Week 10 Retrospectives

Group Status Report

Status

Morale

Inidividual Status Reports

Alberto

• What went well:
  

  Because we finished the app functionality in week 9, this week we were able to work on minor changes, overall UI polishes, and generally perfecting our app and artifacts. The only feature we added was emoji support, but we did that because we knew we could afford it with time and it wouldn't take us long. Overall we are seeing the results of planning well early on: we are not stressing about the finishing touches. Regardless, next week will still be intense as we have to complete the final report and final presentation. Because we are doing the best we can to deliver a great product, we will be working hard putting everything together.

• What I learned this week:
  

  This week I learned that good planning early on, along with being realistic with the expectations of what we can achieve, really helps with reducing stress levels in the later phases of the development process. I also learned that no matter how much design up-front you do, you will still have to revisit the artifacts in the end.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  If we had had details about what the final submission for the project would have looked like, I could have planned our next week (finals week) better, and that would have decreased our stress levels. However, the team is still managing and we will be heading towards a great final presentation! I guess in these cases thinking ahead is a skill that is very important to have. Definitely meeting with the professor for a practice demo helped us have a better idea of what was required of us.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  I am extremely happy for the progress made, stressed about next week as we are approaching delivery.

Alex

• What went well:
  

  This week, our team put a lot of effort into improving user experience and documentation. We also met with the professor (our client, and one of ur users) and got some great feedback on the status of our project and pointers for our final presentation. Although I worked on a UML diagram for our code, I believe most of my time and effort went into reviewing PRs for the documentation updates being submitted. While they may have involved many changes required by developers, I'm happy with where the quality of our documentation is, and I'm happy with the thoroughness I put in to reviewing.

• What I learned this week:
  

  This week I learned about Code Climate, and what code smells and maintainability scores are. After Jason incorporated this into our project, I got to see how Code Climate enumerated potential issues with our code and suggestions for refctoring. One of the more interesting smells reported was that we had a function with too high of a cognitive complexity! I can really see the usefulness of something like a maintainability score, which could really help us in the long run. This week, I also learned about the C4 model for the first time.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  I was tasked with coming up with a UML diagram to describe our code. It was extremely complex, and the teacher in me was screaming at how abstruse it was in trying to dissect it. Thankfully I got some help from Edward on making a diagram with a higher level of abstraction. I think that I am usually good at communicating things in a clear way both verbally and textually, but I think I can really stand to improve on representing things in an asthetically pleasing way. In addition, after learning about the existence of the C4 model this week, I would really like to educate myself on the format. Because it seems like a collection of code representations with varying levels of abstraction, the teacher in me (this time) is very excited about this.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  No cap, my stress level is off the charts balancing remaining tasks for the project and the comprehensive exam. Although I feel we were really on track last week, coordinating all of the remaining documentation has made this week more stressful than I expected. However, all hands are on deck, and what we have is looking solid. I know we'll be able to pull this off in these remaining hours.

Chang

• What went well:
  

  This week we finished demo presentation and the professor provided lots of advice. We did UI polishing and fixed some bugs of user list and chat message window.

• What I learned this week:
  

  Use code climate to generate maintainability and test coverage report. Refactor API functions to improve maintainability level.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  Continue to work on documentation.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  I am looking forward to our final presentation now.

Dian

• What went well:
  

  We are finishing up the project as adding Readme, jsdoc, badges, updating documents, UI polishing and more. We are also writing the final report and preparing the final presentation. The web app is working and the professor seems to have confident in our app.

• What I learned this week:
  

  I learned how to incorporate type definitions in jsdoc and how it looks like after deploying on a website. I also learn to set up the Cypress dashboard to record our Cypress tests and get Cypress badges from it.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  I should start more often and early to do all my tasks and help out my teammate more since it's the final week. If I have time, I would also like to learn how to write description on the type definition page in jsdoc.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  It's final week and we made it! I'm confident on our team project and presentation! I hope we will be the top one team of the class and "show off" our chat app! I love this team and we did accomplish something together!

Edward

• What went well:
  

  This week I was able to refactor my code for the landing page, adjust the UI for our chat header to make the logout position more intuitive, and add in a new favicon for our chat application. I'm really appreciatin all the time and effort we spent on the build pipeline to assure the cleanliness and quality of our code. Searching for the right component and making changes within the code base is very simple.

• What I learned this week:
  

  CSS is hard. Though the language adds lots of unique features to help with webpage layout. I also learned that it is sometimes easier to just hop on a call with a teammate to discuss a potential question/issue rather than trying to rack my head around it for a few hours. Also, didn't know this but React has built in security and all string variables in Views get automatically escaped!

• What can I do to improve:
  

  Overall, I think our team is in a really great spot! Last thing we have to do is communicate well and finish out our final presentation/report.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  Feeling good! :yeehaw:

Jason

• What went well:
  

  I refactored a lot of code based off code climate's maintainability score. I also added Emoji to our chat. All went pretty smoothly.

• What I learned this week:
  

  I learned about Code Climate and what it does. The maintainability score is looking very promising to me and I should use it in the future for other projects as well.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  I probably should have brought up the idea that we need to assign time for the final report/demo so that we don't feel as much pressure as we do right now. Given that we have finals and final report/demo due at the same week.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  One more step, almost there. Let's finish strong!