This week was sprint 1. Sprint 1 was a rather simple and basic sprint that started with getting into teams and diving into the workload. The most work that was done for sprint 1 was done before getting into teams. Getting setup for the sprint required a lot of work, like filling out the CATME survey and getting your availability schedule together. Once we finished our prep work for the team formation, we got into our groups. Once we got our assigned groups we began sprint 1. Our first assignment was given to us by Professor Wurst. We had two tasks, one being to prepare a REST API for the food pantry and the other being finding a way to host a json file from a government organization. I took the lead on finding out how to host a server for our json file while other members of the group worked on researching REST APIs and figuring out more information on our project. Professor Wurst suggested a few options for hosting our server for free, digital ocean and heroku. I looked at digital ocean first but quickly found out that it actually costs money (a per month subscription) for us to host a server to store our json file on. After finding this out I looked into heroku. Heroku is a free service that lets you host a server for free (albeit they do limit you to a certain amount of server size/space as to avoid people from abusing the system by hosting large applications for no cost). I took on the task of doing a tutorial on heroku, which was rather simple. I went through the windows powershell to follow along with the survey. I learned a few of the heroku Java application specific commands, such as preparing the app (this was a simple process that uses the git commands to clone/pull/fork projects from github/gitlab), launching the app (heroku create), viewing heroku build logs, and scaling dynos. Dynos are specific to heroku, and are basically small containers that live within the heroku server that run your applicaiton. You can scale the amount of dynos per application to affect its performance (however you are limited to a certain number of dynos per application), and I learned that scaling down to 0 dynos does not allow it to launch the application. I feel like heroku is very similar to angular in the sense that there are commands to build/launch/diagnose applications, however angular is more of a “coding” application because you can edit code and run it all within the angular platform. Another large difference between angular and heroku is the language used to host the servers. We as a group settled on heroku for Java because we are all most comfortable using Java as it is our primary programming language. After completing the heroku tutorial I looked at the git repository that was shared with our group by Professor Wurst. I think that as a group we are unsure where to go from this point, as we have not been assigned any solid tasks yet. My hope is that for sprint 2 we can dive into the project more and will be assigned tangible tasks that we can complete for our end users.

From the blog CS@Worcester – The Average CS Student by Nathan Posterro and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Getting started with our first sprint, we were tasked with a few familiar tasks which included:

– Creating a GitHub repo for our team so that we could fork the AMPATH/ng2-amrs repositories
– Cloning the repos onto our local computers so we could edit/build the code
– And lastly set up our development environment to be ready so that when we have the back-end server up and running we could start immediately.

The first two tasks were pretty straight forward but when it came to setting up our environment we had many difficulties.
– The first of many difficulties was getting an error that stated we were missing some style.css packages. Since half of our team got this error we dedicated a large part of our time to figuring out what was wrong. James figured out that we had to install the missing packages, specifically ng2-ion-range-slider which got rid of this error. Starting npm was not an issue after this case.
– The second main issue we had to learn to work through were missing environments which I and Gulshan had. I found that since we never ran npm start, we wouldn’t have the environment. This fix took quite some time to figure out also but now most of us are on the same page; waiting for the back-end server to get set up.

There were many steps we tried that failed, some of which ate up a chunk of our time working as a team. We tried deleting and recloning the repos which did not work. We tried installing npm numerous times over and over but the result was the same. I believe most of our successes came from trial and error. We constantly tried updating all of our working environments, researched on stackoverflow, and worked collectively as a team helping one another to figure out our problems. Throughout the week whenever one of us made progress towards ridding one error we would post in our 404 slack channel for others to see; keeping constant communication.

If I were to instruct another individual who wishes to start working on this project I would be sure to have them follow a series of steps as well as solutions to errors that they might encounter. Before beginning anything I would suggest updating all versions of node and npm to the latest. From there, the first command to try and run is to be npm start in the working directory. If there are no errors then localhost:3000 should be all set, else if there are missing packages I suggest installing the ion package that was missing for most of us. We did not encounter any other sort of errors so I don’t know what else could go wrong.

