With the conclusion of our last sprint, I’ll start by reflecting on the team performance. I think we went into this sprint pretty determined to get the backend fully up and running. Those of us who were involved in the backend development started working on trying to get the backend running in order to test each of the endpoints. Though the container was running, we were unable to use http calls to test any of the endpoints. We realized that there was a bigger issue than what we initially thought, resulting in us spending most of the sprint trying to get the backend server running. Another thing I would like to point out was that we had issues that were a bit too ambitious. We structured our sprint around the idea that we were going to have the backend running fairly quickly. And because of this we were essentially unable to do a good amount of issues because they required the backend to be running.

Reflecting back on my performance, I would say that I communicated well with the team at the start of the sprint. I discussed with my team during the sprint planning, helping the team structure what needed to be done for the upcoming sprint. At the beginning of the sprint, I assigned myself issue #31 in the backend, which was to test the removeInventory endpoint. I spent time trying to test with http calls but I was not getting any response. I then learned that we were having issues getting the backend to run, which explains why I was not getting a response. I think when it came to this point, I started becoming unproductive due to the fact that my assigned issue depended on the backend running. 

As a team, we definitely could have improved in the communication aspect. At some points during the sprint it was a bit unclear as to what everyone was working on. Most of our progress came to a halt by the issues with the backend, and I think we should’ve put all hands on deck to look into the issues. I do also think we could’ve come up with more manageable issues. For example, a task such as implementing keycloak into the inventory system is something that we can’t gauge the weight of until we actually start working on it. We could’ve come up with issues to get the backend running as opposed to things to do after the backend is running.

Coming away from this sprint, I will need to remember to communicate with my team, engaging with them to see if they need help with anything. I think I should’ve spent more time looking at the entire structure of the project to get a better understanding of how it should work, that way I can look into issues as to why things aren’t running. I will also need to consider setting realistic goals and understanding what things can be done in certain time frames. I still learned a lot from these past three springs and I look forward to applying this knowledge to my professional career.

issue #31: Troubleshooting the removeInventory.js endpoint which was unsuccessful due to the backend not running as intended.
issue #3: Bundle items-api.0.1.0.yaml to be used in the backend.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Null Pointer by vrotimmy and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The course of our sprint was good, we completed large sections on the frontend and backend from the last sprint to get the necessary functionality to integrate the front end and backend together. We achieved our sprint goals by all agreeing on what was most important to focus on in the sprint, which helped us on completing our ultimate sprint objective. We structured our issues in such a way that they were less dependent on each other for completion. This strategy maximized the number of issues that could be completed without having to wait for someone to submit their issue first.

Keeping in mind the lessons from our previous sprints, we continued to work in small branches dedicated to one issue at a time. There was minimal code divergence because of our fast branch, merge, branch strategy. It was tempting to keep developing in the same branch, but with the small size of our project, the structure of our project changed very quickly. Merging large branches together often resulted in breaking code in the past. By our third sprint, we had developed a great workflow and collaborated seamlessly. Two large braking changes we made this sprint were updating the port numbers for the backend and frontend as well as updating the fields within the guest info record.

With our workflow and communication, our team updated internal ports, mapped them to docker images, and reflected the changes in docker-compose files for code in multiple repositions. All while maintaining integration of the frontend and backend code. We also had to remove and add new fields for the guest record. This required modifying the OpenAPI Schema, handling the changes in the backend, and modifying the form on the frontend. By doing small branches in coordination with our team members, these major changes were made without issue. If this was our first sprint, things would have been more difficult. I see the ease at which we made these major updates as evidence of how much we have developed over the semester.

Overall, there were no significant indefinable changes we should make as a team. As always, we should aim to communicate with each other to the best of our ability. In my opinion, we did this well and left little room for a need to improve. Although our in-team communication was excellent, one area that still needs improvement is our communication between teams. We improved on this compared to the last sprint by working with other teams using the credit card scanner, sharing CSS styling, and meeting with the Kubernetes team to discuss integration. However, we wanted to implement keycloak this sprint, but we did not accomplish that task. The reason for this was both due to running out of time and failing to have enough dialogue with the IAM team to learn how their system would integrate with our system. If we had the fourth sprint, I am sure we would be able to learn from our experience and succeed at implementing these features in the future.

