Backend Example: https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/training/spikeathons/winter-2021/stoney-manage-items/backend

For the second spring, our team focused on developing the frontends, backend, and keycloak of the inventory system. But a big problem the team encountered during the sprint is that to develop the inventory system, we had to learn all this new material such as Vue.js, Express, and API. Even though I was introduced to these concepts last semester, it’s still comparatively new next to all the time in college where I used Java and C++. And even though we had the entire first sprint to get familiar with the material, actually applying it to a project is a bit more difficult. It caused the progress on development to lag and a decent chunk of what was planned for the sprint didn’t get finished, like writing the API for example which was my responsibility and I’ll get to that later.

I worked on developing the backend and event system components for the inventory system during the second sprint. For the event system, I met up a couple times with the team members working on the event system from other teams. We talked about how our systems were going to communicate with each other to the point I at the very least know what to implement on my side. The inventory system just has to send messages to the reporting system whenever the inventory goes up or down and it will do that through a JavaScript file called “send.js”. I also managed to create a base skeleton for the backend which is heavily based on an existing example which I’ve linked above. I also tried to write the API but I didn’t really manage to finish it well enough and even though I did work with APIs last semester, it’s been a while. I feel that the biggest reason for the unfinished API is because I didn’t even study API during sprint one, I mainly studied express. All of these tasks most of what I did during sprint two outside of a few miscellaneous things that don’t come to mind immediately.

On what to improve as a team, I can’t really think of much outside of trying to keep up with the new material because I feel a good portion of the class is dealing with the same problem. I feel that the inventory team is doing decently all thing considering. As an individual I could improve on my knowledge of API and some other subjects by using the inventory system wiki more. I could also try and free up more time to work on the system since I planned to work on the API some more and I barely got anything done since I had a test last Friday and I have another test this coming Tuesday. I might have time on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday but I also have other classes that I have to keep up with and I should also set a concrete goal or write a to do list to guide myself. I just came up with that and it sounds like a good idea so I’ll stick to that plan.

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

It probably goes without saying, but this sprint certainly seemed more effective than the first. This is essentially a given, as a good portion of the first sprint consisted of figuring out how to work within my team in addition to adjusting to the teams shifting around a bit. After this, I feel as though we were able to accomplish everything we set out to, and a little more in some circumstances. Though this sprint certainly was not entirely bereft of some issues, at least with my own contributions to the team. Other than these though, I am satisfied with how this sprint went.

After adjusting to being embedded into the InventorySystem team, the sprint went very smoothly. Initially I had some difficulties being in a community of practice and the team, not really knowing if I should be meeting with others from my COP. We ended up establishing some meeting times and help each other with some parts of Keycloak. We were able to find a method of connecting our mock frontend app to keycloak, in addition to developing a logout function. Additionally, both Keycloak and the mock frontend app were containerized in docker. These were the major issues that I had focused on this sprint and all were effectively completed. Beyond myself, the InventorySystem seemed to accomplish many of the issues, with the exception of maybe one or two, that were posted for this sprint. One part that I felt did not go entirely well was how exactly I could help out the InventorySystem team. It might have just been the nature of the issues I had involving just using Keycloak, but I was concerned that I could have been helping them more in some way. Other than this there were no real issues that I could think of.

Despite the overall success of this sprint, there are a few more thing that I personally feel could change to improve the next sprint. I should clarify that these changes are entirely with myself, the first of which being what I felt was my own lack of participation in the InventoryTeam’s issues. I did not feel like I involved myself enough, this is also the reason why I cannot really speak on how the team can improve. As for changes I can make, I will simply try to involve myself a bit more, if not through taking up some of their issues then just through communicating more. I will try and ask where they are at throughout the sprint so I am more aware of what is happening and, ultimately, when I will be implementing Keycloak into the system. Additionally, I still had some struggles balancing my work for this class with some others, but I have been working on improving this for the next sprint. I have been sticking to the time I have set aside for working on schoolwork and have, at least, kept up. In conclusion, I am very pleased with my current progress going into sprint 3 and am excited to finally finish implementing Keycloak into a system!

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Bizarre Coding Adventures by Michael Mendes and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

There is one month left in the semester and it is already time for the second retrospective blog. This was certainly an interesting sprint due to the unprecedented pandemic that took the world by storm. Luckily, it doesn’t hinder us too much as technology exists enough to where we can still collaborate with our partners and other teams thanks to discord, Zoom, Gitlab, etc. To begin this post, I’ll be posting links to the progress I made this sprint.

