Sprint 1 Retrospective

At the middle of last week, our team finally concluded our first sprint, working on user approving system for the LibreFoodPantry. Overall, I think our team did pretty good on doing a lot of initial setups and communicating with other teams to make sure we can have a consistency on data across databases. For me personally, I did quite a lot of work on setting up repositories, researching on making the back-end database, and helping my teammate, as well as people from other teams on the problems that they have that are related to our module.

List of what I accomplished during the last sprint:

– Setting up repositories, including ApproveGuestWebUI, ApproveGuestService, and isApprovedWebUI, which regarding to tasks like forking from templates, enforcing rules for making changes to the source code, and informing the team about that policy.

– Researching about how mySQL database can be initialized on Docker containers, import – export existing mySQL container for future usage, and communicating to it from outside of the container (wiki page is available at link)

– As I am more interested in getting the back-end to finish in the early stage of development, I helped one of my teammate, Tyler, to make documentation about REST API endpoints and further getting feedback and making suggestion with other teams on those endpoints (wiki page is available at link).

– With all that endpoints in place, I setup the schema to potentially be what the mock and the actual database looks like and getting appropriate changes to it to match with the Register Guest module (wiki page is available at link).

– Finally, I had a lot more time towards the end of the sprint than I expected, so I dug deeper in setting up Spring Boot for the REST API and making a few objects within the program to lighten the amount of work for the next sprint.

With a lot of work that is put into initializing the project, I also learned a lot. While I did have a chance to experience SCRUM on my last internship, this time we use Gitlab as a tool to log all of our work, which I really the simplicity but professional and effective, rather than Jira and Confluence, which are more corporate driven software. I also learn to operate Docker, which I delay on getting to know it for a while as I though to myself that virtualization is a most optimal way to go, and after the last sprint, both are now under my consideration for future projects. And lastly, I learn that communication is really important, especially in the early stage of development, as a lot of data structures have to be defined and unified among the teams.

There is also the excitement, and at the same time,  frustration, of planning what to do to optimize the time and the work needed to get the job done as we had a list of questions without a clear answer on where we should head to. Although on Gitlab, we got really few comments put up, the teams had a lot of face to face conversations to make decisions on problems, and that I think is a problem that we need to record more of our conversation during the next sprint. At the end of the sprint, we are able to finish every issue tickets that we put up initially and we got quite some spare time afterward so I think we did a really great job on what we set out to do and I think the more sprint that goes on, we would be able to take a much heavier workload.

From the blog #Khoa'sCSBlog by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint Retrospective 1

What we did as group for sprint For this sprint we as a team started our first meeting by putting in place a plan for the whole sprint, we picked the first steps of the architectural design for our API. We decided the roles for each one of us, and then divided the tasks, so … Continue reading Sprint Retrospective 1 →

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.

Sprint Retrospective 1

For the first sprint we did a lot of setup tasks as well as the designing of the architecture. In addition to some of the programming. The first thing we did was talk about the architectural design of the service. Once that was settled a group member created the wireframe for the “register” user interface. A group member also created the wireframe for the “is registered” user interface. The next thing we did was create the blank projects on gitlab. After this we initialized two blank angular apps in the user interface projects. We also created the blank rest server. While this one going on a group member was working the database understanding it and creating one that the architectural design specified. At the same time we created the class the design specified in the rest api and created the endpoints. We also connected the endpoints to a run-time database to test the rest server. In Addition we put in a template to learn how to make scheduled calls in a rest server. At the same time we also started coding the wireframe designs in HTML pages. That basically all we did for the sprint.

For the sprint I personally first created the main documentation issue and kept  it updated. I did this after the meetings or after consulting with the rest of the team and coming to a consensus with them. I also did several of the issues. First I did the issues for creating the 4 projects and initializing them. I also did the issue for designing the endpoints. I also did the issue for creating the object classes for the rest server. In addition i did the issues for creating the endpoints and finishing the rest server with a fakes database implementation. The last issue I did was researching how to make a scheduled method call in a rest server.

For the sprint I personally first created the main documentation issue and kept  it updated. I did this after the meetings or after consulting with the rest of the team and coming to a consensus with them. I also did several of the issues. First I did the issues for creating the 4 projects and initializing them. I also did the issue for designing the endpoints. I also did the issue for creating the object classes for the rest server. In addition i did the issues for creating the endpoints and finishing the rest server with a fakes database implementation. The last issue I did was researching how to make a scheduled method call in a rest server.

