After the first month of my final semester, my capstone course has proved to be an interesting experience so far.  As much as we are working in groups to create a database dedicated for the food pantry, I believe we really are striving to strengthen our skills with using the SCRUM method of group work.  Our first sprint went very well in my eyes.  We have not gotten much done in terms of making the frontend and backend of our database, but we accomplished a lot when it came to getting tasks done that we chose to try to complete at the beginning of the sprint.  Our team worked very well together and it seemed as though everyone was contributing heavily towards finishing our tasks quickly and completely.  Personally, I thought I contributed a lot of research, work, and extra effort for the team to help everyone out.  We decided to make me the team’s SCRUM Master which in all honesty did not force me to have much more responsibility at all, but it was helpful for me to learn from the product owner and relay back to the team.  I tried keeping helpful information posted both on discord and on gitlab for the team and for myself.  This proved very helpful.  In the future (for later sprints and for in similar situations in real life), I believe we could have done a better job communicating outside of our class periods.  It may have help our group get things done even smoother than how we already did if we had been running a better communication system.  This however was not really anyone’s fault as we were still able to get most of our tasks done and because of the fact that everyone is taking a lot of classes right now and not just this one.  On a personal note, I think it would have relieved some stress for me if I could have tried spacing my work for this group out throughout the week rather than getting things done in one or two sessions per week.  This would have made it easier for me to communicate problems if I had had any and would have reflected better on my final completions at the end of the sprint.  Again though, it is more difficult when I am taking other courses and not having this project as my main job or focus.  The main issue that I think my group and I will run into for the next sprint is that we will have more tasks related to building the database now rather than the more learning and reviewing bases tasks we had in sprint one.  Like I stated earlier, this sprint seems more like one in which we get familiarized with how the rest of the sprints will be done and how to work as a group with SCRUM.  However, I think we picked up on what we needed to do very fast, and everyone seemed to have put in a lot of good work and dedication.  Because of this, I know that even if the tasks in the next sprints become more difficult, we will still be able to get great work done and have a successful product in no time!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tim Drevitch CS Blog by timdrevitch and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint #1

For our work on the InventorySystem component of the Thea’s Pantry software project, our team worked throughout sprint #1 to learn about necessary tools, skills and technologies which we will be using throughout our development of the project. This meant that a majority of our focus was on learning, although a small number of useful artifacts were also produced. Much of our communication throughout the sprint was coordinated with the issues board for the project on GitLab (https://gitlab.com/groups/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/-/boards) which allowed us to keep issues organized based on whether they were actively being worked on, completed, or in need of review.

More specifically, much of my work during the sprint was focused on learning about the Vue.js front-end framework. I organized this process into a number of issue cards, with one central card (https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/community/-/issues/2) which I used to connect three interrelated cards concerning the same topic.

First, I went through introductory content (https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/community/-/issues/3) from sources including the official Vue tutorials on the website for the framework, as well as introductory materials produced externally, such as this intro to Vue 3 series: (https://www.vuemastery.com/courses/intro-to-vue-3/intro-to-vue3/) produced by Vue Mastery.

Furthermore, I went through some of the most important highlights of the Vue documentation to learn the fundamental concepts of the framework (https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/community/-/issues/4), and then practiced using Vue by building a simple Docker container with a Vue Installation (https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/community/-/issues/5).

Combined, I feel that this sequence allowed me to gradually build up a familiarity with Vue and to become fairly confident overall in my ability to work with it. When the group begins working on the actual implementation of the front-end during the next sprint, I will be prepared to make use of Vue for the creation of the three different front-ends necessary for the InventorySystem portion of the Thea’s pantry project.

In regards to how this sprint went overall, I would say that it went relatively well. We managed to complete the majority of the work which had been staged for completion, accumulated a lot of valuable information, and built a wiki for the project (https://gitlab.com/groups/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/-/wikis/home) which we can now use in the future to store documentation as well as the sort of syntax/procedure which we focused on during the sprint. Everyone on the team was able to find a large number of resources, tutorials, and documentation related to their chosen topic/focus throughout (ie: https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/community/-/issues/6, https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/community/-/issues/10). Additionally, we were able to get the basic structure of the project setup (multiple repositories to hold the corresponding front-ends, the back-end etc) (https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/community/-/issues/14, https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/community/-/issues/13).

