Week 8 Retrospectives
Group Status Report
Status
Morale
Inidividual Status Reports
Alberto
- What went well:
We are approaching the last stretch. This past week the coders worked hard to complete the MVP by the deadline we had set as the end of this week. The only thing pending is some tests on a few features. It was great to meet with the professor, as we got a lot of interesting feedback and helpful tips on what is coming in the next weeks. In particular, the professor allowed us to give him a mock MVP demo to practice for the final demo.
- What I learned this week:
This week I mostly learned that it is very important to establish a good relationship of trust with your customer. A lot of times when developing one can forget to dedicate some time to meet with the customer. However, that is key to remind the team of what we are here for and what the ultimate goal is. In our case, our customer is also our professor so he gives us a lot of useful advice.
- What can I do to improve:
I feel like between everything that is going on with school and my personal life, there are many things in this project I could have done better but I didn't because it wasn't the only thing I was focusing on. For these last weeks, I want to make sure to revisit everything we worked on to make sure we deliver it in the best way possible.
- Inidividual morale:
Feeling good because the MVP is almost done and because we are starting the last steps. At the same time, I am feeling more stressed because we do have two weeks to wrap everything up, and there is the pressure to make sure everything is good. I do not want to have any regreats or forget about anything.
Alex
- What went well:
This week, the team made a lot of progress implementing a user list, the ability to search for users, as well as room creation. On top of this, tests were generated, as well. Lasltly, we also sketched out a plan for the last stretch of the project, which includes: adding end-to-end tests, generating code documentation, and polishing up our current UI and existing artifacts. Our MVP is essentially done at this point, with some testing pending. As has been the case in previous weeks, everyone has been accountable, friendly, and hard-working.
- What I learned this week:
The biggest technical thing I learned this week was mocking with Jest. In a previous week, I encountered it for the first time, but I think this past week I made progress in understanding it much better. There is still the question of what should and should not be mocked, but I now at least feel more comfortable with the how to. The biggest soft skills thing I learned about myself this week is that I wasn't approaching pair programming with steps in the right order. Although in previous weeks I would look into tools, languages, and libraries before working collaboratively, this was never enough to equip me to be able to hit the ground running. I learned that when a new tool, language, or library is on the table, researching it before collaborating is not enough to prepare me to effectively collaborate. I definitely need to first work with something new hands on and do some trial and error to gain some domain knowledge and understand it a bit from a working perspective before I am able to collaborate with someone else. This realization is a result of going through the trials and errors of writing a unit test that mocks Firebase SDK functions. Before doing this, simply reading examples was not enough prep before collaborating.
- What can I do to improve:
Now that I've gotten my hands a bit dirtier with writing tests that mock Firebase SDK calls, I think it would be good to better understand where and when it is and is not good to mock functions. I feel that a balance must be struck. Also, there are probably places where we should be mocking component methods or entire components as opposed to the Firebase SDK calls that they use. Currently, I think an integration test that I wrote is a bit implementation-dependent, which isn't sustainable (i.e. if the code changes, the test will have to change, too). This is likely a sign that there is a better design.
- Inidividual morale:
The central piece to my individual morale over the course of this quarter has been: am I making meaningful contributions? Compared to the last few weeks, I feel decently better on this front this week since I put in a significant amount of time to better understand mocking the Firebase SDK and generating some unit tests that utilize it. Outside of this, I'm a little apprehensive moving forward when thinking about our time budget - we have to integrate JS docs and end-to-end tests, learn how to write end-to-end tests, polish our UI, polish our documentation, and lightly rehearse for presenting our product. On top of this, we have assignments and (personally) have to schedule in time to study for the comprehensive exam. It seems that we won't be doing the final showcase until the end of finals week, which buys us more time than I anticipated, so at least there is that. After putting in significant time this past week, I feel stretched a little thin and worried my responsibilities outside of the project will continue to take a backseat. All things considered though, I think our project is in a good spot and we're making good progress. I have faith that our team will continue to do quality work over the next couple weeks.
Chang
- What went well:
We finished user list and search by username functions. We also finished unit test of these two features.
- What I learned this week:
Learned how to write tests for frontend component.
- What can I do to improve:
Get down to create a new workflow for jsdoc deployment.
- Inidividual morale:
Our teammates did great work.
Dian
- What went well:
We finished the task of search by username and figured out some jest testing problems and done with the all the tests. Everything is good for now. We also refactored the testing code to be more concise and we are proud of us.
- What I learned this week:
I learned some jsdoc details and found it very helpful to document our code. However, it does take me some time to figure out the proper way to document different variables such as null or undefied since there is not much online resource for those kinds of parameters or return values.
- What can I do to improve:
I should learn more about jest since some codes work in one place but not in other places. There should be rules on how to format our testing code and which chucks should be put in which places. I should also learn more about the jsdoc and different styles on different functions with various kinds of parameters and return values.
- Inidividual morale:
Everything keeps going well and I feel confident in our team. We should and will have a perfect application soon enough.
Edward
- What went well:
This week for me has been fairly rough just trying to balance my other commitments with development time. On the otherhand, I was able to rely on my teammates to help with code review and testing. The two big milestones that I was able to get done this week included room creation for chat rooms and finalizing the tests for messaging.
- What I learned this week:
I learned a lot about jest testing, especially how to mock different requests to firebase. I also learned more about our CI pipeline and different git nuances.
- What can I do to improve:
I think I need to spend more time reevaluating my time commitments and ensure that I am able to meet my deadlines by the times that I set them. Otherwise, I should be more transparent and explain why certain tasks are being finished on a later date!
- Inidividual morale:
Excited to finish out the project!
Jason
- What went well:
We developed more features and added testing for the features we added. Testing is a bit tricky but we solved it in the end. We have finished the MVP of our project.
- What I learned this week:
I learned more about testing, frontend, and testing in software development.
- What can I do to improve:
I think we might need to get in touch with the customer (the professor) more.
- Inidividual morale:
Feeling pretty good right now, we are on track!