I thought the sprint went mostly well. I thought we did using the issue to break the work of the project up into smaller pieces for us to do. I also thought we did a good job of assigning issues to different people to make sure everyone had something to do. Lastly, I thought the documation issue worked well to keep the whole team on the same page as far as what the current plan was.

    Even though the sprint went well there were still some things we needed to improve on. I feel like there should have been more time spent planning before we started. Since a lot of  the first half of the sprint was spent changing our mind on the design and having to start over and this was inefficient. In addition before the working documentation issue was made we were not really telling each other what the plan was or when we changed it. We also could have had better communication overall especially at the start. We got much better later on though.

There are a few we could do better for the next sprint. I don’t think there is much however as we fixed most of the problems by the end of this sprint. The most important thing is to have a better planning meeting. We could be more communicative with each other on what we are doing. Lastly i guess the communication we do have could be better quality and more informative.

I could do a better job individually too. For the next sprint I need to do a better job of explaining why I am making the decisions i am making. I could also do a better job keeping the team updated on what I am doing and my progress. Lastly I could do a better job with the overall documentation of my issues. That being said, I don’t think me or anyone else in the team really needs to be better individually to much.  I think the biggest problem was the poor planning meeting at the beginning.

GITLAB LINKS:

  1. https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest
    1. This is the whole project.
  2. https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/register-guest-service
    1. This is the rest server project i was working on.
  3. https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/Plan/-/boards
    1. This is the issue board for all our issues.
  4. https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/registerguest/Plan/issues/16
    1. This is the working documentation issue that has the current plan for the project.

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

Sprint Retrospective

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/issues/9

Here I am finding out about docker, posted resources to videos for the team.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/ApproveGuestService/-/wikis/Docker-Documentation

Created a document that highlighted the key commands that would be used for docker containers and images.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/issues/28

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/issues/27

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/approveguest/Plan/issues/23

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

These are the endpoints that I reviewed and moved to done.

From the very beginning of the spring we had assigned everyone an issue of what they needed to start on. From there each respective person worked individually on their assigned task until moving onto the next one. This was working well for our team in the beginning and for me, because I had a higher weight task, because everyone had something to work on. However, once I thought I was done researching docker and creating the wiki for the docker commands, I had run short of things to do with docker. My main task was familiarizing myself with docker but since we were not going to be using docker until at least the next sprint, there was little to do with everything I had just learned.

Another tough issue was the actual design of our endpoints. Our teams had not yet gotten the documentation of what would be stored for information on each person. For our initial design we made simple variables that could be replaced once the correct information was present. Eventually we were able to change into the correct variables with proper documentation.

Our team was very good at coordinating with the others when it came to work on our endpoints. We had originally designed them each with base variables as described before. After the documentation was given, the main problem that arose was the communication between other teams. We needed to understand what we were pulling from other teams and what they would be pulling from us. Our team did well to communicate and document the interaction and solutions on GitLab.

I think something that our team could do better in the division of tasks. For next sprint, as mentioned in class, we will be waiting to assign the next task once someone has completed theirs. I believe this will allow for a smoother distribution of work. Another team improvement, we could have better documentation when working through GitLab. When different people were working on different task, it was easy for the work completed to be missed. It can also cause a lack of understanding through the team if there is not much to go off of.

An improvement I could make would to be to take on a greater responsibility. I need to communicate to my teammates that I need to take on more work than previously because I felt a lot of time was wasted. I have to be better at involving myself in the ongoing process of something new in order to immerse myself, even if it is just to help push someone to the end of their goal. Another change I will make going into the next spring will be better documentation. I posted a document in the wiki for reference, but should be in markdown on the page for everyone to see easily.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Journey Through Technology by krothermich and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint 1 Retrospective: Trial by Fire

Last week our team concluded our first sprint working on the Approve Guest module for the LibreFoodPantry project. This project is part of my Software Development Capstone and has us working on an open source project using Agile principles and the Scrum framework for software development. While I think the project has been going well, there are definitely aspects of our workflow that can be refactored in order to increase our productivity.

