Assigned Gitlab Issues

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/deployment/gitlab-profile/-/issues/23

Continued and finished the development of the launch page for Thea’s Pantry

Reflection

During this sprint I wish I was better about just starting my work. Often I kept delaying it because I was worried about problems down the line that haven’t even occurred yet. Another thing i should’ve done was just ask for help regarding the page when i wasn’t sure on what to do. If I had just asked then I would have saved myself a lot of headaches. This could also apply to asking for help regarding keycloak. Because at many points I was confused about how the tokens worked, or what roles I had to account for. It took me a while to realize that keycloak would handle the login for me so I didn’t need to implement that myself. Which would have saved me some time. One thing I think I did well was learning the vue framework and transferring my work to the vue framework. And kinda just the overall structure of vue and what i needed to do.

During this period i missed quite a few classes so i can’t speak as well as we did in our classes. One thing I can say is that at some point we kind of broke off into two groups. And each of our groups was tackling a different issue together. I’m thinking of the time that me and Andrew teamed up to find the port mapping while Cameron and Ben worked on another issue. This kind of goes into something I talked about before. But I think I could’ve done a better job of communicating to the team that I was stuck and or times where I couldn’t come in due to other issues. I also didn’t share my work very often with the team to get their input.

The pattern I tried to employ this time around was the Craft Over Art pattern. This pattern is about having the chance to build something impressive. While you have this great opportunity, its important not to get ahead of yourself. Remember to keep the function in mind and make sure the software can function properly before adding the flare. I think this was an important pattern for me to keep in mind because at many points I was full of ideas of what I could do. But by doing this I overwhelmed myself because I had no idea of how to complement. So at a certain point I decided on making sure that the launch page can first fulfill its function, before getting into the more aesthetic stuff. Especially near the end of the sprint I became more focused on getting the page and token stuff to work first. In the end I didn’t have as much as I wanted to improve the look of the page. But I did have something functional in the end which is better than something that looks nice but is broken.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Code Craft by Kyle Tucker and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Assigned Gitlab Issues

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/deployment/gitlab-profile/-/issues/23

Worked on starting development of the launch page for Thea’s Pantry.

Reflection

What I think worked well for me during the sprint was just research into what a launch page is and what its purpose is. Like I had heard of the name before, but wasn’t really sure how to apply to theas pantry. I think the hardest part of building was figuring out where to start and what I needed. In the beginning I was just building with an html file with help from bootstrap. I also wasn’t too familiar with building an app from the ground up. Like I had built simple web pages before, but they were bare bones and meant for learning purposes. I had built something like a page and brought it to class. I think after you gave some more direction I had a better idea of what to do. One thing I think could improve was just experimenting more. Like I kinda just stuck to my first design and moved from there. The design is simple which is fine. But I think I could have made it better. Or just experimenting with different ways to spice up the feel of the page.

One thing I think we did well as a team was just working together to troubleshoot issues. Of course at this point we all have our own separate work we could do. But we used the work classes as time to put all our heads together and tackle the same problem. I mean it didn’t always work, but I always thought we at least came away with something new or at least some direction. One thing I think we could do better is just updating each other more often on work or if we are stuck on something. Though it’s kinda hard to do so when none of us really know too much about what we’re working on.

I think the design pattern I tried to use during this sprint was Confront Your Ignorance. To summarize this pattern is saying instead of being afraid that you don’t know something that others seem to know. Just try to learn actively instead of being afraid that you don’t know it. I tried to employ this pattern because although I have messed with frontend before. It was not to this degree of involvement. And felt I was sort of the one in the dark. So instead of being afraid I tried my best to learn more about designing app. Tried to learn what everything means and some cool things that I could to improve the appeal of the app. Near the end of the sprint I realized that I needed to learn more about keycloak and how to incorporate that. I won’t lie, it was definitely overwhelming at first. But near the end I started to be better about taking the time to learn what I needed to learn.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Code Craft by Kyle Tucker and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Gitlab Descriptions

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem-culling/inventorybackend/-/commit/96464eb852632dc728f438b7f4c0165831091a80 – Changed the modal pop-up to better match our visual identity guidelines.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem-culling/inventorybackend/-/commit/93a04bbdc54647d56d91fe797d7b3fea86c42236 – Changed the inventory table layout to accommodate for smaller screen sizes by adding a slider to view the entire length of the table.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem-culling/inventorybackend/-/commit/d81fe66a0adf27aff2dd29f7ba3713be9b9aa09d – Added buttons to navigate between the scanner and inventory pages to not make it necessary to go to the home page first.

