The first sprint for the Libre Food Pantry software went very well for the most part. Since it was a spike sprint, it was mostly looking up tutorials, making sample projects, and brainstorming ideas.

What worked well for me was that I found a great tutorial on Node.js with Express which also shows you how to connect to and use a MongoDB database. This tutorial gave me a great foundation on how to run a server and handling HTTP requests. The tutorial had great explanations of why we are doing each thing step by step while other tutorials lack such explanations and just show you how to do whatever you are trying to do. From this tutorial I made a To-do list web application using Express, MongoDB, Ajax (Ajax code was provided from a source), Mongoose, and EJS(Embedded JavaScript) as practice for the Libre Food Pantry backend and also to make my skill/understanding more solid by practicing everything I learned from the tutorial. This also gave me a reference to look back on if I ever forget how to do a certain thing.

What did not go so well was my understanding of the project as a whole/how it all fits together. Studying the architecture of the project a few times did not do it for me. It took a while but learning Express, eventually asking my teammates about the technologies they are working with, how they fit in with the rest of the project and studying the architecture again after each new piece of knowledge finally helped it all click.

Some things my team and I could improve on would be to be more interactive on GitLab. By the time we made a repository to upload all of our progress, it was more than half way through the sprint. This meant that we could not review what our teammates were doing and have an understanding of our progress as a team. Also, our communication and teamwork could have improved as well. Instead of working on individual sample projects, we all should have worked together on a single sample project using everything that we learned. This would have been a better learning experience for us since that is what we will be doing eventually for the main project. We also could have had better communication with the product owner. I felt at times that not just me but my whole team was confused or stuck with what was wanted/expected from us. Towards the end of the sprint we eventually asked the product owner some important questions that really helped us move forward for the next sprint. Since we were mostly learning the foundation for new technologies this sprint it did not necessarily effect our productivity, but our motivation and confidence.

A change that I could make as an individual is to improve on communication. I felt that I did not have a good understanding of the technologies that my teammates were researching and how they intertwined with what I was working on. For example I did not understand what RabbitMQ was and what it had to do with the project when all I had to do was ask my teammate researching it to explain. Eventually towards the end of the sprint I did this and it helped my understanding of the project greatly.

Links:

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/new-sample-project/-/tree/main/Backend/NodeJSTutorial/NodeJSPractice – Repository where I uploaded files from each tutorial video.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/new-sample-project/-/tree/main/Backend/TodoListApp – Repository holding files for the to-do list web application

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cUxeGkcC9gcy9lrvMJ75z9maRw4byYp – The tutorial I used for my sample to-do list app.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Austins CS Site by Austin Engel and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Links to evidence of activity on GitLab.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/new-sample-project/-/tree/main/Frontend

I created a sample frontend using vue.js and learned how to build up the environment and set up a sample project.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/new-sample-project/-/tree/main/Frontend

I learned how to create a climate for vue.js on Udemy and Youtube to set up my vue.js settings. I used my tutorials to build my first sample project.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/58

I am working with Migena for the Small Frontend, which is going to test the login feature with keycloak. We will use vue.js to build the Frontend and the third-party system, keycloak to test it. We will see how a real example of securing our system with keycloak. Our goal is to build a simple frontend to test keycloak.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/34

I will keep meeting with the other teams working on the Frontend to discuss the Frontend’s style, format, and other components.

Reflection on what worked well?

The reflection on what worked well is that we work together with the team members we have worked with before to complete the project plan. Because we have worked together in the same group before, we have a deeper understanding of our teammates and are more accustomed to each other’s habits. There will be a relaxed and happy working atmosphere in the group, and the chemistry between the groups will encourage each other and push the project forward.

Reflection on what didn’t work well?

The reflection on what did not work well is that we didn’t know much about the project initially and thought it was a big project. When faced with the unknown challenge, we were a little confused at first. As we got to know each other and started to move forward with the project, we found that labor division was not reasonable. Because in many issues, Frontend and backend are related. Being responsible for each task affects productivity. So we have overlapping project leaders working together to complete the job, which leads to increased efficiency. It was difficult or challenging to push the task forward, but we encouraged each other through the ZOOM meeting after class.

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

As a team with cooperation experience, 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 together.

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

As an individual, I need to improve my understanding of the Frontend more quickly to help my team better connect Frontend and backend. I need to arrange my group tasks more reasonably to help promote the whole group project’s completion. Besides, I also need to make clear my work objectives, continue to follow up on the team’s project, and make my part and the whole develop simultaneously. 

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

Links to evidence of activity on GitLab.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/new-sample-project/-/tree/main/Frontend

I created a sample frontend using vue.js and learned how to build up the environment and set up a sample project.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/new-sample-project/-/tree/main/Frontend

I learned how to create a climate for vue.js on Udemy and Youtube to set up my vue.js settings. I used my tutorials to build my first sample project.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/58

I am working with Migena for the Small Frontend, which is going to test the login feature with keycloak. We will use vue.js to build the Frontend and the third-party system, keycloak to test it. We will see how a real example of securing our system with keycloak. Our goal is to build a simple frontend to test keycloak.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/34

I will keep meeting with the other teams working on the Frontend to discuss the Frontend’s style, format, and other components.