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

This is thew link to our database repository because I had to modify it to reflect the new changes that were made after our meeting with Joanne. I am also using this link to show that the branches have been merged because I am no longer testing it.

• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/Plan/-/issues/55

This is a link to another one of my closed issues. This issue pertains to connecting the database to the server. While, I haven’t figured it out quite yet, there is a link in this issue with a tutorial that I have been using to experiment connecting servers with databases.

There wasn’t a large amount done by me on this sprint due to the COVID-19 outbreak which caused us to have a whole extra week off of school, and completely shifted us to online learning. However, there was a large improvement from the last sprint. Our Gitlab use improved immensely between sprint 1 and sprint 2. We started using the “blocked by” features to make sure issues were getting done in the order that they had to be. We also started commenting more on our issues, so everyone can see our progress rather than just our group knowing what we did. Also, I feel like our communication worked better compared to last sprint, but it could definitely still be improved.

As for what didn’t work well, I think that I could have gotten more work done for this sprint seeing that I only worked on database stuff for this sprint. I also feel like were still only involved in our each individual part of the project when we need to be more involved in each others parts. I also believe our communication with other teams could still use some work especially for this upcoming sprint because if we have time, we need to work on the aesthetic of our web application.

When it comes down to improvements, I know that I can try to work on a little more for this upcoming sprint. Once I figure out how to connect the database to the server, I can then move on to starting my work on Docker and helping everyone else with what they have to do, and hopefully we’ll be able to get to aesthetic because I feel like I would be helpful on that front. As for the team improvements, I still think that our communication with each other could be improved. For example, we can have more zoom meetings with each other and show each other our work. I also think we should talk to the other teams as well because they might be able to help us with things that we are stuck with. Besides that, I think our team is in great shape for the last sprint.

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.

It’s time for another sprint retrospective. Last sprint, our team focused on researching needed technologies and structure of our micro-service. This sprint, our team focused on implementation.

We started with deciding coding standards and preparing for the visit with pantry staff. We decided to follow the principles of the first five chapters of Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftmanship by Robert C. Martin. Lucky for me, I was reading these chapters for my software process management class. We also decided our code formatting standards, so collaborative work does not get reformatted constantly. After these issues were completed, it was spring break and I started focusing on solo work.

Last sprint, I learned how to implement and test a Mongo database with a schema defined by the Node.js package called mongoose. With this knowledge, I started implementing our micro-service’s database requirements. I designed a guest schema with all the data fields from the register team. Due to the nature of our update service, our schema does not require any data field except for the guest id. I also added an additional date field for when the update was made that is automatically added. I then wrote tests for checking the schema and the interaction with the database using mocha. At this point I decided to wait for my work to be reviewed by my team and started work on implementing our endpoints.

Our service only needed a few endpoints, a POST for new updates, a GET for obtaining an array of updates from a range of dates, and possibly a DELETE. I managed to get a couple endpoints started before my previous work was reviewed. After the review I had to focus on the guest schema again. While I did not focus on the endpoints after this, I did manage to fix up the incomplete GET endpoint when I had the time.

My focus for the rest of the sprint was getting the schema work ready to be merged. The review process was much longer than I had anticipated. With my merge requested branch bringing a lot of changes, the issues I needed to fix were diverse and plentiful. The issues ranged from simple oversights, to writing documentation. At this point, the schema branch has been through many changes and is nearly completed.

The rest of the work I did was reviewing my team’s work and familiarizing myself with it. The rest of my team worked on the front-end, implementing our UI and how to test it. At this point, our team has the UI design completed or nearly so.

Overall, I feel good about the work that was completed even though it took longer than expected. I think we have improved our teamwork since last sprint. The main lesson to learn from this sprint for me was to expect a lot of editing and to assume issues will take longer than I initially guess. Something we could improve on is the scope of our issues. Many of our issues could have been broken down into smaller issues that would be quicker to complete. After last sprint, we gave a work-in-progress limit to our review column to try and force reviews, but it ended up getting clogged by wide scope issues with a lot of work to review. I believe our team will be able to continue work on our micro-service and hopefully be able to have some functional software after next sprint.

