Overview

• Preliminaries.
  • Admin.
  • Upcoming Work.
  • Extra Credit.
  • Questions.
• Planning for Client Meetings.
• Software Engineering: An Overview.
• Some Important Terms.
• Thoughts from the Readings.

Preliminaries

Admin

• We now have a class mentor. Welcome to Sooji Son, who will be with us on Mondays and Fridays, and will also set up an evening hour. She should be contacting you to ask about the best times.
• I updated the Web site today. Let me know if you notice anything broken.
  • Thanks for volunteering to write unit tests.
• I expect that some of today's conversation will continue into Friday and maybe even Monday.
• A portion of today's CSC 321 will be devoted to CSC 322 issues.

Upcoming Work

• For Friday: Finish the Rails Tutorial Chapter 3 work. (You should be done, but I'm just reminding you.)
• For Friday: Hartl, Chapter 4. (Ruby Review: Almost no new programming!)
• For Friday: SaaSBook, Sections 3.5-3.8. (Week 2 in EdX)
• 10pm Thursday: Reading Journal (on Hartl)
  • Message subject: CSC 321 Journal for Day 7 (Your Name)
  • You have now read three different introductions to Ruby (the Codecademy course, the SaaSbook, and Hartl). What do you see as the major differences between the approaches? What approach do you find most compelling?
  • Now that you've seen a broader introduction to Ruby, what do you consider the most exciting aspects of working with Ruby?
  • What is metaprogramming? In what other languages you've learned can one metaprogram?
  • What aspect or aspects of Ruby confused you the most? Try to explain them in your own words.
    
    • I'll try to talk about all of the confusing aspects you, but I identify might also challenge you to explain things to each other.

Good Things to Do

• Convo, September 8 (Thursday, 11:00 a.m., JRC 101): Roberto Gonzales on "From Undocumented to DACAmented: Understanding Legal Status in a New Policy Context".
  
  • Get a free copy of his book Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America by visiting Macy 203 during regular office times.
• Learning from Alumni Thursday: The Job Board Doctor
• CS Extras Thursday: PM on PL
• SHACS is offering Question, Persuade, & Refer (QPR) training for students, faculty, and staff – this is suicide prevention training run by a national institute. They’re first holding one session with a cap of 30 people for September 13th in ARH 120 from 11 – 12 noon. Email Toby if you're interested.
• CS Table Tuesday: ???
• CS Extras Tuesday night 7:30: Google
• Mock Interviews Tuesday

Questions

Planning for Client Meetings

• You will have about twenty minutes with your partners. How do you want to spend those twenty minutes?
• Talk in your group. (Those of you not in a group sit in with a group.)
• Then share with the broader group.

Plans

• Introductions. Names. Years. Maybe where you are from.
• Ask about them.
• Ask about their organization.
• Sam is both the least organized person you will ever meet and a cruel bastard and thought we should have the pleasure of learning about this project without sufficient preparation, because that's a real world experience. So please bear with us if we seem insufficiently familiar with the project.
• What would you like to accomplish in this meeting?
• Ask about contact information.
  • How best to contact them.
  • Window of response.
  • When to recontact them.
  • How much lead time.
  • Given your experience with past teams, how often do you think we should meet?
• Share contact information!
• You have much more experience working with Grinnell students than we have working with you. What has worked well and what has worked less well with previous teams?
• What do they understand about the current state of the project?
  • Tell me about the project from your perspective.
  • How far/close last semester's students got?
  • How does this project serve your organization?
• What do they need/want/like in the project.
  • Our plan is to have an MVP up and running this semester.
  • We are using a slightly different approach, tail-heavy.
• Do you have questions for us?
• Set up a next meeting!

Software Engineering

Last semester, I asked students to do these questions in small groups and then in large groups. This semester, I'm going to try giving a quick lecture on each issue and then ask you to ask questions and fill in missing details. (Some missing details will be intentional; others will be unintentional.)

• What do you see as the main steps in one iteration of waterfall, spiral, and agile (or at least XP-style agile)
• What do you see as the important agile practices?
• Why do people like agile?
• Why don't people like agile?

One iteration

• Gather requirements from client
• Turn those requirements into a specification
• Verify spec with client.
• Plan to implement.
• Implement.
• Test.
• Release.
• Maintain.

The three mechanisms differ in

• The length and number of iterations.
  • Waterfall: one iteration, multiple years
  • Spiral: A few iterations, multiple months
  • Agile: Many iterations, two-weeks
• The ways many of the steps are done.
  • Waterfall: Spec is a large, formal document
  • Agile: Spec is a series of user stories
• Timing of testing
• Role of maintenance

What do Patterson and Fox tell us about agile vs. Waterfall vs. spiral?

• In project after project after project, waterfall has failed!
• One of the problems is that you can't predict everything in advance. Agile methodologies let you adapt.
• It turns out that agile works best with small (and sometimes medium) teams.

Agile is a series of connected practices

• Different models of agile: SCRUM, XP, ...
• Short iterations
• Focus on working code, rather than big picture issues.
• Pair programming
• Test-driven development (or at least test-centric development)
• Refactor!
• Regular communication with the client
• Reprioritize regularly
• Stand-ups

Important Terms

• Software as a Service
• Service-Oriented Architecture
• ...

Thoughts from the Readings