Onto Sprint-2!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

          We learned quite a bit in our first sprint for the AMPATH project which ranged from troubleshooting compiling errors to understanding team dynamics. After some reflection, I found that the mutual troubleshooting that our team did allowed us to bypass any icebreakers that were needed. We were able to professionally and respectfully look into each other’s problems while making sure that no one was left in the dark. After learning about our team dynamic, I will proceed to do more involved communication through slack rather than other private forms of communication. We had begun to use texting a form of communication but quickly changed to slack to ensure that everything was able to be pulled up easier in the future for documentation and blogs. We learned to better troubleshoot using sites such as stackoverflow and GitHub to find information on node as well as npm versions. The start of our first sprint consisted of working on the front end of the project to make sure it was able to run and look into the server side as well to gain more information on how it worked. We had many problems when trying to make the ng2-amrs repository to work when we cloned them on to our own computers. We consulted each other and the various other teams to understand the common problems everyone was having and fix them together. After cloning the proper files onto our computers, we immediate ran into problems when trying to run the project. We were met with various errors that we were able to fix by updating our versions of npm and nodeJS. The npm version was easy to update through commands in the terminal but various team members were having issues with updating node through the terminal, so a manual reinstallation was necessary. During the installation, we found that we must check a box that allowed node to install packages that may be needed as a project is built to ensure that the project could continue to compile. After this error, I happened to get a windows x64 compatibility error for certain files within the project, specifically a file named style.scss. Fortunately, our professor was able to locate a solution to the error and explained that we should type the command “npm rebuild node-sass” to rebuild that node so that it would work with our version of windows. After trying to build the project once more, we ran into another error when running the command “ng build –prod” which would have let us build the project and figure out any other errors we were having. The error said that the javascript process ran out of memory which seemed quite odd. Our teammate Harry was able to troubleshoot this error from stackoverflow using google and emailing people from AMPATH. We were able to change some of the memory restrictions on the javascript process and ran the command npm start which allowed us to fully compile the project and get an interface running. We currently are still facing issues because the project says that it was compiled with warnings which we have not delved into yet as we are awaiting more information from AMPATH. Our troubleshooting methods were mainly using our resources from the internet to find out why the project was running into issues until we were able to properly compile it into a workable interface.

References:

Node JS manual update

https://nodejs.org/en/

Style.scss error

https://github.com/sass/node-sass/issues/1918

JavaScript out of memory error

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50621043/fatal-error-call-and-retry-last-allocation-failed-javascript-heap-out-of-memo

From the blog CS@Worcester – Student To Scholar by kumarcomputerscience and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Over the past two weeks, I experienced my first sprint with my fellow teammates. Although it was introductory in nature (as were the tasks we actually completed), I feel that it gave me a solid understanding of what to expect in the upcoming months, and in my eventual career.

The first sprint consisted almost entirely of setup tasks; each member of the team installed Webstorm, connected to AMPATH’s test server, familiarized ourselves with JIRA, set up a Trello board, among several other things. The bulk of our communication throughout each of these tasks consisted of troubleshooting, particularly when trying to get the ng-amrs build working properly on our machines. There were a few different fixes we came to, but in general, it seemed that each of us was having the issue of a file not being found. We each worked out with each other how to find that specific file, and the build worked fine once we’d each done so. As a result of the fact that we each found different methods of resolution to this, however, we have also agreed as a group that we should exclude these files (which, thankfully, were only styles) from our commits to the project.

A teammate and I each forgot to submit responses for one of the scheduled standup meetings. Fortunately, the reason for this was that it had been such an insignificant period of time due to the prior completion of tasks, and nothing of value was left out of any report.

In future sprints, I believe that the familiarity that this preliminary sprint provided our team as a whole will serve us well. Having already discussed the user stories provided by AMPATH with the others, I am excited to get to work on this application. For me, and for the other members of the group to my knowledge, this is the first product I’ll be putting into the real world. Although the idea of this being my first work to have real consequence is daunting, I believe that we as a team will be able to deliver not only a satisfactory final product, but one which exceeds expectation. If we can keep up the kind of groove we had going for these two weeks, it might even be a smooth project – imagine that.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Studio H by Connor V. and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

During the first sprint, I learned more about the node modules and dependencies needed for the AMPATH application to load properly, mainly the angular2-ladda module. I learned more about angular and angular testing, including framworks such as Jasmine and Karma. I learned about test debugging right from the browser. I learned how to create a Github organization, a useful tool for any team of developers.