What I Completed This Sprint:

For this sprint I took the role of Scrum Master for my team of four. I felt like this would be a great way to put my knowledge of the Scrum framework into practice. While I tried to make sure I was available to the team to answer any questions about Scrum, I feel like I didn’t emphasize the importance of following the scrum framework as well as I could have. I facilitated the stand-ups at the beginning of each class period as well as planning and review meetings. Our team did a good job of explaining what they had done prior to the stand-up and what they were going to work on, but the stand-ups were never used to raise questions about logistics or talk about progress towards meeting our Sprint goal. I feel this is because much of the Sprint was used for getting adjusted to the slightly more structured workflow that we are working with. If I continue to be Scrum Master for our team I will make sure that we utilize class time to the fullest in order to have open discussion about what we need to complete and how we can deliver working software as fast as possible while doing only the minimal amount of work necessary.

I think its important that, as a group, we start to utilize GitLab and our issue board to a greater extant than we did this Sprint. In the beginning of the Sprint we were having trouble coming up with what issues to work on because we didn’t have much information about exactly what it was we are building. I feel like not only our team, but all teams were very concerned with granular aspects of the project such as, what attributes should we be storing in our databases and what style guidelines should our applications use. All of the information that was up in the air was making it difficult for us to feel like we can start developing since everything is subject to change, but it is important for us to remember the Agile principle, “Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage”. We should be building this expecting requirements to change, rather than feeling the need to wait until requirements are finalized to start working. Also, I feel like even though our communication with each other and the other teams improved greatly from the start of the Sprint, we should be communicating as much as possible in order to maximize our productivity. We had good discussion with other teams but left minimal evidence of this on GitLab, which is something that we will need to be more vigilant about in the future.

We were able to finish all issues in the Sprint before the end, which is a sign that we gave ourselves too little to work on. I think as a team we made an acceptable amount of progress this Sprint as it was our first ever sprint working as a team. Going forward we can more accurately gauge how long each issue will take us to complete and make sure each member of the team delivers a reasonable amount of work by the end of the Sprint. Reflecting on what I delivered this Sprint I know for a fact that next Sprint I will need to give myself more issues to work on. I wanted to start working on our actual web applications, but the fact that our requirements were vague made me decide maybe we could leave that for the next sprint. I think my own fear of the unknown had me making many spike issues, when we could have made greater progress on the application itself.

“Working software is the primary measure of progress.”

 

From the blog CS@Worcester – Creative Coding by John Pacheco and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Confront Your Ignorance

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.

-Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person

Every day of our lives, we find ourselves surrounded by people who know more than us. It is normal to not know everything. This is why we shouldn’t go hard on ourselves when we meet people who expect us to know more than we do. The best we can do is to confront our ignorance, which means to identify gaps in our knowledge and try to fill those gaps continuously. The “Confront Your Ignorance” pattern shows us different ways to approach when we find those gaps in our knowledge. Some of these approaches are: to read the introductory articles and FAQs, to love what you do in order to understand it better, to work with others who have more knowledge than you in a specific topic so you can learn from them, to learn in public and not in secret. As good as this pattern can be, sometimes the apprenticeship can become a problem for the team at work.

This pattern made me realize how important it is to confront and expose my ignorance. Sometimes I get too hard on myself, such that I forget that I am in a learning process and it is okay not to know everything. From now on I will write down everything I find it hard to understand and start working on getting better on those. It could be a skill, a technique or any topic, but that would be a good start towards a great future full of knowledge.

What got my attention is the fact that “Confront your Ignorance” and “Expose Your Ignorance” patterns are very close to each other. By doing a list of the things we don’t know, and the things we should know in the future, we’ll be able to learn where our gaps are, but exposing them to the world help us learn even faster, and get help from the others as well. Facing your ignorance alone leads to stubborn knowledge that never takes action, but reveals your confusion without seeing it as a question that must be answered as soon as possible. As a conclusion, confronting your ignorance is very important in our daily work, especially when our purpose is to be successful in our professions.

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

Sprint 1 Retrospective

This past week was the end of our first Sprint for the Capstone class. It all went well, and I think we completed all out tasks successfully. I will write about my tasks and my overall impressions of this Sprint.