Overall, I improved significantly between sprint one and sprint three. I could still improve the amount of communication I have from team to team and take it upon myself to reach out more. I did do this during sprint three more than I had in the previous sprints, but improvement could be made in the number of times I reached out.

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

To start with, our communication got a lot better about when we were done working on things, and about what needed to be done before the rest of us could work on new issues. Our prioritization also improved greatly, with us figuring out what was most vital in order to get our project as far along as we could in the last sprint. Our issues were also a lot clear in terms of what needed to be done, and we were relatively efficient in assigning and working on them as needed. I also felt that personally, I was extremely productive during this sprint, more so than I had been in the others, and this was the first sprint I felt that I had an extremely clear goal and something that was important and useful that I was working on.

That being said, I felt like other parts of team communication were lacking somewhat. We still struggled with knowing what everyone else was working on, and there were a lot of cases where it seemed like some people were finished and waiting on others, or were just unsure of what to do next. I felt like the backend not being fully functional still was a huge holdup to the rest of our work, but there were still some small things that could’ve been done without it. I think that having a clear end date on when we would be able to work on the project left us with less motivation to get some things done, as they would likely have to be redone by future teams, so I just think that our overall planning was a little bit lacking for the amount of work we had to do in some places, as evidenced by our remaining issues in the sprint backlog.

As a team, I think that we should have improved our communication a bit more, and more time spent looking at what actually needed to be done in the code could’ve helped us break up the work a little bit more. But I also think that this largely comes from our lack of clear direction and prioritization in the prior sprints. I think that greater clarity and communication about what we did, what we were working on, and what we needed done could’ve helped avoid a lot of the issues we ran into this sprint, and I think that overall having a clearer picture of the overarching architecture required for all of this could’ve helped us a lot. If we had spent more time getting to know exactly what we had done and what we needed to do could’ve helped us significantly improve our performance in this case.

As an individual, I think that I should’ve been more open about what I was doing with my team, and this sprint has given me an example of how I need to, in the future, pay more attention to the vital parts of the project, so we can get those working before we start working on the meat of it all. I should have been more meticulous previously, and less short-sighted when creating issues. Spending more time looking through the code and what we needed could’ve helped greatly here, I feel.

Issue #36: This started off as just adding bin files to start and build the backend server, but became reconfiguring and rewriting all the server files to get the backend server and API functioning.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Kurt Maiser's Coding Blog by kmaiser and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I thought that the team functioned well this sprint, despite not being able to complete our ultimate goal, which is to have the backend be fully functional. I think the team communicated much better during this sprint than in the past two sprints. I also think every team member tried to put in the effort to do their part and accomplish our tasks despite coming up short. I think we underestimated the sheer amount of time that it would take to finish the backend. We all thought that we were very close to getting to work and that we would have plenty of time to work on testing the endpoints and other files. However, that turned out not to be the case and we spent most of the sprint trying to get the backend to work.

Individually, I think that I performed well during this sprint. I tried to take an active role in the sprint planning portion of this sprint, and I tried to communicate with teammates more often than in previous sprints. I managed to this sprint to upload the RabbitMQ demonstration that I created and researched during the last sprint in the general repository. I spent time working with Julion to merge the updatedFunctionality branch to the Main branch in the CheckoutGuestFrontend repository. The updatedFunctionality branch had all the necessary src files, and by merging this branch to Main, the CheckoutGuestFrontend finally has functionality like the other two frontends in this project. I also spent some time looking at the backend near the end of the sprint trying to find solutions to the errors that we were facing.

I think that the team could have done some things better in this sprint. I think when we figured out that the backend was going to take a much longer time than expected to get it working, we should have redirected our focus for the sprint and had the entire teamwork on getting it to work. I think the team should have done an overhaul of our issues. Many of our issues were either too ambitious or required the backend to work in order to proceed (testing the endpoints for example). I think many of the tasks in our sprint backlog and product backlog could have been broken down into smaller, but simpler and more realistic tasks.