One minor issue we did have was in relation to the database/data persistence layer of this project. We didn’t have enough people allocated to the team for someone to focus on learning about MongoDB (the database software being used for this project) specifically. Given that the front-end and back-end were deemed the most important components necessary to get started with actual development & implementation, we decided to focus on MongoDB during the next sprint, after we have some of the front-end and back-end frameworks implemented and in-place for the database system to hook into.

In conclusion, I would say that the sprint was a success, a good majority of the work planned was completed, a great deal of information which will be useful in the future was collected, and then categorized/organized on the project wiki. The example project using Vue and Docker will be an important reference during the next sprint when we will need to begin working on the implementation of the project, and we will be ready to start working on the functionality and layout of the InventorySystem during the next sprint period.

From the blog CS@Worcester – CodeRoad by toomeymatt1515 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Wiki: https://gitlab.com/groups/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem/-/wikis/home

For our first sprint, we mostly focused on learning what we need in order to build the inventory system such as Vue.js, Express, and API. I worked on researching Express by finding, studying, and recording resources such as Express tutorials and syntax guides among other sources. I also got in some practice writing and running Express JavaScripts, though not as much as I’d like to since there weren’t many examples I could find online. The team also created repositories for each component of the inventory system and a wiki where each member can place links to helpful resources. The link to the wiki, which include the resources on Express that I found during the sprint, can be found in the link above. If I were to describe what worked well, I wouldn’t know what to say since this sprint focused on learning rather than building. The same also applies for what didn’t work well since components can’t work incorrectly if you don’t build any.

Overall, I feel our team did fairly well considering one of our team members was incapacitated for a good amount of the sprint. We were able to finish tasks that amounted to 13 weight out of the tasks planned that amounts to 18 weight. That’s six weight for each remaining team member with one extra. The only thing I remember the team really struggling on was getting used to working in the structure of a sprint. So, I can’t really think of a way the team can improve outside of getting use to the workflow and structure of a sprint. It’s about as specific an area I can think of for improvement and it’s a pretty general area. And when I talked to my team in our sprint retrospective, they couldn’t think of much to improve on as a team either.

However, I can think of a bit more to say if we’re talking about what to improve as an individual. For example, the entire sprint I had a general feeling that I didn’t have a clear goal in mind outside of “study Express”. This probably resulted me to not have as fast of an output as I could have and also caused me to worry more that I wasn’t doing enough work. It’s also one of the major reasons why I couldn’t practice writing and running Express JavaScripts as much as I’d like to outside of the other reason I mentioned earlier. Another area I could improve on is summarizing the outcome of each task assigned to me. I say this because I didn’t realize I was supposed to do this until the meeting near the end of the sprint. But then again, this issue kind of ties back to what to improve as a team; getting use to the workflow and structure of a sprint. So, all I can really think on what to improve on as an individual is planning on a specific goal for each sprint to give a clearer direction and remembering to summarize the outcome of each of my tasks.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Rainiery's Blog by rainiery and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/14

This was easily accomplished by everyone. This was learning the issue board.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/1

This was us choosing a Scrum master. We decided on Tim Drevitch.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/25

This was our review of the LibreFoodPantry website which was to get an idea of LFP.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/24

This was creating the requirements for the GuestInfo EventSystem, in which I linked resources and described the requirements.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/9

This was the most time-intensive task. I linked multiple tutorials for Vue.js, all of which I completed. This encompassed most of the first two weeks of the sprint for me.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/17

This is the repository I made which contains all of the simple examples we created for small Vue.js, Express, and MongoDB applications to pull from.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/26

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/13

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/11

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/12

These 3 activities are encompassed in the GuestInfoSystem section of Thea’s Pantry. There is a repository for frontend and backend work. It has basic files for each which is taken from the WNE example.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/15

This is created a sample Vue.js project, which is on the example work repository.

            Overall, I think we worked quite well as a group, and I would attribute a good deal of it to how well our sprint planning went. We were thorough in going through topics which we felt we needed to cover and created individual cards for everything so that all of our tasks were tangible. Furthermore, we were fair in our division of labor and honesty in what we wanted to do while still taking on enough responsibility as individuals to support the team as a whole. What worked well towards the end of the sprint was also when we focused on what we hadn’t yet finished and allotted the work evenly. Not only this, but we had also made enough progress that I found it to be helpful to have a sort of progress report session in class. We were going through with our Scrum meetings daily, but it was more in-depth, and we were able to articulate what we had done and where our progress was taking us. This was very helpful and perhaps we could incorporate this into our Scrum meetings, allowing us to have a better stream of communication.

