Going back to work!!
After a brief 'kit-kat' moment, a.k.a relax period, our group has gone back to work. We have divided the tasks of the STD (Software Transfer Document) between the members of the team, and also the fourth BPR (Bi-weekly progress report).
We have a question regarding the STD, we know that a User Manual and a Developer one is needed, but do we need to use screenshots in the user manual? I think that it can be a very graphical and easy way to explain the users how to do the things, but we are not so sure.
If someone can answer it could be great, thanks.
As of yet, we haven't got any news about the SVVP, so we are supposing we have passed it or our customer is waiting until new year to send us the review. Anyway, it does not affect our schedule, 'cos until the 9th er don't have to send the last DDD version (is going to be the same as the prefinal, that's the reason we put so much work on it) and the 12th we have to send the STD and BPR.
After that, there is only one document left, the PHD that is a summary of all the BPR already delivered; thus, we are happy with the current workload, after nine very stressfull weeks.
We are back!!!
Cheers
Nieves
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Hello people:
This is a christmas post to wish a merry christmas and a happy new year to everyone that read us and also to those that don't.
In order to be more international:
Bad SW update in Microsoft Office!!
Just now, while reading the last post of the blog MELIDS (see The others section) I have remembered that I wanted to talk about the new Microsoft Office 2007.
Everyone who knows me, know that I am a pro-windows fan, but in this case I have to say stop. Based on what SE-3, SE-2, SE-1 and all the other subjects about knowledge acquisition, have shown me, it's that when you develop a SW project you must take into account what the user needs and wants and not do some showy application or interface that people is going to get frustrated with.
This is the case of the last Microsoft Officec 2007, over all Power Point and Word. Almost all the people that I know and try to work with them, get mad and shut off the computer where it is installed and try to do it again with an older version of Office like 2002 or 2003. Why??
Simple, because nobody can really understand the interface, you get lost, you don't find the icons or the functionalities. And if you save without really looking, it saves the doc into a new format called .docx or something like that.
So when you try to open it in your personal computer you can't.
This is my example of a very bad SW update; people don't like it, and if WE (engineering students) can not really get it, how are the normal users do it?? )
Please follow the rule:
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools". Douglas Adams
Thanks
Nieves
Audit!!
Hello everyone:
Although we though that if we did the selling we didn't have an audit, that was a wrong assumption of our part. We have to do it also.
The audit consists on recording a CD (good that it's before the canon law is in use) with all the repository of the project: folders, old versions of documents, etc.
Then the customer or in this case the auditor will tell us the result on the audit and how we have to change some documents.
That's all, so finally it's not a lot of trouble, and the CD has already been delivered to the auditor.
Hope we get good results.
Cheers
Nieves
P.S I am on holidays break, if someone wants to read a book about SE, this seems good enough (it could be a christmas presents ;-) ) :
Title: Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World
Authors: Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt
Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
Chapters: Excerpts from Introduction and Chapter 1
ISBN: 097451408X; Copyright © 2006 The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC.
Huge Discovery!!!
Hello bloggers:
Today I have realised a very important fact, but first I have to explain the situation.
This last month, I have been in some job interviews (yeah, I know, bu that's not the point), anyway in everyone of them, they have asked me:
Review of the DDD and SVVP comments
Hello again!
Today we had another review regarding the huge changes we had to make in the previous version of the DDD and I am happy to inform everyone that this time, the customer was really happy with it; so we don't have to make any changes from the final delivery of this document. That time we can use it in other documents.
Also today we sent the first draft of the SVVP document; and in this case we had a little problem with it, because of some 'communication issues', let's say. But finally and thanks to the hard work of our team, the document could be delivered before deadline (Today at 1 p.m., Madrid time).
So now we have begun our christmas holidays for this project. But before we go, we are going to divide a little work for each member, so they don't get lazy with all the food and parties and then we have a not so tight schedule.
But we are happy, because the worst of a software project has passed.
Congratulations Team
Your project manager
Nieves
How did the selling go?
Hello people:
The selling was mmmmm... interesting is a good word. It was my first one, so I didn't know what to expect. But I had a great time listening to the elevator pitches and when we had to show our presentation, we were really nervous.
At the end, we had some mistmatches but in general it went well. I don't know if we sold the product or not; but the important thing is that now we know what we can meet in an event like this.
One of my mistakes was about the SW methodology in Mexico, because I though there was none, but apparently it exist as is something like PROMOVER or PROVER or so. But I have searched again in the Internet, and I have not found anything related to that. So I believe what the customer told me, because he was from Mexico, but I didn't find it.
Anyway, we did it and now it's in the past; yesterday we delivered the pre-final version of the DDD and tonight or tomorrow morning we will deliver the SVVP or Tests.
This week the schedule has been changed, so now we are going to have reviews on Monday and Tuesday because our customer can not meet with us on Thursday, so we accomodate his needs as best as we can.
And then it'll be christmas break; in that time, our development team will keep on working to finish the last 2 documents. So then we have time off after the break.
Post more tomorrow after the review.
