Fall 2007

See my milestone report here.

 

I actually think this was one of our worst weeks for productivity in a long time. Almost everyone spent their time catching up on work for other classes after the big push last week.

 

I personally haven't gotten much done as I was doing work for my other classes this week. I have re-written the searching to perform searches for both contents and authors. The search tree is generated correctly but I am not getting the results.

In addition to working on video tags, I completed the document that details how to implement new kinds of content for PlanetTeach. I also created a copy of the code for Luke and Bethany, but since Thursday I haven't done much due to a med school interview.

Milestone report is here

My main work for this week has been on testing and security testing. I've been mostly focusing on SQL injection and XSS attacks for now, but I'll be looking into other things later (after I am satisfied with our security or at least our knowledge of security holes.)

Also, I will soon be helping Matt 'encourage' people to work on features, i.e. annoy people until they start working on or finish up required features.

My milestone report is here. There wasn't a whole lot that happened, but I did implement a way to keep track of the number of times a user has viewed a piece of content.

Milestone report is here.

Additional duties included communicating with the customer, running meetings, and maintaining the features list.

-I have re-put the necessary programs back onto my tablet since last weeks crash, including VS and Office.

-I have read through/begun work on the notification system, but very little concrete implementation yet.

My milestone can be found here: Link
I fixed several bugs and made search usable in WYSIWYG editor.

My Milestone Report

Not much. The authority system is in place, but it wasn't done early enough to allow the UI team to make a UI for it. Also, the most complicated part of it is yet to come, which is the re-evaluation of authority levels.

My milestone report can be found over here. It basically documents that my week wasn't that productive, although it does coincide with the same sort of week for everyone.

Progress was made in search result viewing, a better organization of the frontend, and a few other nitty-gritty details here and there. There was unfortunately no fundamental change apart from basic search and advanced search working far better, from a frontend perspective.

My milestone status can (finally!) be found here.

There's not much more to be said about it other than to reiterate the new changes - Aaron's taking over groups and we're going to continue working on access control - in fact I shall do so until the next milestone, whence I shall fully divert attention to UI.

Not for me personally but we had: malloc + comp440

I actually think everything is still on track except for access control, which is on the critical path for finishing everthing up by the end of the semester.

I'm really getting worried about ensuring the usability off the final product at this point. I still think there will be a lot of issues that will have to be solved before anyone will actually want to use this thing, but I don't know how to identify them without user testing. At some point you just have to go out and get user feedback. This should just give you more incentive to get the beta going.

The user interface (and I'm including content in this) group is making progress still, but the number of potential features they might need to make is getting rediculous. There is a point where you need to tell the customer that it isn't feasible to finish all of these features by the end of the semester, rather than adding them to a list and disappointing when they are not done.

Everybody was really busy this week. I personally had a test on Monday, malloc due this week, and a problem set due and last weekend KSA activity took a bulk of my time. Since you knew how much work you had at the beginning of the week, was this reflected in your milestones? It's better to warn people that you'll be swamped rather than taking on too much and disappointing.

As with everyone else, the push last week made me work a lot harder this week in other classes, so I haven't done a whole lot this week. Hopefully this was reflected in the milestones you assigned yourselves; being realistic and finishing all of your milestone is better than swamping yourself, getting very little done, and going crazy.

Also, preparing for the medical school interview took time away from work.

It sounds like you were a bit passive on this one--when days pass and you have no response, remember that it's part of your milestone to get what you need. It looks like you still haven't heard back since you wrote your milestone report...being passive is giving permission to let your concerns slide. --Chelsea

What I had planned to do this week was work on the production servers, determine how they were holding up to the strain of beta testers, and look for anyplace that we might be able to streamline huge bottlenecks. I couldn't do any of that since we didn't have a beta test. Since others, like Brad, have mentioned what a big deal access control is, maybe you should have redirected your efforts towards that until the issues that you couldn't control were fixed?

75% of the class (that I know of - could be more) had major issues with other classes this week. I know mine in particular did not go well. Midterm/project weeks do seem to all occur at the same time.