Our team worked well together, I believe we all have the skills needed to take on the task of adding offline functionality for the AMPATH providers. I created the Github organization for our team, and made sure that my team members were on the same page. We organized how the team should manage pull requests and for now will be approving requests when we meet. I think we will have more communication when we actually start writing code and making changes.

The first week, I forked the ng2-amrs repository from the class organization to our team organization. All team members were added so they were able to fork their own copies to work on. From then, my team members and I worked on installing the needed dependencies for the application to compile. From the start everyone had compilation errors because some files were missing or in a different directory. While browsing the Slack channel we discovered that a different team member(Matt) posted a fix to the issue we were all having. The issue was with the angular2-ladda module, the errors showed that we had some missing files. Our team followed the instructions on what changes needed to be made and successfully fixed the errors. Once we had the application compiling properly, we set up our browsers with the help of the AMPATH team’s youtube video showing us how to add the CORS plugin. Once logged in we realized there was no data being shown as the AMPATH team is still working on getting dummy patient data on the test severs.

The post Sprint Retrospective 1 appeared first on code friendly.

From the blog CS@Worcester – code friendly by erik and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

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

My first sprint experience was interesting. The experience was more of a sprint-lite, a streamlined version of the process. The tasks we had to accomplish did not have to be split up between team members and there was no real roadblocks that had to be overcome except minor issues which were solved with out too much hair pulling.

This weeks sprint was a learning experience in that it was my first time with sprinting on a software project. It allowed me to get some of the basics down and get used to the experience. Not much would change with the knowledge I have now, other than issues would be fixed sooner. Though they were fixed quite quickly to begin with.

I feel like most of our progress was made during the in class meetings, as we could share a large amount of our findings with each other and have long discussions on them. In the future, I feel as if more discussion should be had remotely, to increase productivity overall. Though this time it did not really matter. Helpful links and tips were still posted to slack. The Trello board was set up quite quickly, and the stand ups were finished by everyone pretty consistently. Barring two very minor misses. Overall, the team worked really well together. Everyone was helpful and made contributions to aid others. I brought up a fix for an issue I will describe in a few moments, and was helped in resolving an error by a fellow team member.

During the week everyone had to setup their teams repositories which had forked versions of the n2-amrs app. They then had to get the application working on their machines. The steps to take were basic, but they did not end up being as simple as they should have. Npm install should have installed all dependencies and npm run should started the application running. However, many people, including me, received errors when trying to install dependencies. The errors mention files that do not exist in the application. I searched the issue and online and was able to come upon a page on git about the specific issue with many suggestions for fixing it. Here’s a link to the page in question:

https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/17444

The method that ended up working for me was to delete package-lock.json, which would be reinstalled along with the other dependencies after running npm install.

Running the application came with an issue in the styles guide file, where it could not find another file called ladda.min.css . There were suggested fixes on the general slack channel, and suggestions made by my team mates. I ultimately fixed it by moving the ladd.min.css file and then rewriting the path in the styles guide file to its new location.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Fu's Faulty Functions by fymeri and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

During the first sprint of my software development capstone, it mainly consisted of setup tasks which would aid into the upcoming sprints that are later to come. What I’ve learned was how to adapt to the team that I’ve been set up with, using Angular through the webstorm IDE, accessing the AMPATH server, briefly using trello, using git commands, communicating on the Slack channel, managing the Team’s git repository, and experiencing of what it’s like to work in a software development environment. Looking back on how I’ve learned all of these things, what I would’ve done differently is that I would communicate to my teammates a little bit more through the slack channel because there would be times where my teammates would often lose sight on what I was doing. They could only know through the standups that we do every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during the sprints. That would be one of the main areas that I could’ve improved on and would’ve done differently.

Out of these things that I’ve learned through this first sprint, they could all be applied in upcoming situations. Communication will always be an ongoing action to take especially working in a team since everyone needs to be up to date on each others work. Angular will probably be in constant use as well as the Slack channel and possibly trello. Acessing the AMPATH server will probably be a must in all sprints as well because the team and I will be submitting code to the server.