            There weren’t many things that didn’t go well for us, but a few include some lacking communication at times and a lack of due dates. As I articulated previously, I was only able to notice any lacking communication when we did communicate better. It wasn’t that our communication was impeding our progress, but it definitely helped to have a clearer picture of the project as a whole when each of us was clearer about our individual progress. As far as a lack of due dates, we became a little rushed towards the end of the sprint since we spent a little too much time completing our learning tasks. If we set limits on these tasks, because they were more open ended, we could have gotten some of our more rushed late sprint activities done faster.

            As far as changes to be made as a team, I would focus on making the changes I stated previously. To get better communication, we should make better use of the cards on the GitLab issue board. Each card should have documentation of information learned and progress made it on it. This makes it much easier for everyone to read the cards instead of having to check Discord or wait for the in-class meetings. Also, we should start putting due dates on the cards for our own sake. This would keep us on track better.

            Individually, I should plan out my time more. I was feeling lost with Vue.js so I spent a lot of time on it. I got into stuff that, later on into the sprint, I found out that I didn’t even need. I need to be better at setting due dates and creating more incremental tasks. I took a couple longer tasks and rather than breaking them down, would try to accomplish a couple things at once which could have been subdivided. This, along with better documentation on the GitLab cards, should put me in a better spot for success in the next sprint.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Marcos Felipe's CS Blog by mfelipe98 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint 1: 01/22/2020 – 02/19/2020

During the month, I started to work as part of the UpdateGuest time for the LibreFoodPantry project. The Sprint started with sharing and learning general knowledge about the project, what are the services to be offered, and some future perspective. As I learned the service that I and my team will be supporting, we began to fill the backlog with to-do tasks. We operated as a Scrum team, managing a Scrum board in GitLab, and separating stories based on requirements.

We started this sprint by learning new knowledge. As we decided to with the MEAN Stack, we needed to gain knowledge in all technologies that will be used: MongoDB, Express Framework, Angular, and Node.js. So we created stories to track our learning timeframe and weight the knowledge we gained.

During the Sprint I worked in multiple stories and supported the team in different topics:

• #1– I created the Angular App, the Mock version of our UI service. I supported the team with discussions on how the App should be implemented and organized.
• #2 – I supported to edit and fix an issue we had with .gitignore file. Together with the team, we discussed how to fix this issue and concluded with a good result.
• #3 – I created the Document and designed the Frontend Architecture for out UpdateGuest. This document will support the implementation of the service. This document will be edited during Sprint 2
• I supported the team with PR reviews, issue discussions, and research when we had knowledge gaps.

The end of the first Sprint consists of secure knowledge and the beginning of work with UpdateGuest service.

In this retrospective, I and my team need to reflect on these points:

1. What we need to stop doing
2. What we need to do less
3. What we need to keep doing
4. What we need to improve

1- What we need to stop doing

We should stop Approving PR by only one person. Each member of the team should approve a PR – so we know that we are all on the same page.

2- What we need to do less

We should be careful when we create new stories and check if there are no duplicates.

If there are duplicates, before closing the story we should let the creator of the story know first.

In the case of merging a PR, the creator of the PR should merge, or if another person do it, we should let the creator know first.

3- What we need to keep doing

We need to keep working with stories that we have on the Sprint backlog.

We need to discuss issues that we may have during the sprint and approve each other work.

We should keep reviewing each story before we mark them as DOne and close them.

We should keep solving debatable conversations and conclude in a good result that works for everyone.

4- What we need to improve 

We should have better communication for each story, issue or blocker during the sprint. Class meetings are not enough to solve issues. For each story, we all need to discuss and communicate with each other, and to consider all opinions before we conclude to a solution. Communication is the key to success for a team.

Conclusion

As a team, we successfully closed Sprint 1. We closed most of the stories in Sprint’s backlog and supported each other to move to the next sprint. We had a Sprint review for what we did, and a Sprint planning for Sprint 2, so we are prepared for the next step. So, let’s start implementing our ideas!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Gloris's Blog by Gloris Pina and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Completed tasks