It seems like something of a blessing that you got a respite this week when you had no computer. However, if your machine keeps freezing, remember that the machines in Symmonds have VS on them. If you're being hindered in future harder weeks, you should definitely put off the ramp-up time and use the lab. Sometimes it's a necessary evil. --Chelsea

The WYSIWYG editor is tough since the script has at least 8000 lines and I have no idea why the WYSIWYG editor cannot find the textarea's name even if it is initialized with the name.
Loading content with AJAX after saving is also hard since the content and editor are placed in different controls.

I think a lot of people (including me) got buried in work from other classes. Malloc (in comp 320) hit quite a few people, and I had to work on 440 stuff since my partner was going out of town early for Thanksgiving. I think the last few weeks before the original beta start date, we were all pushing hard and neglecting our other classes, and it's caught up with us.

Also, there are some issues with hosting and contracts that are holding up the beta.

Other work was a major problem. In my team, Jeeyun had Comp 320 work (malloc) and I had SAS commitments (Dhamaka). Progress was slow and I didn't really encounter anything from a programming perspective that was difficult.

The biggest obstacle was definitely balancing workload. It cut into a lot if not all of my time as well as the time of people I needed to work with. Oy gewalt. Compound this to a lack of time on Friday (friggin' SAS shows) and a really-not-feeling-so-good-although-bearable-now weekend leads to a waaaaaaay late milestone status, and a less-but-still-very late journal. Suffice to say I'll be glad to be home soon.

I hope that we'll get rolling again next week much stronger. If this situation happened again, how would you fix it that week rather than oscillating back and forth between strong and weak weeks? These weeks are particularly frustrating and challenging for the PM, so it will help to be prepared with a solution next time--for example, the last week of classes is demanding, but you may have some loose ends to tie up. How will you keep things going? --Chelsea

Additionally, once we get user testing going, we should be able to address many usability issues quickly.

I just need to pick it up this upcoming week. I have come to realize that I don't have time for everything that I'm committing myself to, so I need to manage my time better as well. My remark here may be better in line with development process stuff, but when you make this realization, how can you solve it? You certainly can't drop your other commitments when 410 comes calling, so what can you do? *hint Talk to your PM hint* --Chelsea

I've caught up in a lot of my classes, so this next week can again be a strong push to get things done. I also plan on getting lots of work done during Thanksgiving. Although tryptophan always seems to put an end to that...:-P

Perhaps it wasn't clear that I was expecting a reply in my e-mail, next time I'll be sure to mention that I am looking for feedback. Also consider calling them and/or mentioning it to them during class time.

As soon as possible we need to get the website public. We've been trying very hard to convince our customers to allow the production servers I set up to actually be used, since we can locally manage them and they're free for them until the end of the semester. I think that we're close to being allowed to run the beta, but it's really out of our hands.

There is some degree of advanced planning we can do, although on the other hand there isn't a lot that can be helped when the majority of the class is swamped with other work. Although, as we've mentioned in other journals, you can pitch for smaller milestones that will be completed rather than larger milestones that will be left largely uncompleted, thus disappointing the customer... Maybe someone else has a good idea of a solution for this - I don't at this point (though part of it is just being very tired).

Given the lack of follow through on this front from last week, do you have a contingency plan? It's probably not a good thing for you to be blocked for two weeks when there is work elsewhere.

I need to do some investigation about what will the editor do after user submit the content.
I'm considering load the content again when the active tab of tab container is changed.

Unfortunately there's not much you can do about other classes' work. (Check out other journals, like Felipe's, for the TA's comments on how weeks like this can be handled in the future.) Ideally you'd want to stagger it so you don't lose everyone, like it seemed we did this week, but this was to be expected with having everyone work so hard the two weeks before. Perhaps we could've planned better for it in hindsight.

As above, the obstacles were large but unavoidable (I spent most of the last 3 days in the Grand Hall and I really expected that and hence could not really plan around it because the thing to go around was too huge).

