Organisational and schedule methods

In today’s lecture Juan mentioned some ways to be organised within the group. So, I did more research into it:

Gantt charts

A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart developed as a production control tool in 1917 by Henry L. Gantt, and American engineer and social scientist. They are frequently used in project management, a Gantt chart provides a graphical illustration of a schedule that helps to plan, coordinate, and track specific tasks in a project.

A Gantt chart is a visual way of seeing exactly what needs to be done for a project from start to finish. It is helpful for organising exactly what needs to be done and showing it in a specific simple way. 

You can make Gantt charts on Excel. 

Waterfall model

The waterfall model is a sequential design process in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards through the phases of Conception, Initiation, Analysis, Design, Construction, Testing, Production/Implementation, and Maintenance. 

I found this list off of this website: https://airbrake.io/blog/sdlc/waterfall-model

The 6 stages are:

-       Requirements: During this initial phase, the potential requirements of the application are methodically analysed and written down in a specification document that serves as the basis for all future development. The result is typically a requirements document that defines what the application should do, but not how it should do it.

-       Analysis: During this second stage, the system is analysed in order to properly generate the models and business logic that will be used in the application.

-       Design: This stage largely covers technical design requirements, such as programming language, data layers, services, etc. A design specification will typically be created that outlines how exactly the business logic covered in analysis will be technically implemented.

-       Coding: The actual source code is finally written in this fourth stage, implementing all models, business logic, and service integrations that were specified in the prior stages.

-       Testing: During this stage, QA, beta testers, and all other testers systematically discover and report issues within the application that need to be resolved. It is not uncommon for this phase to cause a “necessary repeat” of the previous coding phase, in order for revealed bugs to be properly squashed.

-       Operations: Finally, the application is ready for deployment to a live environment. The operations stage entails not just the deployment of the application, but also subsequent support and maintenance that may be required to keep it functional and up to date.

Rubber duck programming

Rubber duck programming is for when you are having an issue with the software or coding. So, you have an inanimate object, or animal (commonly a rubber duck), that you can talk the problem you are having to. This is usually used as when you speak an issue out loud it helps you to think out the problem. 

The steps to do are:

-       Explain your problem and goals with the project. 

-       Explain what is not working and what you have done to try and stop the issue.

-       If you haven’t figured it out yet, explain it in finer details.

-       Find your solution. 

Scrum meetings

Scrum meetings are quick meetings that are held daily, or frequently. They are done so people can quickly say what they are working on and any issues that they are having. Then after the meeting if people need to speak over a topic in more depth, they will have a separate meeting. 

These meetings would be useful to have for our group projects as they make it so everyone knows what each person is doing, as well as meaning that nobody can get away with doing little or no work. 

Post-it notes

Post-it notes can be very effective for organisation. You can use post-it notes to create Gannt charts.

One way to use post-it notes is to create a timeline of the project. To make this you draw a grid to make a calendar, then write in important milestones on particular dates. Then you write down all the tasks needed to achieve each milestone on separate post-its.

Another way is to make a Kanban. Kanban’s are a way to track complex projects, by having multiple stages and splitting tasks into each section, as well as having them in sections for if they need to be done, are being worked on, and finished.

I found this on the post-its website:

1.     To start, you'll need a smooth surface a marker and Post-it Notes, one colour for each member of your team.

2.     Create columns by evenly spacing four notes of the same colour across the top of your poster board. Write “Owner” on the first, “To-Do” on the second, “In-Process” on the third and “Done” on the fourth.

3.     Assign a different coloured note to each member of your team. Place these notes in the “Owner” column to easily denote each team member’s tasks.

4.     Ask everyone to write down the names of their projects and tasks on notes in their assigned colour and place them in the “To-Do” column.

5.     Each team member should select a task to start with and place it in the “In-Process” section. Participants update the status of tasks by moving their notes to the right until they're in the "Done" column.