One useful aspect I found on the LibreFoodPantry website was on the Organization page, which detailed the layout and relationships between development teams and the Coordinating Committee. The diagram provided information regarding teams receiving guidance from their shop manager, in addition to the committee. Before working on a FOSS project, it’s crucial to know who will handle project direction and issues, as well as how these decisions are handled at the top. Additionally, LFP links to the Agile Development Manifesto, which highlights the twelve Agile Development Principles. Ensuring the every developer that works on the open source project reads the manifesto, will guarantee team collaboration and smooth development progression. Having a Agile as the backbone will also ensure that teams receive a balanced input from both the customer and the shop manager

The User-Stories documentation page will be crucial to development teams because it will provide a rough sketch for how the food pantry is designed to operate. Having this information readily available to the development team will make decision-making and discussion easier because each team member can ensure that everyone is on the same page in regards to an “end product”. The documentation also provides how the program will operate differently, based on whether or not the student/guest has accessed the food pantry before.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Computer Science Through a Senior by Winston Luu and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.