There are a lot of things to be said here, but to be fair I believe they would be better addressed in the development section, and thus they will be written there.

Other than the time constraints of this week, I think we're still allocating human resources fairly well, although we still need to work towards having the most people work on the stuff that will affect final usability.

Also, it remains to be seen but I think the process where I've been speccing, designing, stubbing and handing off systems has enabled us to bring the last few systems online quite quickly. For notifications I actually did more of this than on access control because of the bad experience with access control difficulties.

We are doing well as a team, and people who have not much left in their own team (i.e. authoring team) has volunteered to help out with the UI stuff since we have a lot to do. People have been good at delegating work and picking them up.

The backend team is virtually done. And from what I hear, search and relationships are also very close. I think this is extremely important as the last push (and the one that will improve the site itself by leaps and bounds) is to make the UI awesome. Right now it's just Sohum, Yuan and me and we cannot keep up. So I think we agreed this week that we will soon assign more people to UI.

Now that some groups have completed the majority of their features, we are reassigning people to other groups that are in need of more manpower.

Everyone seems to be doing a great job and team organization is still strong. This week was a bit of a hiccup in terms of progress due to exciting projects like malloc and other work, but overall the general process is going well. No one seems to be angry at anyone else and it's easy to get people when you need them or ask a quick question about something and get it answered.

The backend is nearing completion. We need to finish access control, but that's the last major feature. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, now that we're almost done, the front end has a ton of stuff to implement, so soon I expect the teams to be shuffled. The relation and search teams are in similar places, I believe; Dave was assimilated into the front end today.

Groups are still working well, and it seems like everyone is accepting of making some changes to accommodate the increasing amount of UI work. I'm glad the team is pulling together on this issue.

-We seem to be getting the core of the background stuff done, which means we can put more people on UI, testing and flushing the program out. This changeover has already begun, and it seems to be a good sign.

Most teams don't have too much stuff left except the UI team. Now we have more people working on UI.

I think we've finally gotten the site to a point where everything works together, and the components are in place. This means we've finished up most of the design and can just knock out all of our remaining goals. For a while, different pieces were being thrown out and redone, and work was being done in branches, which caused all of us to be working in our own world. Now it's to the point where people are actually being diligent about making sure that their change doesn't break the build or functionality.

I think the most difficult part of this class is that we're essentially starting something from scratch, and building a system, and a development process, up from the ground. We seem to be at the level (at just the right time too) where we've all settled into that. I think that at the end of the semester, even if our project doesn't live up to all of our expectations, if we can say that we came up with a set of practices that allow us all to work together, then we've accomplished a lot. And you've hit one of the main lessons of Comp 410 on the head.

This week was a really bad week to comment. I talked to a few people and it seems Luke had a rough week. Apart from that, the UI team had a rough week (Jeeyun with Comp 320 and me with SAS). It seems a lot of other people also had a rough week (I couldn't make it to the customer meeting) and hence we really didn't develop enough to have problems with the development process.

Um. This week nothing was working on my end. Well, very little to say the least. We (and I in turn) got a break for the customer meeting due to some other hangups, but that's certainly not a good sign, nor position to be in.

We paid for last week's push this week. We'll have to find a balance, and I'm seriously worried about having enough time to polish everything off. Especially with Thanksgiving this week.

The process of handing things off is still rudimentary, as the experience with access control has shown. I'll be interested to see how quickly Rae can get a handle on notifications. On a side note, make sure to keep the team organization documents up-to-date.

I feel like not much has been achieved this week in terms of what is visible (showable to the customer). I wasn't at the customer meeting but I felt like we didn't have any progress to show him.

This week we all seemed to slow down a lot. At the class meetings everyone seemed tired or out of it, and its understandable since we had a hard week.

Our group leader meeting was also very unproductive. It honestly seems as if last week burned us out and we're trudging along now. I really hope this changes soon or we may need the Thanksgiving break to get back on track.