Cheers
Nieves
Huge Review of the DDD
Hello everyone:
Yesterday we had a meeting with our customer about the DDD or Detailed Design Document, and as predicted the complaints were important. Although the problems can be summarized in 3 points:
Reflection exercise about the whole project
At this point in the development of the project, we can say that we are almost finished with it, or at least, that the most complex and time consumming part is done.
That does not imply that we are going to begin being lazy about it, but now we have a clear idea of the project and the documents left are a recompilation of the work done up to this moment.
It's true that everything can fall down, but I don't think so, because if we have worked hard all these weeks(10), then we are not going to let everything go down the river in the 4 weeks left.
My general idea of the project is that we have realized that not everything is 'pink' or ideal; and that we must take responsabilities of our actions, and also if we are working in a group we have to be there for the others and left the differences apart. That does not mean that we don't have an opinion, it's more I know that I am stubborn sometimes; but when if you explain your opinions giving proofs and reasons, it's okay and an agreement is reached.
Another important aspect that this project has shown me; it's that a document TAKES HOURS and hours and hard work. And that a simple thing like a dot in a document means more that what I though it could mean.
So we will see how it goes, now that we begin the last part of the project, because we have done 75% of the project and time.
But up to this moment, I am quite content with the work done.
Nieves
3rd BPR and ADD Final Draft
Hello or goodnight readers! Yesterday we delivered the third BPR without any problems, we are going okay based on the schedule, but I am sure in the next one we are going to change it a little bit because of the selling.
Also today we delivered the last draft of the ADD, mainly is the same one as last one but adding a new operation in a component and rephrasing some parts that were left forgotten. But anyway, we will have to wait and see how it goes.
Also we are preparing now the selling an tomorrow before the meeting with the customer for the review of the DDD (we will explain tomorrow), we are going to decide who is going to do the elevator pitch and how the selling is going to be, who is going to say what, and all that jazz.
So we are in for a busy week in the project, because don't forget the SVVP or test document. Than we haven't begun yet.
So we will explain more later on.
Goodnight
Nieves
Elevator Pitch
Hello people!
While looking for information about elevator pitch in order to do a good job next thursday; I found this great web page. It is a summary of a whole book about this topic: Elevator Pitch 101.
In it an idea that I found quite interesting and that it changed what I though about what I had to prepare is:
One reason why so many people deliver completely ineffective elevator pitches is they don’t understand the purpose of an elevator pitch. They act like the purpose of an elevator pitch is to close the deal while in truth the purpose of an elevator pitch is to just interest The Audience in continuing to talk.
No more, and no less.
So now, that I know that important topic I can concentrate on what to tell following the rule of the 8 Cs:
First draft of the DDD and group multitasking!!!
Hello everybody, we have hot news to explain to all of you.
As of today, we have delivered the first draft of the DDD and this document has a total of 153 pages, based on the granularity of the component. We almost freaked out when we realised it, so I hope when the customer reads it, he has a drink near him, haha.
Another important aspect is that this holidays break we have to do a lot of job, because we have to deliver the final version of the ADD on sunday, on saturday it's the turn of the third BPR and meanwhile we have to work on the selling, the elevator pitch and also begin planning the SVVP. So as you see lots of work.
Based on these problems, we have decided to multitask or better to delegate the work in mini-groups. Some people is going to do the BPR, some other take care of the final revision of the ADD, also others will think about the selling and some will begin planning the SVVP.
We don't know how it is going to be, but by monday; the BPR and the ADD are out of our hands, so the selling and the SVVP will be a group issue.
So wish us luck with the work.
Thank you all
Nieves
Oldie Joke and pic I have found in the Internet:
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"
The man below says: "Yes you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."
"You must be a software developer," says the balloonist.
"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone."
The man below says, "You must work in business as a manager." "I do," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met but now it's my fault."
And then the typical image that shows the process of SW Engineering.
New month, new deliverable!
Hello everyone, to celebrate the beginning of December, the christmas month, we have begun a new deliverable in our project. This time, it its the DDD or detailed design document. As we have the components and operations of the ADD more or less clear (waiting for a review). We have been able to separate the workload between the members of the team more or less equally.
WE are going to have 57 components in this new document; because we have decided to create a document for each operation in the interfaces of the ADD (basically we are using a great granularity with this component). This way the codification of the components should be easy and straigh forward, although I don't think the programmers would love us, anyway. LOL
Apart from the deliverable, we are thinking about a new milestone in our schedule. WE have to do a SELLING of our project instead of an audit. So we are thinking which things to explain and how to do it. Hope we reach and understanding and make a good impression.
Anyway, that's all for today.
Keep in contact.
Nieves
Changes in the ADD
Yesterday was a SW engineering full day for me. Making the changes, creating the data model, drawing the diagrams again, checking that everything was right; took me all day long until 2 a.m.
But the worst of all were the CAPTIONS, I hate the captions; because if you have to add something in the middle, you have to change all the captions below you.
I know that latex do it, but we are using a MWord 2003 template, so we can't use latex and it drives me crazy.