Personally, I think I have a lot of room for improvement after this sprint. I should have definitely spent more time looking at the backend and researching ways to solve the different errors that we kept getting. I also should have paid closer attention to the issues that we created during the sprint planning period and really evaluated how much time they would take. Over the course of this sprint as well as the past two sprints, I have learned that taking an active role in communicating and helping my teammates, being more involved in the planning process, and being realistic about what I can do during a sprint are all things that I will need to succeed in my professional career as a software developer.

Issues that I worked on:

Issue Community#69: Upload RabbitMQ demonstration to General

Issue CheckOutGuestFrontend#11: Merge the updatedFunctionality branch to the Main branch

From the blog CS@Worcester – Fadi Akram by Fadi Akram 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/58

The card I created for adding rabbitmq to docker compose

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/backend/-/issues/8

The card I created for adding message sending to the backend

This sprint not much worked well for me, mostly because of outside forces unrelated to the class. I simply was not able to put as much time and effort in as I wanted to. Most of the sprint was spent working on figuring out the messaging system. I was able to send and receive messages locally. What I was not able to do was send messages to other computers. I am pretty sure if I kept working on it I would have gotten it eventually; I found many solutions online that I did not get to try yet. 

That does not mean everything went poorly though. Something that did work well was transitioning between the two teams. This sprint I worked more with the event system so I had to meet with Derin and Rainiery more often. It was really easy to get the team together because discord is made to do that. If we were using zoom for class meetings it would have been a lot more difficult. 

I think my team did well this sprint. Marcos and Tim were able to do a lot of work on the front end and while it did not get where we wanted it to be we still got far. This sprint I think David was able to do a lot really fast and because of that he was able to start working on the integration portions. Cam was a lot like me in that he did a lot of work outside of our system with the IAM team. 

Even though this was our last sprint, there are a lot of things I can do to improve. The improvements may not be for the next sprint (there isn’t one), but they will be things for me to carry into my career. Time management is a huge thing I need to work on. Expecting to be able to do a ton of things all in one day just does not make sense. This sprint and this class really taught me that I can only be productive for a few hours at a time. Anything after that is probably wasted. It’s better to let a bunch of short work sessions add up. I also need to make sure I do a little bit every day. It is more efficient and I forget less if I minimize time in between work sessions. 

As a team, if we were to work together again I would want us to communicate more. I think David and Tim both were looking for more work to do during the sprint. I should have asked them for help with rabbitmq. We could have sent mock messages to each other and probably would have figured out the messaging system a lot faster. When I got stuck I also could have taken a step back and helped out with some other parts of the system, maybe doing something like helping test out the front end. That would have helped me clear my mind but it also would have helped make sure the front end worked for when we demoed it.  

From the blog CS@Worcester – Half-Cooked Coding by alexmle1999 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Links:

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/77

This was about filtering the data for the report.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/74

We were able to get sample data from the other teams as a JSON object and used fake data to download report as csv.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/62

Created a docker container registry and implemented it on gitlab.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/75

Edited backend code so it takes a date and retrieves data based on that date.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/72

Created the backend endpoints to receive the start and end dates from frontend.

The thing that worked well was that we got the system to actually run and get messages from rabbit mq which gets saved in the database to be used to pull the report. We were also able to connect it to the frontend and get a wsu style theme for the website. I think there was a lot that worked well considering this was our last sprint and we could not rely on another sprint add more work.

Some things that did not work well in this sprint was that we did not have as good of time management because there was so many projects for each class so we had to find chunks of the day to work when we can. However, I think our group gets a lot done under pressure and is able to complete a lot more in a few hours nearing the deadline as opposed to those same hours with free time. If we had more time to space things and did not have to worry about many other cs classes, then it would be much easier to focus on making the website as efficient as possible.

A few changes that we could make for future sprints as a team was to keep our eyes on the main goals of the sprint and not on small details. I feel like we were stressing on small aspects of the project when the big important features would have been just better to work on. We were struggling taking so much time to work with docker and get some of its aspects to work, and this took a way from upgrading and making the backend and frontend more efficient. I think next time we would spent as much time from the beginning to get the website up and running and having all the functions work properly for a user, then focus on the small details that won’ t take as much time to figure out in comparison to the bigger parts.