Reflection on what worked well?

The reflection on what worked well is that we work together with the team members we have worked with before to complete the project plan. Because we have worked together in the same group before, we have a deeper understanding of our teammates and are more accustomed to each other’s habits. There will be a relaxed and happy working atmosphere in the group, and the chemistry between the groups will encourage each other and push the project forward.

Reflection on what didn’t work well?

The reflection on what did not work well is that we didn’t know much about the project initially and thought it was a big project. When faced with the unknown challenge, we were a little confused at first. As we got to know each other and started to move forward with the project, we found that labor division was not reasonable. Because in many issues, Frontend and backend are related. Being responsible for each task affects productivity. So we have overlapping project leaders working together to complete the job, which leads to increased efficiency. It was difficult or challenging to push the task forward, but we encouraged each other through the ZOOM meeting after class.

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

As a team with cooperation experience, 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 together.

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

As an individual, I need to improve my understanding of the Frontend more quickly to help my team better connect Frontend and backend. I need to arrange my group tasks more reasonably to help promote the whole group project’s completion. Besides, I also need to make clear my work objectives, continue to follow up on the team’s project, and make my part and the whole develop simultaneously. 

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

Links to evidence of activity on GitLab.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/new-sample-project/-/tree/main/Frontend

I created a sample frontend using vue.js and learned how to build up the environment and set up a sample project.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/new-sample-project/-/tree/main/Frontend

I learned how to create a climate for vue.js on Udemy and Youtube to set up my vue.js settings. I used my tutorials to build my first sample project.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/58

I am working with Migena for the Small Frontend, which is going to test the login feature with keycloak. We will use vue.js to build the Frontend and the third-party system, keycloak to test it. We will see how a real example of securing our system with keycloak. Our goal is to build a simple frontend to test keycloak.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/34

I will keep meeting with the other teams working on the Frontend to discuss the Frontend’s style, format, and other components.

Reflection on what worked well?

The reflection on what worked well is that we work together with the team members we have worked with before to complete the project plan. Because we have worked together in the same group before, we have a deeper understanding of our teammates and are more accustomed to each other’s habits. There will be a relaxed and happy working atmosphere in the group, and the chemistry between the groups will encourage each other and push the project forward.

Reflection on what didn’t work well?

The reflection on what did not work well is that we didn’t know much about the project initially and thought it was a big project. When faced with the unknown challenge, we were a little confused at first. As we got to know each other and started to move forward with the project, we found that labor division was not reasonable. Because in many issues, Frontend and backend are related. Being responsible for each task affects productivity. So we have overlapping project leaders working together to complete the job, which leads to increased efficiency. It was difficult or challenging to push the task forward, but we encouraged each other through the ZOOM meeting after class.

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

As a team with cooperation experience, 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 together.

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

As an individual, I need to improve my understanding of the Frontend more quickly to help my team better connect Frontend and backend. I need to arrange my group tasks more reasonably to help promote the whole group project’s completion. Besides, I also need to make clear my work objectives, continue to follow up on the team’s project, and make my part and the whole develop simultaneously. 

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/new-sample-project

This is our example repository that contains everything we worked on for Sprint 1.

Review Docker: Reviewed old projects and main commands for docker.

Create Sample Docker projects: Created a sample Docker Project, Did the getting started activities.

Repository for event project: The main repository for the event project.

Learn About RabbitMQ : Learned RabbitMQ components and Implemented them using Docker.

Review Scrum :  Reviewed the scrum guide and understand the process.

For the project, I am part of the reporting team. I mainly work on the event system software that sends and receives a message to other systems using the RabbitMQ messaging system interface. I also work with the database person and did make a docker example project and a cheat sheet of all the docker commands.

What worked well / did not work well

 The thing that worked well for our group is that we were good at organizing everything and everyone was responsible for certain tasks, and I noticed that some of the tasks overlap between us. For example, the backend person must work more closely with the database person. The first few days we were a little confused, but as everything came together our workflow improved tremendously, which helped to complete all the issues for sprint 1. One thing that did not work well is that we had few problems with GitLab, our template was not loading properly at the start so we could not assign proper labels to issues. Also, during meetings, we should have done the group tasks together instead of a person just doing the task.

What changes could be made to improve as a team?

For a project, communication is the key to success. I think that as a team we should be communicating more rather than doing our tasks during the meetings. For instance, if someone is struggling to figure something out, the other team members can help the person and give insights to lead the individual in the right direction. Also, for the next sprint when we are making cards we should be more specific about the descriptions and properly think about the issue and how we can achieve it and it is clear to the person what needs to be done.  

 What changes could be made to improve as an Individual.

As an Individual, the change that I can make is to plan properly for the next sprint. The first sprint I started of slow because I was not sure how you do something or if I am doing it the right way. A properly planned sprint will help me to go with a flow and have a balance rather than getting overwhelmed by doing all the tasks towards the end of the sprint. My communication with the team should get better as we move on to the next phase.

