings seem to be more focused and better prepared. This is 100% to do with the general fact that they are. I get the feeling that in our first meeting we really didn't know what we were trying to accomplish and it was difficult getting hold of a base from where we could work initially. This meeting (and further meetings) had more of a model of "Here is our idea, do you like it?", and our presentations, agendas, all completely organized. Excellent
• Working in smaller groups is definitely the way to go right now - we saw a lot more get accomplished in the warm-up project, and just the breaking up of a singular daunting task into smaller managable tasks makes everything easier. Also, getting a good time to meet with everyone in the group, when the group is only 2 or 3 people is a lot easier. Very true.

• We are definitely on much better terms with the customer. The customer meeting had a very friendly overtone to the discussions that took place.
• We've taken splitting off into groups to a new level. Not only have we split off into a set of groups, we've divided into two sets of groups. This means we can focus on more issues like preperation for the customer meeting, future technologies to more code related topics like authoring and data management. This also means we get more exposure working with others who we might otherwise not get into contact with if we were in a single set of groups
  

• My only concern currently, and I suppose the only thing that I'm going to write about here is the way that class meetings have been organized. It's great that we started off with organization on Monday, but Wednesday and Friday seemed much less so. I understand that the whole laptops-coming in thing kind of messed up a lot of stuff, but in the future we need to better plan our class meetings, and better utilize them. Proposals for change below.

• We recognized the need for accomplishing goals within a timeframe, and to that effect, Brad named Hubert the Time Tzar. Within the same meeting though, when Hubert tried to alert the presenter that he was over his time limit, Brad said it was OK and overruled Hubert. The put pressure on the last presenter to compress his information as much as possible and also caused our class to run late once again. With his authority undermined by the very person who bestowed it upon him, we never heard so much as a peep from the Time Tzar in the meetings to come.
  Good point! -- SW This is certianly not what I intended to do. In fact I was trying to tell Corey to hurry up and move on, but wasn't iron fisted enough to really kick him off. If I was interpreted as overrulling the time czar I'm really sorry about that. -brad
• Actually, we hardly heard a peep from anyone at all in the customer meeting, aside from Brad, the presenters, and Corey. For the most part, it seemed like we were observing a dialogue between the customer and Brad. The majority of people in the meeting played a very passive role, while a select few engaged in active discussion.
Would you say this is necessarily inappropriate for a customer meeting? If it's a problem for only a few people to speak up, maybe it has something to do with the "presenters/PM" setup that you went in with. --Chelsea

• With regards to utilizing our class meetings better, I feel we really just need to sit down and plan them better, or have set schedules for each day. We need to make use of the time Czar very well, and if something runs over then we shouldn't be afraid to schedule meetings during lunch (when we all can make it), even if it's a decision made the night before (we do have a class contacts list, but of course such decisions made as early as possible would be best). I know, of course, that it's easier said than done. I've had experience through the Scouts planning and running meetings before, and I know that it is not an easy task to do this on such a consistant basis. But it is necessary, and from experience I can say that we should not just plan for customer meetings as our "big meeting" of the week, but rather treat every meeting as a big meeting with equal importance. With such a big project, we cannot afford to lose time. I saw that it's been mentioned that Lucas Scanlon wants us to speak up more as a group (I don't know if this is entirely validated since we are giving a presentation and have pre-decided members who speak with authority and representation of the group as a whole) but it was also mentioned that this might be due to individual members not knowing the whole picture or what's entirely going on. Well I know that Wednesdays are supposed to be our "oh-crap" days after the milestones are due, but maybe it wouldn't hurt if we used some of the time to go through a dry run of our presentations for Scanlon on Thursday. That way we can better prepare our presentations, as well as help imbue knowledge of what exactly is going on to all group members.

These are good ideas, but an important consideration is how to most efficiently implement your solutions.  Keep in mind that as the programming workload increases, you may find yourselves unwilling/unable to spend a huge amount of time working on meetings.  How can you get them to flow naturally?  --Chelsea

• This doesn't have anything to do with any issues currently, but I think we should maybe start working on a written spec. Maybe a nice ginormous pdf file to compile all information into in a comprehensible, searchable, table-of-contents-filled manner (LaTeX would be nice here). Thoughts?

Let me ask this: Without a written spec, how does anyone know what they are building?   -- SW

• The next time we confer authority to someone, we have to make sure his duties and privileges are well defined, so as to avoid conflicts of authority (does the Time Tzar get to silence the Project Manager if he's running over his limit?).
• It might be worthwhile to consider a group approach to the customer meeting, where the groups we've delineated each get time alloted with the customer and present their findings the the customer and the rest of the class. The customer gets to ask and answer questions of that group. This way we all get more direct exposure to the customer in terms of his needs and feedback.

Good suggestions!  -- SW