A few changes I could make as an individual is to find a balance with working on my team and working on my own. I feel that I was either working with the team too much or my own most of the time. I think in future it would be a lot more clear what our goals were and what to work on as the sprint went, but for this a lot of the task were things we could work on together and help each other out. I think even with all the factors we were still able to produce efficient work.

Overall, I think this sprint went very well and we got a lot accomplished. In the last week of the sprint we were panicking because of how much other projects we had to from 4 other cs classes and 5 including this class. However, we put our focus 100% on accomplishing everything and looking back we got more than enough done. It was very helpful to work in a team where we would help each other out and make brainstorming and planning a lot more easier. I think this sprint and this class in general will help us out in our future endeavors especially in the work field. A lot of the planning is what helped us out and our website was able to run which was very helpful for us to know that we did it. I’ll appreciate everything that I learned these past 4 years and from every professor and good luck to everyone on their future goals.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Roller Coaster Coding Journey by fbaig34 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

 Links to evidence of activity on GitLab.

This is my frontend user interface for the report team

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/generatewcfbreportfrontend

I updated my frontend from sprint 2 in my local service which I used the sample frontend example from the professor. I have changed the background and move the start date and end date in the middle same as the common website let the user input the login information. 

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/reportingbackend

Austin and I connected the backend API to my frontend API, which can let customers download the report for the inventory. It got succeed download the report for the inventory when we connect the API together.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/35

My frontend design idea is based on the Worcester State University style of design. For the background picture and the color use, I followed the handbook of WSU style of design.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/67

I implemented FrontEnd for reporting with the most recent version.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/55

We Made some OpenAPI.yaml files for our FrontEnd and BackEnd.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/66

We looked over TheasPantryReport.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/71

We looked at the new architecture and plan accordingly.

Reflection on what worked well?

In Sprint 3, in terms of what worked well, the second phase was more efficient when team members worked together than ever before in completing the project plan. After a semester of teamwork, we have a deeper understanding of our ultimate goal and become more accustomed to each other’s habits. There will be a relaxed working atmosphere, and the team chemistry will encourage each other to push the project forward. The project progressed more smoothly, and the ZOOM meetings of the team were relatively frequent.

Reflection on what didn’t work well?

As for why it didn’t work out, there is a longer-term vision of the end product and the project’s future goals. Unfortunately, we failed to get the data of other groups. We made test data to run our report program. In addition, the team members were busy with other courses at the end of the semester, so there were some deficiencies in the adjustment of time in the later period. We had some confusion in the front end and back end docking. Through learning external materials and teamwork, we successfully solved the docking problem. Fortunately, we made timely adjustments and promoted the project objectives, and completed the group project.

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

As a team with cooperation, smooth communication, and tacit understanding among team members are the basis and key to improving our team’s cooperation level. We would discuss the project after class and give some constructive suggestions about each other’s tasks. Good communication makes our team have chemistry. Through communication and cooperation, we have a thorough understanding of the team members’ tasks. Each knew the other’s project progress would be conducive to the overall advancement of the project. When a team member encounters a bottleneck in a task, we will appropriately slow down the overall progress and communicate with him to buffer his time to complete and push forward the overall task progress.

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

As an individual, I have watched and learned a lot about front-end production after class. It improves my front-end understanding and production skills, which helps my team better connect the front-end to the back-end. In this project, I learned and improved some problems encountered in team cooperation and realized the power of the team in finding and solving problems. In a team, the mutual understanding and tacit understanding among team members is the basic condition for the smooth operation of a team. It was a great honor for me to meet every team member in my last year of university, and I learned a lot of valuable experience from them in ZOOM meetings. At the same time, I am also very grateful to the professor for giving us an opportunity for a big team project, which benefited me greatly. I believe that I will bring my learning experience to my team in future team cooperation projects. Finally, I’d like to thank Worcester State University. It’s my great honor to be a member of the computer major.

From the blog haorusong by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem

Here is the Link to the repositories that contains everything we worked on Sprint-3. Backend, Frontend, Event system, and Keycloak.