Overall, this was a great learning experience. I think the first sprint was a success and a starting point for our team to move forward with a vision to complete the task that is assigned for us. I’m looking forward to working with the other teams to combine everything and see our progress.

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

If anything can be said about this sprint, it is that a lot was learned throughout. I was familiar with how the teams would work, but many of the day-to-day specifics and exact deliverables were a bit unclear to me. Before this class I had only really examined this sort of team structure in CS-348, and that more theoretical practice left me in the dark on some of the specific aspects. To specify, the issue board for our team was not utilized to its full potential in a few different ways. However despite these issues we were able to complete all issues on the board. First I will discuss exactly what worked well, and subsequently what did not.

Regardless of what could have been improved, which will be discussed, this was overall a successful sprint. Each team member did, at the minimum, read through the material they were assigned and documented any relevant information in the wiki. So by definition this was a successful sprint, but it’s true value for us was what we learned for the next sprint in my opinion. One part that could have been worked on were the actual issues themselves. These could have been streamlined a bit, as we simply decided to read through all of the documentation because it was the most logical thing to do. However the documentation often contained much superfluous information that may not really end up  being useful. It felt as though this was mostly being done to meet our SCRUM goals. Besides this, it was still difficult to communicate all of this information with each other. Throughout the sprint we also forgot to move issues through the board as we worked on them, and I personally did extraneous work that could have qualified as a new issue but did not think to create one for them. After all of these issues however, there are some changes that can be made for this next sprint.

This first sprint was an extremely valuable learning experience as previously stated. There are a few ways that our community of practice could improve the effectiveness of our teamwork. One idea that was brought up was to simply communicate more often using the community of practice channels. This will allow us to simply have one location containing all information we may need, and allow us to be on a similar page with each other. To further improve this, we also discussed having small work sessions in the community of practice from time to time to ensure none in the group are behind. This would also allow us to have more consistency in the method that we use to connect our respective systems to Keycloak further down the line. As for myself personally, my major flaw was simply getting behind on my work. If I am being honest, I had to do much more reading towards the end of the sprint than should have been necessary. To improve on this, I have set aside specific time frames during the week to work on projects. I will also try to share any more useful information in the project-wide community of practice, as I have a tendency to just share information in my team’s text channel only. I am excited to put all of the changes into play for this next sprint!

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.

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

Here I put links for tutorials and relevant articles for learning MongoDB.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/27

This card shows I was allocated to the event system cross-cutting team.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/16

This is a card I created for learning how to connect the backend to mongoDB.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/guestinfosystem/community/-/issues/18

This card is for an example mongoDB project.

Our first sprint was filled with learning, both about the tools we need and about the sprint process. I think there are many things that worked well. First, I think our team composition right now is good. We all know each other from previous classes, and we are comfortable with talking casually to each other. This is good because there was no initial awkward phase – we were able to get straight to working with each other. Another thing that worked well was asking important questions for each other on gitlab. While we did not use the cards to their fullest potential, having email notifications for gitlab really forced me to pay attention to the cards. My discord does not have notifications turned on, so I must actively check for new messages. On gitlab the email notifications made me extra aware of new comments on cards and any changes to the cards.

There were of course many things that did not go so well. Somethings I failed to realize is that gitlab should be the place where I keep all my work. I followed quite a few tutorials, so I have a few mongodb projects on my own computer. I should have been actively adding them to gitlab as well. My issue was that I did not feel like I had a finished product worth sharing. I should have realized that was okay and posted that anyway.  Another thing that did work so well was communicating mostly on discord. We did a lot of brainstorming and communicating in class through voice chat. Because we did not write down every single thing we spoke about, some things were forgotten or missed. We should definitely be trying to use text chat more, but most of our communication should probably be through gitlab to maintain a permanent record of what is being discussed.

As a team we should definitely work on mostly using gitlab cards for communication. As a team we should also try to contribute more evenly in discussions and with product owner meetings. I know I am not contributing enough and we should all be taking responsibility for our team instead of just letting one or two people do all the talking for us. Overall though I feel like my team is very solid and we work well together.

As an individual I should work firstly on time management. Having sprints like this is almost deceptive in a way. This isn’t the kind of thing you can do all the work right at the end of the sprint. It really isn’t possible to complete most of the cards like that. The work should be spread out, especially since it is cumulative. Some cards need to be completed so you know how to complete other cards. I also have to work on communicating with my group more. As the system is more fleshed out, we are going to have to work together more to combine the parts we have created. Right now we are sort of working independently and just checking in with each other. I will have to share the work I am doing with he rest of my team very frequently by pushing it to gitlab instead of just waiting to show them during class.

I went into this sprint very intimidated by the size of this project. After finishing it I feel a bit better because I know how sprints work now and we have a clearer vision of what we are going to do for this project. The next sprint will definitely be an improvement over our first.

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

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.