Sprint Reflection

This was our last sprint, and I think that during this sprint a lot of my previous qualms were addressed and fixed. One thing I had said before was that I thought our communication was lacking in certain areas and that since we were working in pairs, the rest of the group was mostly in the dark about what we were working on, but I felt an increase in transparency this sprint. It felt like more of a team effort which I think was in big part because we were finally finishing up working for the semester so everything that we were working on individually was coming together. Working on the final presentation also helped with this as we felt everyone needed to be on the same page to be able to deliver a presentation that showed off our project well.

This leads to what I don’t think went as well, which was that it didn’t feel like as much progress was being made toward the project this sprint, at least in comparison to previous sprints. This was probably due to our presentation preparation, as well as a focus on cleaning up already implemented features rather than starting new ones. We knew since this was our last sprint that it was the time to wrap up what we were working on, which is probably why it felt like not much was getting done, but in reality I think what we actually did was just as important. 

I can’t think of any major improvements to make to the team to get it to function better, as we worked just as well as I think we could have. It was a pleasure working with this team and I think that these reflections in past sprints helped us come to a point where those points of improvement were answered and made us become an efficient team. As an individual though, I do think that I could have done more, which again circles back to the point of not feeling like too much was done. Looking back at what we’ve done though, I am happy with our progress, seeing as we started the semester with a blank slate and now we have a functioning scanner/database app. It’s just a personal feeling that more could have been done, but I think it’s true that there is always room for improvement. And I also think it’s good for me to have that mindset, but for this project specifically I’m not disappointed with my performance.

Apprenticeship Pattern

The apprenticeship pattern that stuck out to me for this sprint was the “walking the long road” pattern. It’s an important one that comes with mastering a discipline, the mindset that you are never really done learning, that there is always more knowledge to be had, always more challenges to overcome. This being our last sprint makes this pattern important, because we just spent months working on a project, emulating a real scrum team, but it doesn’t mean we are anywhere near mastery. Just because the semester is over and we completed this chapter doesn’t mean we are done, in fact I’d say we are at the very beginning of our journey still.

From the blog CS@Worcester – The Science of Computation by Adam Jacher and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For my team’s sprint 3, there was not much more functionality we wanted to implement. On one hand we had the front end and back end working exactly how we wanted it to, for the full purpose of a demonstration. On the other hand, we knew that we would have to back track. The backend needed to be refactoring to fully represent an inventory backend instead of the guest info backend we had forced into working for us. This proved to be much more work than expected, more on that later. We also had a few different looks in regards to the actual display our front had. Slightly changing colors, logos, their sizes. All of the things you would expect when it comes to user interfaces and experience. While my own work focused mainly on the back end it was a good experience and very eye opening to work with the team members who were tweaking things and making different versions we were choosing from. It was fun to see what the tedious and seemingly bland work I was doing on the backend actually visualized and became something that felt actually usable.

For my own work on the backend, I was trying extremely hard to work with a teammate to go through Renaming and refactoring everything. At this point we had taken a backend that was being used to store guest information. Names, ID’s, and other identifying or important information. Them converted it to instead take the place of an inventory system that had not existed. This meant that the collections being used, the end points, the oaths, a lot of the comments, all of the documentation and all of the included tests. Would all need to be rewritten. What seemed easy on the surface quickly spiraled. Looking back it probably would of been better to dive into this issue before expanding on the whole project. By this time we had already connected the front end to it and a fetch script that worked as a middle man. After weeks of trying over and over to make this conversion. It became clear that it would have to become a project for whoever comes after us to work on. Although the opportunity is still available if I decide to take another shot at it, solo and on my own time. 

In order to at least make some progress I had moved forward with rewriting all the tests. I am extremely grateful for having learned Mocha and Chai testing from an old classmate a full year ago. He was also, is surprising serendipity, the person who had worked on the original tests for the guest info backend. Once I realized this I reached out to him just to check in and he was able to give me a couple resources and remind me of an assignment we had done together that proved to be a massive help.

This helping hand from a friend I had made really brought me back to the section finding mentors of the apprenticeship patterns. Having a network with friends who have understanding and experience in areas where you’re lacking can be such an amazing resource to utilize. Surrounding yourself with smart people, even if they’re not directly involved in what you’re working on can be a saving grace.

In the end, not as many features and additions were made in comparison to the first two sprints. Sprint 3 was a fun challenging experience that helped me reconnect with an old friend and rediscover how much I love testing software. 

With the original goals of all of the variable name changes, comment changing, documentation updates and rewritten tests. We were at least able to complete the documentation and testing. I even got the pipeline to finally pass with all of the tests and spelling checks.

I’m proud of what this team accomplished and the state of the project they were leaving behind for future teams to further develop. 

If I don’t get to it first >:) it is open source after all

From the blog CS@Worcester – Mike St G – 448 by Michael St. Germain and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.