Tasks:                                                                                                                                                                

  1. Issue #21: Define Database Schema
    https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/checkout/Plan/issues/21#
    Creating a small UML diagram of possible database schema, open for further revisions later.
  2. Issue #6: Create UML Diagram for REST API Structure
    https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/checkout/Plan/issues/6
    As the name implies, creating a UML diagram for REST API structure for our project, open for further revisions later.
  3. Setup production Database
    https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/checkout/Plan/issues/11
    After deciding what our team will use as a database for the project we have made some preparations to make sure it is working correctly and we can do necessary operations with it.

What worked well?
In my opinion pretty much everything our group (BZPJ’s) planned on doing ended up fine and on time, when it comes to my tasks they were somewhat easy for now and not necessarily required a lot of time, in my opinion being able to use some of the knowledge from previously taken classes was a very good example that what we learn is useful in the “field” application. What I am also very grateful and happy about is the way our team was able to find time and place to meet regularly to be able to work on these tasks. With my busy schedule it was always challenging to have a team able to work within my time constraints.

What didn’t work well?

Comments. I think as a team we were not quite there yet when it came to work on this big group project that others will take over eventually. I also believe that some of my contributions to the team could be more, after this Sprint I’m not sure I have done enough.

What changes could be made to improve as a team?

As I have mentioned before, as a team we should work more on our comments and notes when it comes to working on GitLab and making sure that future participants will be able to trace our decisions and thought process, I believe we are simply not there yet but with some minor adjustments it will be ok. We also should work on our problem descriptions, we need to be more specific and detail oriented, in my opinion we have only used more generic wording.

What changes could be made to improve as an individual?

During this sprint I have felt that I have not contributed enough to the team, what I had to make were some diagrams, only the work on the database was somewhat challenging, even though most of it was handled by my teammate and I only helped with some of the parts. As an individual I also think that I should work on my free time management and schedule conflicts. I work full time and often I have only certain time frames to work on school projects and homework, but to be honest I also waste some of that time. Another thing I should probably work on more is to do more research on topics assigned to me, not only finding enough to get my portion completed. As my previous post said I need to Dig Deeper.

From the blog #CS@Worcester – Pawel’s CS Experience by Pawel Stypulkowski and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Dig Deeper

This pattern form “Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman” by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye is probably the scariest thing I read in this book so far. It describes how in order to be a good “craftsman” in software development one should be able to dig deeper into the knowledge about the problems they are working on. It shows you how one must try and be able to find more information about things in order not to be just a person who puts some code together and is what the book calls “programming by coincidence”.

This is a very interesting and intriguing pattern in my opinion but at the same time makes me feel as one of the people who just happened to code but do not know what they are talking about. It might just be my own feeling at the moment but nevertheless it is there. In my professional work I have always worked on very custom project and not very often things were reused which lead, at least in my case, to constantly only gaining surface knowledge of certain subjects. It is not easy to admit that I am probably not as knowledgeable as some of my colleagues, but I think this pattern is showing me how I might be able to fix this problem.

I am very much in agreement with what this pattern is describing, and in my own opinion a living example, even though I am constantly reading some new materials about my chosen field I still feel it is not enough and I should dig deeper to be able to stand out . Knowledge about a subject is always precious but just like the pattern describes if it is not deep enough it will not be really useful, and it might become a problem later on. One thing I definitely understand from this pattern and I like to think that I’m doing right is reading of the documentation and specifications, even though it might not be enough I think that this at least is somewhat redeeming for me.

This pattern is also somewhat problematic for reasons that sometimes getting more knowledge about subject is just plain boring and monotone, I know it sounds as an excuse, but I never heard about anybody excited to read some standards and specifications. Yes, it has to be done and it should be, but it is definitely not enjoyable.

From the blog #CS@Worcester – Pawel’s CS Experience by Pawel Stypulkowski and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Retrospective: Sprint-1

Links below for my work on Sprint 1 of the LibreFoodPantry project.
MongoDB spike:
https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/checkout/Plan/issues/11
The goal of this task was to preview MongoDb and determine whether or not it will be useful for the project.

Production DB:
https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/modules/visitmodule-tp/checkout/Plan/issues/8
The goal of this task was to create a working Database to match our schema and work with our Rest API.

