Terrificus - Development

We will be using an agile process during the development of this project. This will include:

• Working in Sprints
• Using GitHub
• Setting up Continuous Integration
• Using a project management tool such as Github Projects or Trello.
• Conducting Story Grooming meetings
• Doing daily Stand Ups
• Demoing your project to your Project Manager
• Holding Team Retros

Sprints

In agile processes, a sprint is a single cycle of development. The most common length of a sprint is two weeks. During this cycle, teams will assign features, develop those features, demo their work, get feedback, and retro.

Sprint 1: User Interface and Microservice Spike

• Begin: Monday of Week 4
• End: Monday of Week 5
• Deliverables:
  • Working User Interface - This interface should touch on all the features of your MVP. You should not build out your microservice yet. Rather, you should mock out the data you want returned from your microservice. Focusing on the user interface first will force you to think through what value your product is delivering through your features.
  • Microservice Spike - Although we won’t be building out the full microservice just yet, we do want to have a proof of concept that we can build it. This should be as simple as a single Ruby file. You should not spend a lot of time on this spike. What you are aiming to create is a proof of concept that you can supply the data that is needed on the front end.
    • What is a Micro Service?
      • Video-What are microservices?
      • Microservice Article

Sprint 2: Final Product

• Begin: Monday Week 5
• End: Friday Week 5
• Deliverables:
  • Polished User Interface - This should complete all the features discussed in your MVP.
  • Working Microservice

Project Check Ins

In addition to the End of Sprint Demos, you will also have two project check ins

• Check In 1
  • Wednesday or Thursday of Week 4
  • During this meeting, you should be prepared to review the artifacts from your inception: MVP, wireframes, story board.
  • During this meeting, your team will draw out the architecture of your application
• Check In 2
  • Wednesday Week 5
  • During this check in, you will discuss with your project manager what the expectations are for your final demo on Friday
  • You can also use this check in as an opportunity to ask any questions and get help for the final few days of the project.

GitHub

• Commit Frequently
• Make branches and submit Pull Requests for each new feature.
  • DO NOT commit directly to master
  • Keep your PRs as small as possible (one feature per PR)
  • Your PR should be review by at least one team member before it is merged.
  • Tag your Project Manager if you have questions. DM your Project Manager letting them know you have tagged them.

Continuous Integration

• Set up a CI Server
• Timebox this activity to 2 hours. If you don’t get it working in 2 hours, create a branch with your work, but don’t merge it.

Story Grooming

• You should be using a project management tool to keep track of your stories.
• When doing a “Story Grooming” you should:
  • Make sure that the project board is up to date
  • Look over the current backlog of stories and decide if you want to make any changes
    • Are there any stories that need to be updated?
    • Are there any stories that need to be added?
  • Assign stories to individual team members or pairs
    • Be clear on what it is that everyone should be doing
• You should be Story Grooming every 1-2 days.

Daily Stand Ups

• A Stand Up is a very brief (hence, physically standing up) meeting for the development team to keep in touch about what everyone is doing.
• During the stand up, each member of the team will take 1 - 2 minutes to answer these questions:
  • What have you been working on?
  • What are you going to be working on?
  • Is anything blocking you?
• Every weekday you should send your PM a summary of the day’s stand up.

Retros

• End of Week 1
  • Students should discuss what went well, what didn’t go well, and what they would like to change for the second half of the project. Students should use their DTR as a guideline for this discussion and be willing to reaffirm or change any expectations that weren’t met in the first week.
• End of Project
  • Students should discuss what went well, what didn’t go well, and what feedback they have for their team members using this template. Each group should make a copy of the template and submit to their instructors.