CSC322.01 2015F, Class 03: Partner Meetings

Overview

Preliminaries

Picnic!
Alumni visits confirmed for the 17th. Plan on lunch and dinner with alums, if at all possible!
Can today's two teams transport themselves, or should I attempt to acquire an auto?
Work for next week:
- Everyone - Overviews of existing codebase - questions, ideas, notes, etc.
  - Resource bank can look at the food pantry code.
- User stories.
- Whatever you think will be useful to get ready for your first meeting with the mentors.

What are they?
- An account of what a user wants to do with the system. "As a BLANK I want to BLANK so that I can BLANKETY BLANK.
- As a mother of three I want to search for cheap groceries so that I can feed my family.
- The language you use is important!
- As a grant reviewer I want to be able to review multiple applications for multiple grants efficiently so that I can help select a grant recipient.
- As a parent, I want reminders of expected appointments so that I can make those appointments and maintain eligibility.
- As a potential board member, I want to be able to describe my skills so that organizations can identify my skills.
- As a potential board member, I want to be able to submit my resume, so that I don't have to retype things in describing my skills.
How do we build them?
- Talk to our clients. (And listen to our clients.) (Sometimes simulate our clients.)
- Synthesize into something more concise.
- Make sure that they are the right size. Often break into smaller stories.
- Discuss with client to make sure that they represent what the client wants.
How do we use them?
- Prioritize work.
- Sometimes break into tasks.
- Think more closely about audience.
- Track your project - Let's you see how much work you've accomplished (or that you've accomplished work).
- Estimate your work.

You are building the Grinnell online teaching system (GOTS) for the Ruby programming language

Whole group question: Who are your audiences?
- Grinnell students - use the system
- Professors/A - Keep track of student learning
- Professors/B - Content providers
- Any students, anywhere, anytime
- CS novices
- CS students
- Trustees / Administrators (are these just stakeholders)
- Professional Software Engineers
- Alums
We will break into individual groups to conduct user interviews. NBB and I will simulate certain kinds of users. Others of you will have to simulate others.
We will come back together with the stories we have gathered.
Strive for relatively small/narrow stories. Not "As a student, I want to learn." or "As a College official, I want to publicize the College so that I can recruit more full-pay students." (Well, maybe the latter.)
Some stories:
- "As a teacher, I want to be able to send email to my students who have fallen behind, encouraging them to keep trying and catch up."
- "As a first-year football player, I want to explore whether or not I am interested in CS."
Some concerns
- Moving forward into "I see us doing this" rather than listening carefully to the stories and asking them to say more.

Reread the r&ecaute;umeés of the folks in your group, keeping the following questions in mind.

What story does the r&ecaute;umeé tell? (If you had to summarize the person in two sentences based on this r&ecaute;umeé, what would you say?
What is something in this r&ecaute;umeé that you might adapt for your own r&ecaute;umeé?
What makes this r&ecaute;umeé stand out from the others you read?
What are two things you would improve in this r&ecaute;umeé?

What are important questions that you have for your client?
Some starting ones:
- "What do you see as the primary mission of your organization?"
- "We are new" (or "this is a new project"); "Can you describe the goals of the project from your perspective?"
- "What things do you think it is most important for the project to do?"
- ...

Some students will head off to work with their clients.

The remaining students will look at global issues in their r&ecaute;umeés.

Superhero names with alliteration are good; change your name.
- Don't take career advice from Peter Parker or Matt Murdock or Bruce Banner or Bonald Blake
Be consistent in your formatting - Don't make your resume look sloppy.
- May be particularly important for computer science students - sloppy resumes can imply sloppy code.
Find ways to condense repeated employers
- E.g., one heading for the employer and subheaders underneath
Use formatting tricks to highlight important information
- E.g., boldface the languages that you know; make your position more readable than your employer (although for some employers, it could be good to have their name. software developer at AMAZON CLOUD SERVICES!!!
Condense to one page ...?

Conducted by CLS. - Service, Social Justice, Sivic Engagement, and Stuff

Know when your clients are too enthusiastic about going along with you. You have a responsibility to make sure that you push to hear their requirements.
Be sure to know how people want to communicate with you - in our cases, everyone seems to be comfortable with email.
Setting up regular times for email or whatever is useful.
Some of our clients are very busy and very understaffed.
Lots of things are done by word of mouth in our community.