Session 12

Project Development, Day 3

810:188
Agile Software Development

Daily Stand-Up Meeting

We go around the room and report:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What do you plan to do today?
• What is in your way?

Everyone reported on the progress they made last time. Obstacles: Lack of documentation in code. Need for input from customer.

Several pairs noticed the lack of an on-site customer. When developers have questions, being able to get answers soon can save a lot of uncertainty and wasted work.

Development

Everyone: pair off, check out a clean copy of the project repository:

    svn checkout https://student.cs.uni.edu/svn/810188-May10

... grab a story, and write a test.

Things I noticed:

• The coach let teams remain in the same pairs today, working to complete yesterday's stories.


• We are bogging down on these stories. Why? I think this is a result of at least two things unrelated to XP proper:
  • a lack of domain knowledge
  • a lack of basic design knowledge and experience

  The customer can help with the domain knowledge. The coach can help with design knowledge (for example, how to decompose a method that filters a collection of account entries into a linear search loop and a for-all loop).

  For some of you, there is also a lack of Ruby knowledge that will lessen over time.



• Handling error cases is a big part of writing real systems! They are not the core of the system, or even a huge part of the code. But we often bump into "What happens if the user tries to create an invalid XXXXX?"

Keep in mind that each team member should be doing a couple of units of work on the system out of class every day. We can move and shift hours around for pairing, so use your time alone to to study some of the Ruby you need, or some OO design.

Wrap Up

• Homework. None.


• Reading. Just a quick note -- read It's not a promise, it's a guess at 37signals.


• Programming. Keep learning Ruby, especially any language features you encountered today but didn't understand well. You may also work on the team project but only with a partner. We will continue to do pair programming for all team code.