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.

Overall, I think the second sprint was somewhat less effective than the first for my group. Unlike the previous sprint, we had some problems that prevented us from completing everything we expected to. I think the main issue we had was a lack of clarity regarding our goals for each issue. We have not been declaring a ‘definition of done’ for our issues, so we didn’t always know what we were working towards. The biggest example of this was the “Design frontend architecture” issue. We never had a plan for what our design needed to include or how it should be made, which caused this issue to get stuck in the ‘needs review’ column for most of the sprint as we tried to work out the confusion surrounding it. Additionally, I think many of our issues were too broad. For example, we had single issues for creating a database and implementing our UI which could probably have been broken into more specific tasks. We definitely underestimated the complexity of these issues and the time they would take, which made them difficult to complete during the sprint.

Despite the problems, there were some aspects of the sprint that worked well. I think our communication has started to improve since the last sprint. GitLab was used for discussion outside meetings more often, especially on the merge requests. I also thought that our in-class discussions were more effective. We did a better job using our time together to discuss specific problems instead of working on our own, especially after the transition to online meetings. Although the lack of clarity in our issues made the sprint difficult, it forced us to communicate more effectively so that we could help each other understand what needed to be done.

To improve as a team, we definitely need to be more specific with our issues. This would involve splitting broad issues into more specific tasks and creating a ‘definition of done’ for each issue so that we all know what to work towards. We should all look over our proposed issues to make sure they are small enough tasks, and we should add a definition of done that we all agree on to each issue. Ideally, this would be done during the planning meeting, though we can surely continue to fine-tune our issues during the sprint. If we are able to accomplish this while maintaining effective communication, I think our final sprint will be far more effective.

Individually, the main improvement I think I need to make is to keep better track of my teammates’ progress on their issues. So far, I have been completely focused on completing my assigned issues. As a result, I could never get around to familiarizing myself with the work completed by my teammates. This prevented me from reviewing their issues and approving their merge requests. It has also made me generally uninformed about the state of the overall project and where it is heading. I feel like I have not been contributing enough to the team, since I have been so focused on my own work. For the last sprint, I hope to participate more in reviewing my teammates work to both help the project progress and to keep myself informed. I think that making our issues more specific will immensely help with this. Having more manageable and specific goals would likely reduce my anxiety about completing my issues and allow me to spend more time assisting my teammates.

Links to my GitLab Contributions:

This is the main issue I worked on, where I learned about Angular testing. I left several comments informing the group of my progress and providing links to useful resources I found.

• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/updateguest/Plan/-/issues/29

This is a repository I made to share my project where I experimented with Angular testing with the team.

• https://gitlab.com/kylequad/angulartesting

These are issues that the entire team worked on. I left comments on some and moved some across the board.

• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/updateguest/Plan/-/issues/27
• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/updateguest/Plan/-/issues/28
• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/updateguest/Plan/-/issues/13

I left a comment on this issue to inform the group of a meeting I had with the other teams in class.

• https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/updateguest/Plan/-/issues/26

From the blog CS@Worcester – Computer Science with Kyle Q by kylequad and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

In the past few weeks a lot changed in our lives. With all the global epidemic we lost a week worth of work for the semester, and with all responsibilities that all of us have, everything else pushed to the second degree of priorities. With that being said we as a team supported each other … Continue reading SPRINT RETROSPECTIVE #2 →

From the blog CS@Worcester – Shams's Bits and Bytes by Shams Al Farees and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For the first sprint we did most of the programming of the individual parts of the service. The first thing we did was update the working documentation with the new information from the meeting with the food pantry. Also in the working documentation we Changed the zip code and id to string in the working documentation since they can start with zero. This was pointed out by another team. The next thing we did was to update the REST server with the new information from the meeting with the food pantry. We also updated the register application with the new information from the meeting with the food pantry. The last thing we updated with new food pantry information was the database. Also in the database we looked into how to connect the database to the REST server. Next we created a new angular project with all the different types of inputs the angular applications would need to run. This was done to help the people writing the angular applications. After that we added a register class to the register application to send over the register endpoint. We also added an error checking method to the register application so that a bad registration cant be sent to the REST server. Next we added all the input elements to the register application and connected them to variables in the typescript file. The last thing we did with the register application was to connect it to the register endpoint from the REST server. We also added all the input elements to the is registered application and connected them to variables in the typescript file. The last thing we did with the is registered application was to connect it to the register endpoint from the REST server. This was all everything we did for the sprint.

