While LibreFoodPantry, which I introduced from my last blog, serves the local Worcester as a whole, another similar project, Thea’s Pantry, is developed exclusively for the Worcester State University community. The user story in this project is written linearly instead of a map compared to LibreFoodPantry, it’s less specific but illustrating the general purpose. However, LibreFoodPantry didn’t indicate the architecture and technology used in the project, Thea’s Pantry instead demonstrated everything beforehand giving the readers a technical perspective about how this project is going to be implemented. Since the big task is broken up into smaller pieces, different teams of developers can work at the same time and each new completed project will become a feature of the final product. Furthermore, by using GitLab CI pipeline, it will be continuously delivered with a new semantic versioning. Overall, this project idea is to benefit both students and pantries at the same time by educating students to develop something practical for the people.

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

• User Stories

I know the costumer ultimately is the organizer using the device, but I could not stop thinking of the people on the other side, who are they, a community member in need, a homeless person, a student in need. This made me think about privacy and sensible ways of presenting quantity constraints in a respectable way. I don’t think a future in UI/UX is for me, but I believe the user should be expanded.

• Architecture and Technology

What I think is most helpful is the architecture and technology. Mostly architecture, I remember how easy it is to get lost on systems that have many parts with different relations. The UML diagrams are important not only to get it right in the first place but check whether you did get it right or not. I think dependencies are hard to describe concurrently having their layout ahead of work makes everyone’s lives a lot easier.    

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