Our customer has been acting a little unexpectedly recently, with him going off and buying hosting that will not be able to support our site and postponing the public beta test. Copyright and IP issues have been ongoing throughout this entire semester, though we didn't expect it to affect the beta. Without the beta, we don't have an easy way to test the system under load and with lots of data, however this has given us time to test the security of the system.

Looks like you have a way different (and more optimistic take) on this week than others have. Do the low percentage completions concern you? --Chelsea
I knew this week had multiple projects due, including malloc, so I didn't expect much to get done this week in total, thus I'm pretty happy stuff happened at all. I remember malloc being massively time consuming, especially when other projects are due around the same time -Derek

Everyone was busy this past week catching up on other classes. This had to happen eventually, so it's just as well it happened in a week when a lot of us were blocked.

One thing I've noticed is that we seem to have perhaps too many forms of communication now. Between Trac and sharepoint and email and voice, I think there is some splintering of coordination going on. I don't think it has really become a big issue yet though.

-This week very little got done. Between legal issues (ugg!), which included but were not limited to the lack of beta, work for other classes (mostly Malloc for 320 students), and the like, its been a hard week for us all. It's really frustrating to be held back by/our focus moved to the legal issues, as that isn't supposed to be a focus of 410, from what I gather from Dr. Wong talking. Very true; this is a difficult setback for both the staff and the class. However, as Chelsea mentioned above, it's good to have a contingency plan and talk to other people to find out where help is most needed when your milestones simply can't be done.

This week besides fixing the bugs I was working on cool features of WYSIWYG editor, but I'm not sure whether we should make everything usable first. Have you brought this up to your team leaders and asked if there is anything more pressing?
Everyone was busy in the past week so we didn't have too much to show to the customer. See other journals (like Felipe's) for how to plan for these busy weeks in the future.

This is where the lack of planning issue would come into play and should be discussed. Same with the customer/legal issues...so there were clearly some problems to discuss this week. --Chelsea

I think the above pretty much summarizes the situation. Most of everyone didn't have enough time to dedicate to Comp410 this week, and hence there was no real opportunity to encounter obstacles.

There's not much we can do but focus on things that impact usability the most. I'm really worried that not enough people are looking out for our users and really ensuring that this will be something people want to use. Even worse, I think the struggles with the customer have created an environment where a lot of people don't really care, and they'll be happy just to deliver the minimum. The customers, by their consistent foibles in managment and marketing (they need to keep selling us on the idea) have eroded a lot of the momentum and excitement about creating something innovative. This is a legitimate complaint. How can you all clean up the mess and restore confidence/enthusiasm?

Honestly as Felipe has mentioned, I think after our hard week we should be able to pick up our pace. Also, the thanksgiving break will help us to recuperate. =) The problem is that after thanksgiving break, you will have effectively done half a week of work in the past two. How hard will it be to get back into the project after all that time off?

Consider that another angle is planning for these weeks rather than letting them happen. It's best to avoid lacks of productivity, but when you can't, they should be handled elegantly. --Chelsea

The best we can do for our customer is to inform him of the requirements of the system (something I guess we all assumed he knew) (Learn from this! Don't make undocumented assumptions.). Brad did go over hosting requirements at the last customer meeting, so I'm sure that helped clarify things a bit.

It looks like legal issues are clearing up, which will be nice, and I'm sure everything will get worked out soon. The current plan is for the beta to start on Skynet on Monday, which should be fun, although we still have some things to sort out. The things that should be simple and easy always turn out to cause such a ruckus...

How about the problem mentioned above? How might this week have been smoother with the same amount of work completed but better planning? --Chelsea

I agree that this is a problem, and I'm glad you've said something here. I cannot stress enough that you must clear this kind of decision with Dr. Wong and the staff. Most aspects of 410 are left to the class's discretion, but some are not (journals, for example). Moving tasks to another forum may not be an option, so ask Dr. Wong first. --Chelsea

-The legal issue, though not liked, are a necessary part of the project and dealing with a real customer in general. As much of a pain as it is, I don't think we have a choice in the matter. I think Dr. Wong is being put back into the loop more, and we are re-focusing on Luke rather than Bethany, as Dr. Wong instructed us to, and I feel this is a positive thing that will allow for a smoother road.