What i did for sprint

Update the working documentation  with the new information from the meeting with the food pantry

Changed the zip code and id to string in the working documentation since they can start with zero.

Update the rest API with the new information from the meeting with the food pantry

Changed the zip code and id to string in the rest API since they can start with zero.

Create an angular project with examples of the different inputs

Added register class to register application

Added error checking method to register application

Reflection on what worked well?

Planning was much better than last time

Used the boards better

Added relations to the issues

Ordered issues better

Reflection on what didn’t work well?

Did Not communicate enough during sprint

Didn’t talk to each other during two week break at all

Didn’t finish everything

Reflection on what changes could be made to improve as a team?

Try to keep each other updated on our progress during sprint better

Finish everything

Reflection on what changes could be made to improve as an individual?

Try to tell other people what i am doing more

Ask other people option more

Links to evidence of activity on GitLab with one sentence description for each

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/input-examples

• The input example project

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/is-registered-web-ui

• The is registered application

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/register-web-ui

• The register application

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/register-guest-service

• The rest server

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

• The database

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tim's WebSite by therbsty and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

We are on our second sprint. Couple of things and changes we as a team did. We reflected on our last sprint and tried to be more organized and complete tasks on time. We updated the working documentation, changed zip code and id string to working documentation, looked into how to connect databases with new information, created an angular project with examples of different inputs, added buttons to register applications, connected buttons in the register application to variables and added an error checking method to register applications. We all tried to communicate with each other on how things are going, if someone needs help and communicated on what each member is working on.

I tried to give my best effort in helping the team. I pushed my code in branch-working, instead of master. I plan to work on connecting the endpoint with help of my teammates. I did some more research on Docker and tried to learn more on connecting the endpoint. I needed to understand what why and how I will be doing it because it is an important connection in the project.. Nothing at the moment is blocking my progress. I am trying to learn and research more on connecting the endpoint. After researching and getting some feedback from my teammates. I created the endpoints in isregister and modified the app design.

Overall, everything went well, I learned new skills and gained more knowledge. What didn’t work well was the communication. Due to lack of communication we weren’t able to complete some of the work.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tech a Talk -Arisha Khan by ajahan22 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/25 got familiar with NGINX

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/41 Made program read MySQL login info for rest api

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/21 Implement Endpoint /needsApprove/between

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/46 Design /approveUpdate

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/22 Implement Endpoint /Approve/all

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/37 Implement guest-info Component ApproveGuestWebUI

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/20 Implement Endpoint /getGuestInfo/{id}

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/30 Create connection between database and Rest API

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/40 Create and Link Epics

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/5 Create mock database in mySQL

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/19 Implement Endpoint /isApproved/{id}

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/47 implement /approveUpdate

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/51 Install Angular Material in ApproveGuestWebUI Project

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/32 Create UI Design for ApproveGuestWebUI

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/45 Implementing CI/CD for IsApprovedWebUI

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/44 Implementing CI/CD for ApproveGuestService

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/-/issues/49 Questions to ask Joanne from Thea’s Pantry

I believe the thing that worked well for us in this sprint was constant communication and trying to help each other with issues that we were facing or that were related to one another. I think our team did a good job on staying on task and completing things at a good pace and each member was actively involved with each person’s code since we needed another person to review our code and approve it for it to be merged with the master branch. Due to the situation going on in the world around us the sprint was hindered due to the extra week of spring break and our group got a little too comfortable during the break and neglected our work. I think we had a lot of great things that we should have weighted a little differently and we had no idea that the weight of an issue can be changed during the sprint as well, so had we known that we would have readjusted a few of the weights to be more reasonable for the amount of work that was required to complete the issue. As a team we could benefit from meeting at least once more outside of the regularly schedule class period during the week to be able to complete more work and have more opportunities to figure out what works and what doesn’t. I feel that I got too complacent during the break and neglected this sprint’s work toward the end, so in the future I hope to be more focused and on task even during things like a two week spring break. I should have also spoken up more when I felt that an issue was not the correct weight, but I wasn’t fully sure since the last sprint we had, we finished all of the issues way before the end of the sprint.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tyler Quist’s CS Blog by Tyler Quist and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.