Category Archives: Sprint-3-Retrospective

Sprint 3 Retrospective

As many of the others in my group have said this was probably the best Sprint, we have had this semester. What specifically went well this semester was right when the Sprint started. That was a problem we had the last Sprint because we had a slow start because of Spring break. When this semester started, a lot of us were in the middle of working on issues so when this Sprint started, we continued working on the issues. A big problem we had last Sprint was we did not do enough documentation. Towards the end of the second Sprint and the beginning of this Sprint, our group made a big change. We decided that we would do little to no work in class and instead focus on updating the group on what we are working on, cleaning up our issue board, resolving any major issues that we encounter before that class, and documenting the progress we made in and out of class. This is because we made the realization that most of us in the group worked better alone, but when we ran into issues none of us were shy about bringing them up in the group meetings. We also did not have any issue asking others in the group for help. This was one of the most successful changes we made to the group. When we made this change, it caused the productivity of the project to skyrocket.

What I think did not go with this sprint was how ambitious our group was this sprint. We planned to get a lot complete in a short time and it did not all get done. For example, we wanted to complete the cards.js file and the display.js file as well as the prompts.js and writing.js file. We also wanted to add theming to our project so that it would look neat and professional. We ended up finishing the cards.js file but did not finish working out all of the bugs for the display.js file. In terms of the writing portion of the project, what we wanted to use at the start of the sprint did not end up working and we ended up adding a placeholder with some functionality so that we could have something to present.

I think we did not have too much to work on this sprint as a team. For the most part, I think it worked out very well. I think as a team we really improved our documentation this sprint. What I think we can improve a little is our individual documentation for issues and other small features that we worked on. Towards the end of the sprint, our documentation was a little lacking compared to the beginning of the sprint because we were rushing to the finish.

During the sprint, what I worked on was leftover from the previous sprint. In the previous sprint, we made a display page, but it did not properly transfer information from one page to another.

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/30

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/55

So, for a while, I contemplated how to move forward in the project and considered restructuring our project or looking at other ways to transfer information from one page to another.

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/51

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/54

How I fixed these issues was by simplifying our structure and moving screens to their own respective files.

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/61

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/60

Before this change, our app.js file did too much and was handling the navigation for the project as well as creating multiple screens. Moving things to their own files simplified our file structure and fixed some of our earlier navigation issues as a result.

When I did this change to restructure our project, it made creating the display page a lot easier and I was able to get it working to an extent. We can transfer information and display it on the screen but it currently does not display the correct information.

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/65

This is not because our function is wrong but because our logic is off. The function displays whatever we pass but we have a hard time figuring out what to pass. I was really stubborn at first when I encountered this issue and did not want to ask for this last issue. I have the issue at a weight of 2 but it is definitely more. Even when we had three people working on it, it was not done. So, what I need to improve on is to be less stubborn and ask for help even if it’s last minute.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Just a Guy Passing By by Eric Nguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

“NICE” Sprint 3 Retrospective

During our third and final sprint, we had a clear idea about what we wanted to achieve with our application. The first two splits helped create a foundation that allowed for us to propel much faster and efficiently compared to before. After spending the last sprint working on the docker container for our group, I wanted to contribute in a way that would be helpful to the react team. I ended up creating issues for myself that were more in line with the front end side of things that the react team had not really touched upon. I first decided to clean up a lot of the code from the react team, there were a lot of styles that were repetitively used by the team so I managed to implement a style page where certain style could be called upon instead of written out when being applied to something. The next thing I tried to tackle was an interactive page for users to select which kind of test they wanted to practice. This was implemented with a side scroll feature that was imported from the react-native-gesture-handler where I was learning the design parts of how things would look based on the style I would give it. I was also able to take images and icons as well to apply to the home page and menu screen which gave it a much better appearance to the eyes of the user.

As a team I felt as if this sprint all of the puzzle pieces finally came together. The react team was working cohesively together where as the others who did not work with them originally were able to go back and forth with them to push an pull code without being out of sync. The team cohesiveness really brought out the best in one another as were we able to divide issues into more manageable ones and we could really see the final product coming together.

With the docker team finally being able to assist the react team with the application as a whole, we were constantly running the application and testing it, and that led to a lot of discussion of things that needed to be fixed or added to the app. This would lead to us effectively being able to help one another spot mishaps and expedite the results we so eagerly wanted. Although we were not able to produce a functioning writing portion, we were able to create a placeholder for it that was substituted with a input on the they keyboard from the user.

Individually, I felt as though this sprint was one were I pushed myself the most. Maybe it was because the semester was coming to the end or that the application was seeing growth, but although I was lacking in basic knowledge of react native, I wanted to be sure I contributed more to the application and pushed myself to learn more. The only issue that I had with the sprint was that I wish I was able to be part of the react native team prior to this because I know I could have contributed more than what I already have. Seeing how fast I was able to grasp things, maybe I should have stepped up before and take on that challenge because I had a lot of fun during this sprint.

Links: https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/57

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/66\

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/58

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/49

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/23

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/52

https://gitlab.com/worcester/cs/naturalization-interview-confidence-environment/demo-react/-/issues/25

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life as a CS Student by Dylan Nguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.