Connect RabbitMQ receive file to DB: Connected the MongoDB database on the received file.

Implement Event System components: Implemented RabbitMq components for Event System.

Meet with other Event System Teams.: Met with other teams to finalize everything about messages.

New TheasPantryReport: The new Theas Pantry Report

Create two channels for both teams: Created two channels for both teams on the send and receive files.

For this Sprint, I worked mainly with Austin on the backend components such as implanting the rabbbitMQ, making API, and trying to get out system working.

What worked well / did not work well

For this sprint, what worked best was that we got our reporting system functioning. We have a system where the Rabbitmq receives the message from the queue and saves it in a database. From there the backend takes the data and converts it into a CSV so when the Frontend requests for a report the backend can send that CSV file to the user. One of the key things that I noticed that our group works well under pressure. We are always calm and composed. I don’t think there is something that did not work well, however, we should have managed our time wisely since the end of the semester was filled with many assignments.

What changes could be made to improve as a team?

As a team, this was our final sprint for the semester. In the future, if we work on this, I think it Is important to use the time wisely as we were up on zoom every night to make little progress towards the project. Also, whenever we had a question, we should have posted more on the issue board or could have asked the professor for more help but as a team, I’m so proud and happy with the way everything turned out towards the end.

 What changes could be made to improve as an Individual?

As an Individual, I should be communicating with my team more rather than just doing the issues that are assigned to me. I should try to manage my time wisely too. The end of the semester was a struggle since there were exams and projects from every class. I believe that we could have made our system more efficient and functional, but it turns out to be what I imagined from the starting. Working together as a team doing one task at a time was efficient for me and as a group.

Overall, this was a great learning experience. I will never forget this class or the reporting team. It was a pleasure working with amazing teammates who pushed me to move forward whenever I was struggling on an issue. I hope that the experience I got from the capstone will be a highlight for my future career in the field of technology. I wish all of you the best of luck and congrats on your graduation. Hopefully one day we can look back and enjoy these moments.  

From the blog Derin's CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Like the second sprint, our team focused on developing the frontends, backend, and keycloak of the inventory system for the third sprint. I mostly continued work on the backend API and the Event System components. For the Event System, I specified what data has to be sent to the Reporting System. When adding inventory, the weight and the ID, which are integer and string values respectively, have to be sent. When removing inventory, the weight and the donor’s name, which are also integer and string values respectively, have to be sent. I also added a subsystem folder to the backend and inserted a basic JavaScript file called “send.js”. I’m pretty sure that Matt even added the code for one of the backend functions into the subsystem directory. I needed to edit “send.js” so that it could send the correct information but I ran out of time. For the API, I feel that I did all that I could considering I wasn’t able to test it with docker, either locally or with the docker-compose.yaml file. I was able to add Weight, ID, and Donor to the schema and finish the API code for the getInventory, removeInventory, and addInventory methods. I also added an unauthorized 401 response for each of the three methods for token authorization. However, I wasn’t able to fully implement token authorization to the API since Mike wasn’t able to finish work on the tokens.

This sprint, I feel, was messier than the last two since our team was mainly trying to finish up what we had leftover form sprint two and do whatever we could before the end of the semester. It feels like that lack of direction was one of the factors that affected the rate at which I performed my tasks. I already mentioned what I did during the sprint which I think isn’t really nearly enough of what I wanted to do. I wanted to finish up what I had leftover from last sprint in a week or two and completely focus on the event system and maybe help out on the backend functions. What ate up most of my time was trying to test the API with docker which I wasn’t even able to do in the end. And I couldn’t even take advantage of the extended deadline since most of my finals were on the week following the new due date. I was only able to make the subdirectory and the basic send.js file during that time span. What I’d want to improve on as a team is to set a clear goal since I feel that was one of the factors on why I think I wasn’t able to do as much as I wanted to similar to what I said last retrospective. As an individual, I really need to brush up on docker since I couldn’t test the backend correctly even though I based it on the stoney-manage-items example on GitLab. I couldn’t even get the example itself to run on docker either, neither locally or with the docker-compose.yaml file.

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