On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the highest, the team’s effectiveness throughout this sprint would be an eight and a half. There were some instances where my team members Rick, Jason, Jeremiah, and myself all had trouble getting access to the AMPATH server. Some of us had to install some dependencies, whereas some of us had to update the webstorm IDE. There was a case where Rick had inputted the wrong command into the terminal in the webstorm IDE to connect to the AMPATH server. At first we thought there could be something wrong with his code, which led to spending an entire class on figuring out what went wrong. That’s when we knew at the end that he had entered the wrong command. After all of the team members had successfully accessed the server’s login menu, it was smooth sailing from there.

As an individual throughout working in this team, I felt I was competent enough to do the work that was assigned to me. Besides going through some trouble with accessing the server, the process of trial and error helped me learn new things, which led me to teach my teammates things that I encountered along the way. Besides delivering quality work, I tried to be the individual within the group that made the atmosphere more enjoyable, especially in group discussions about our current tasks. What we will be doing differently moving forward is that we would organize our tasks a lot better through the concepts of the trello board by organizing and assigning tasks to each individual team member. That way, it allows everyone to keep track on who is doing what.

What was done during the week was we established a connection to the AMPATH server, created a trello board for the team, practiced some angular tutorials, and managed a github repository. As said earlier we tried many things to fix and gain access to the AMPATH server login screen through using different commands, updating webstorm and installing dependencies. We tried the command “npm run server” or “npm start” in the terminal in webstorm, and that worked. The command that failed back in Rick’s situation was “ng serve”. There were also some instances where Jeremiah and I had to uninstall node.js and install it again, which was one of the course of actions we took when nothing else worked.

Overall, the first sprint was a learning experience for myself and the others. Currently, we are trying to figure out a better way to manage our github repository that allows an easier way to do pull requests. My teammates and will come up with something later on.

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

The focus of the first sprint was cloning and building AMPATH’s existing code on our own systems in order to get us in a position to begin adding the desired functionality. Additionally, we set up our team’s Trello scrum board and our team GitHub organization, and we began learning about both Angular testing and the JIRA project tracker. We ran into problems most significantly when we couldn’t build ng2-amrs due to compiler errors, but by the end of the sprint we were all in a position to successfully build it.

I downloaded Visual Studio Code and an add-on for TypeScript to use as my editor for this project, since WebStorm so slowly it’s impossible to use on my laptop. This is the first editor listed in the recommendations in AMPATH’s readme file, and so far it runs smoothly for me.

To start off the sprint, I created our GitHub organization and invited all team members and Professor Wurst. George forked the repository from AMPATH. Everyone cloned the repository, and we began going through the readme file. We installed the required dependencies and began attempting to build ng2-amrs, at which point we began encountering errors. Matt figured out that some references to ladda.min.css and ladda.directive.js were producing the errors and implemented a fix that resolved the errors. He created a list of instructions for fixing the errors and shared it. Members of other teams (Oren and Rick) made corrections to these instructions. I and others on my team made the outlined changes, after which we were able to successfully build ng2-amrs.

After this, we learned about doing scrum on JIRA, and some of us went on to learn how tests work in Angular. Matt and George were able to connect ng2-amrs to the server.

For JIRA, I consulted Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/tutorials/how-to-do-scrum-with-jira-software. To learn about Angular testing, I began reading the official Angular testing guide: https://angular.io/guide/testing.

Our team worked closely in the beginning, but then began to work more independently when installing the required dependencies took varying amounts of time for all of us. We shared Matt’s fix to the ladda compilation errors and aided each other in implementing the changes as team members became ready. Our team had difficulty showing up in full to the stand-ups. We haven’t yet decided as a team any specifics as to how we will proceed differently, but I hope to get from everybody a reliable way of contacting them so we can increase our team’s communication and so I can provide reminders if that’s something other team members would appreciate. I think our team will do better if we can close the gaps in the progress we’re making as individuals.

As this sprint consisted mostly of set-up tasks, I didn’t learn much that could be applied to future situations apart from the way our team functions. In light of this, I would strive to keep us on the same page and updating each other on our progress.

To do the same work we did, someone could fork and clone ng2-amrs and follow the most recent set of instructions to fix the ladda errors. Better yet, they might be able to proceed without having to fix anything, as the pull request containing the necessary changes was approved and merged into the course repository’s master branch.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Fun in Function by funinfunction and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.