My favorite part of the scrum framework was actually the integration of kanban. The mixture of the two frameworks really made the work environment productive, predictable, and understandable. My team members and I assigned roles respectively to the scrum framework guidelines, at least two members of the team would know how something is done so that only one member would not have sole knowledge of the task. This way it made it easy to spread the knowledge throughout the team without holding up productivity. If one team member was busy then often the other would be available, or would be in the near future. This team plan also made development quicker in a way that if you were stuck on a task, your fellow task member may have another way of figuring out the issue. Together you can overcome obstacles easier than on your own. A great example of this is when I was developing a Production Database that could be used with our Rest API. I was having trouble figuring out the java code for MongoDb queries. Setting up the connection wasn’t the main goal of the task but it was necessary to have an understanding of it to be sure that MongoDb was the database application we would use. The issue was querying dates and one team member and myself were using CalenderDate which worked, but it ended up being eight lines of code to set up. My other team member on the task figured out LocalDate can achieve the same success with only two lines of code. If I had been left to the task myself the code would be less clean and bulkier, but thanks to my team members different approach we have clean and concise code.

The only things that didn’t work so well was our activity on planning and taking notes on Gitlab. We did not plan in the best way that we could have for the sprint and were constantly editing our backlog and to do lists. We also scarcely posted notes and updates on Gitlab. We did complete our task frameworks in order to move them into the done board. However, we did not thoroughly record our progress on Gitlab. In this way it could be hard for a newcomer to understand the evolution of our issues and how we solved them. They would only see the beginning and end product which is not clear and understandable.

To improve as a team we need to break down our planning technique and make sure our issues are concise and weighted correctly. I think our only problem with this was that we planned last minute because we were unclear of what was expected. However, now that we know we should be able to plan better and make sure our to-do list is concise.

To improve as an individual I need to record my progress, mistakes and achievements on Gitlab more often. Frequent updates on Gitlab would allow a newcomer to see my process and avoid failures that I may have already attempted so that they don’t waste time on something that already is proven to not work. Perhaps they actually solve a failure that I had attempted but was not able to make functional. Without notes to address these topics then a newcomer would not be able to interact and understand our work.

From the blog cs@worcester – Zac's Blog by zloureiro and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Audio Feature Extraction

This week I’ve continued working on the application part of my Android application, but I’ve also started to “dig deeper” (apprenticeship pattern blog post coming soon) and learn a bit more about audio processing.

I started with general concepts of feature extraction a couple of months ago now. Understanding how to use Python libraries to extract features is simple enough, but actually understanding how they work and why they work is another story. This week’s research has revealed an underlying elegance to the concept of signal processing and helped me reach a higher level of understanding and excitement for this project.

The single best explanation has been a video by Youtuber 3Blue1Brown on Fourier Series. I recommend all of his channel because he has an elegant way of describing and visualizing every topic he speaks about. He helped me understand the beauty of Calculus, and in my process of digging deeper I wound up watching his video on the uncertainty principle which was surprisingly relevant to signal processing. Understanding the specifics of the math behind signals and waves, and knowing the fact that mathematical equations are a language used to describe straightforward physical phenomena is key. This knowledge makes daunting concepts easier to break down. Seeing the same concepts used in different contexts also helps solidify them in your mind. And if you’re implementing this in code, it will make it much easier to remember the necessary logical steps required to extract a feature.

This entire tangent (and however useful, it was an unexpected tangent) started with trying to better understand the types of feature extraction that are used in speech recognition. By the way, you know you’re digging deeper when an article with an estimated read time of 11 minutes takes you a few hours to get through with all the additional research.

And universally, as far as I can tell, the first step in signal processing and feature extraction is the Fourier transform, which is simply turning a raw audio signal into separate sine and cosine signals. I say simply, but as the 3Blue1Brown video states, this seems a bit like figuring out which colors make up a mixed up can of paint. It turns out, however, that clever math makes it quite obvious which summation of sine and cosine signals make up a complex signal. I encourage you to watch the video to understand why.

The summation of cosine and sine waves is considered the frequency domain, while the original signal is in the time domain. From the resulting frequency domain, the individual signals can be normalized by taking the log magnitude of the signals and performing an inverse Fourier transform.

This is a new concept called a cepstrum, and it is one of many possible transformations you can make on a signal to begin to analyze the data. Its usefulness comes from the ability to see changes in individual waves. Additional operations can be performed to reveal new insights into patterns in a signal. Determining which if these works best is part of the process.

These individual transformations would be very interesting to implement in code. I may not get a chance to do so for this project, but the understanding of the underlying operations will help in using existing libraries.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Inquiries and Queries by James Young and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.