• Set Up Repository for UI
  • Setting up a gitlab repository for our UI.
• Set Up Repository for services
  • Setting up a gitlab repository for our services.
• Determine endpoints needed from the Registered team
  • Discuss endpoints with Registered team and determine which ones we will need.
• Edit README.md file as required
  • We had some issues with getting the required readme file into the UI repository. This was eventually solved with a merge.
• Edit .gitignore File for UI Repository
  • Create a .gitignore file for our UI repository.
• Create .gitignore for UpdateGuestService
  • Create a .gitignore file for our service repository.
• Determine what data fields our service needs
  • To determine what our data schema will look like, we needed to figure out which data fields we need.
• Create mock Angular app
  • Creating a default angular app to work from when we get to the implementation of the UI.
• Design Web UI
  • Using a wireframe, begin designing the UI for our module.
• Create a test MongoDB
  • Create a test mongoDB to become familiar with the database.
• Make test REST API for MongoDB
  • Create a test REST API for mongoDB to become familiar with the required technologies. (Node.js, Express.js)

I was worried about how well my team would work together at the start of the sprint. We are all rather quiet and I feared that would impact our project. Even Professor Wurst expressed some concern. While I feel our communication could use improvement, I think we did a fine job completing what we planned to do in this sprint.

We divided the sprint tasks amongst us and mostly worked on our tasks independently. All work that was completed was shared so that others could study and review the tasks they did not work on. While this worked for our first sprint, I am hesitant to repeat this method as I believe it can lead to confusion in the group. For our next sprint, I think we should try and assign tasks to multiple people so we can emphasize that the responsibility for the tasks fall on the entire group.

I feel we did a great job of sharing our work and resources. Most of our decisions are public on gitlab so that it is clear why we did what we did.

My primary focuses this sprint were learning how to set up a mongo database and how create a REST API for it. One thing I think I could improve on is the frequency of my updates. I generally completed a task before making my work public. It may be beneficial to update more often. Something I would like more from my team is feedback. While my work was reviewed, I have not felt like I have received any real criticism, constructive or otherwise.

By the end of this sprint, we had a good skeletal structure of the update module. We implemented test versions of the technologies we would use in our full stack application and completed a small MEAN stack, a full stack app using MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, Node.js. With what we completed in this sprint, I believe the coming sprint will be clearer in scope and better planned.

From the blog CS@Worcester – D’s Comp Sci Blog by dlivengood and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Now that Sprint 1 has come to an end, it is time for the retrospective blog. I will start by including everything I contributed to this sprint:

• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/Plan/issues/25#note_284824391

This link is a note in an issue where I have put a document discussing the Pros and Cons of whether we should be using a relational database or not. I put some examples of relational databases and non-relational databases for when I was making a decision along with links explaining a few of them.

• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/Plan/issues/35#note_296685089

This link is another comment on GitLab basically stating that we are using mySQL because of the simplicity and it is easy to look up information on it if needed.

• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/register-guest-data-base/-/tree/test-database

This is the repository for our database currently, it is currently on a separate branch and not merged with the master due to a sudden change in database fields which will be implemented first thing in the next sprint.

• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/tourofheroestutorial

This is another repository that holds the results of completing the Tour of Heroes Angular tutorial. This was the last thing completed for the current sprint to give me a refresher on Angular as I haven’t worked with Angular in a little over a year.

This was our first sprint so everything obviously wasn’t going to be perfect. However, I believe that we used GitLab very well considering this is my first time actually collaborating on a big project using GitLab. I think that we created issues that were specific enough to be considered issues. We utilized the boards well too. Our communication was mainly done through class and text message, but overall, I still think we communicated every issue that needed to be communicated.

Of course there were things that didn’t work well either considering it was the first sprint and this is most of our first experiences with Agile and sprints. While I mentioned that our GitLab use was very good. There were some faults with it as well. For example, my desktop didn’t let me push to GitLab which is an issue that still needs to be resolved. I specifically had trouble working with the separate branches because it was confusing at first. Our issues weren’t created the right way at first, and had to be restarted even though there were ways to just edit them without restarting. We had good communication, but I felt as though I wasn’t as involved as I should have been with the other team members work. I also think that there wasn’t enough communication between the other groups in the class as a whole.

Some of the changes that can be made as a team is more involvement in each others work. I think that we can all spend more class time looking at each others work rather than looking at it on our own time because this allows for more discussion. I also think that our team could start communicating with other teams more. Most of the teams came to us rather than us going over to the other teams to collaborate.

My individual changes that I need to make is talking more to my team members about what they have been working on rather than focusing on my own work. I could offer more solutions to the front end team about design. Probably my biggest issue would be my procrastination. I have to start working on my assignments earlier because that has an effect on how the rest of my team performs. I think that this next sprint will be much better now that we have been exposed to this more.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Life in Comp Sci by Tyler Rego and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.