I will ask for more tasks for the coming week. The thanksgiving break may help us to make more progress. At the same time, only 3 people will be in town for Thanksgiving, and everyone will be stuffing themselves silly, watching football, and shopping with the mad crowds. It's not safe to assume a lot of work will get done, so it needs to be seriously planned for in advance.

Going off the lack of planning theme, I think you've glossed over it a bit. Yes, "perhaps planning better" is a solution, but if it were that trivial, you'd have done it. What kind of planning would be involved? How would it have helped? I'm glad you saw the problem--as one of the few who touched on the real solution, I wish you'd have expanded further on it.

Fair enough. But just to note: you must have a typo above when you mention living in the Grand Hall--you say you had expected it. And what I'm saying here is that the solution to this problem doesn't involve your doing a lot of work; it's finding a suitable alternative to just that.

Here's the listing part. This is the easy part.

1. This is a two parter:
   • Please, please, please send some sort of response or acknowledgement that you've received an e-mail or plans or whathaveyou.
   • The sender should also not get complacent! We have a contacts page! We must learn to use it!
2. Oof one of the hardest parts this week was balancing all of the workloads. This was an extreme situation and I feel that I've performed poorly on several fronts. But just as important as reflecting on the last week is putting that reflection and showing improvement on both next week - and in any other situations like this that may come up. That is why we take this class after all, not as a source of cheap labor (well...I guess there is that too), but to learn. Better here than in a less mistake-friendly environment.
3. I should have stayed on top of my communication, with Corey, with Matt, Brad, Aaron, and...well, a lot of people. That was entirely my fault.
4. This all falls under the communication issue again - we need to make use of the contacts page, and furthermore expound on any issues or problems that have come up, be they technical or not. Matt and Brad shouldn't know that we have a problem when we next have class, they should know when we have a problem.
5. I'm leaving on Tuesday, but I'm going to make myself available up until Thursday - I'm not going to be available then or the day following. Come on guys, nothing beats a bad week like a damn good rebound!
6. As for this one...well...what's the damn hold up?

Now for the hard part - the doing.

Thanks everyone for meeting last week's deadline, and (as corey claimed it) I hope you had a good "week off", but we've still got stuff to get done before this thing goes out the door.

Everyone seems to be doing a great job. Congratulations to those who are finished with malloc. Only web proxy left...

Luke and Bethany, we pushed hard and made the deadline. We really need you to come through with your side and unblock us by allowing the beta to go public.

Derek has been very helpful in dealing with the security testing, and in general taking to all new tasks that are thrown his way with enthusiasm and without complaint. Bravo.

Aaron has also taken on a lot of tasks this week (Page views, profile editing problem) which really helped me out.

-Brad has done a good job of looking into the server issues and the like and doing what, to me, is the ugly work. :)

-Derek's done a great job of finding bugs, and its truely an asset to have someone focusing on trying to find the problems in our site, as he is doing.

I think Sohum is continuing to do a fantastic job with the UI, despite being the one person that can give us shiny things to show at the customer meetings. I hope that with Dave moving to your team you'll be able to keep up with everything that you need to add to the site. Please don't hesitate to ask if there's anything us non-frontend teams can do to help you out.

Corey: Thanks for pushing me to do 410 on wednesday, I would've been totally lost had you not pressured me to spend 15 minutes catching up.

Hubert, Jee Yun - glad you guys got malloc done!

As I'm sure you've learned, you can't compartmentalize your time so one class doesn't affect another. The solution isn't to try to separate the two but to make sure 410 expectations are reasonable in light of your workload. This is a silver lining about 410--if you communicate ahead of time, you can pitch a reasonable deliverable to the customer.

Bleh week.

Sorry for getting this journal in a little late. I actually remembered to do it at about 11:55, so I tried to whip something up and get it in tonight.

Hey, the campos called our chief justice. We cannot be blamed! Late; -5 pts.