Anyway finally I ended the document, and all was dandy; but this morning I had to check it out again because some sorting in the structure and there you go again....
So now I have just sent it to the customer, and I really hope that he is happy with it, becuase changing a 80 pages document in only one day it's stressfull to say little.
A good point is that the other document, the briefing is already finished and reviewed; and the DDD has begun to be done.
So in summary...I just need some holidays; sadly I am not going to get them :-(
This is the life of a SW engineer (at least in the university, that I know). But from a real perspective, this link associated is quite funny; you should check it out.
Nieves
ADD Review Results
Hello everyone! This evening we had a fast review of our ADD, and we are not very happy with it, because we have to make a lot of changes, it's true that most of all it's changing the structure and renaming the things, but adding that to creating a data model is going to take time (and mostly we don't have much free time left).
Anyway, tomorrow we have a meeting to make most of the changes and delegate the different tasks of the DDD. Hence, we are a little bit stressed with the workload. Besides that, tomorrow is also the team deadline to deliver the briefing work of each member, so we can review before sending it on thursday to the customer.
Apart from that, everything keeps as planned; and we still think that we are doing a good job; so we can be happy with that. And this is a fundamental aspect in the job life of everyone, if you are happy, you work better.
So be happy, my friends LOL
Nieves
Second Stage of Final Deliveries
We have sent the final versions of the URD and SRD to the customer, as with the SPO, CPD, SCMP and SQAP; he must tell us if they have been approved or not.
If they pass, then we are following our schedule and we should not have many problems with keeping a day or so ahead schedule, otherwise I think we are going to be in a huge problem; because the design stage depends on the analysis and if the first one fails, a 'snow-ball' is going to follow with the rest of the work.
Another interesting topic, is that the customer asked 'very nicely' if we could write a briefing on the project, that means how the project is going; with a due date of this week; so obviously our plans have changed and they will appear in the next BPR document.
But I think we have divide the work nicely, becuase it's important all the POVs of the members, so we have decide to explain the project to the customer from each perspective. We will have to wait for his opinion regarding this matter.
Keep checking for updates.
Nieves
Cheer up bloggers!!!
This is a post addressed to the authors of the blog http://agc6.blogspot.com/:
Architecture Discussion
Hey I know today I am posting a lot of things, but now I have the time. Also this post is about yesterday.
As the application is a web one, we though that a C/S architecture was the best option, and based on what we learned last year we though that our design was a 3-Tier architecture, but yesterday we learnt that it is not a 3-Tier but a 2-Tier. Also, that although the client is part of the architecture, we don't have to refer the client as a component of the architecture because the client is only viewing the code the server is sending.
So the presentation layer is inside the server and it generates the html code for the client.
After that discussion, we have to make changes on the ADD, basically taking out the client component as explained, and other things.
Thinking, we also discussed not to begin the DDD after we have at least a more or less stable version of the ADD with one review, because if we have to make lots of changes in the ADD then the work already done in the DDD would be lost or it could be inconsistent with the changes on the ADD.
So that's what yesterday was about.
We will post our new issues in another moment.
Nieves
Modifications and problems with the analysis!!
Hello, sorry for the delay in the posting, but we've been very busy making changes. We already had the reviews of the URD and SRD and we realized that we had to make a lot of changes because otherwise our architecture was going to be almost impossible to do.
With the URD we didn't have that many problems, but with the URD, most of the performance constraints had to be changed or modified because we couldn't test them and aso it is almost impossible to implement something to check them.
As those two documents affect all the design process, then we had to plan an urgent get together to fix the problems taking into account the trade-offs of the changes and how to overcome them.
Finally we reached an agreement between the parts in how to change the purpose of some requirements and centre the functionality in important aspects and not adding new ones that the delicious does not have.
So with one week of work we have been able to change the analysis stage and create new and better (based on our point of view) deliverables.
Keep in contact
Nieves
We have passed to second phase!!
Hello, we are very happy to know that we have passed to second phase in the blog competition. We really though that we had failed based on the survey, but miracles exists.
We will open a new survey for the second stage of the competition, the final decision will be on 31st of December, so either way we pass or not we will post a message wishing happy new year to everyone, lol.
We will try to improve and keep posting the evolution of the project.
Many thanks to those who vote on us, we will have to invite you to something (good thing we don't know who vote for us, haha).
And finally, for the groups that have not passed: you made a great job, you can comment on our blog if you want.
Bye
Nieves
Formal English grammar review!!
This evening we had another review done to our deliverable, in this case the SQAP. Usually is Juanmi the one that tries and in most cases throws the mistakes we have done in our faces (remembering the first review); but today it was a native english speaker...
This creates a problem for us, 'cos we are not native english, so we write as best as we can the english expressions. This session has made us realise this.
It is a good thing, mind you, because if we want to work abroad and we have to write reports or papers, we must know these things. But as always, we have to suck up our pride and ego.
So we will try harder next time.
Yours,
Nieves
Group meeting in another pub!!
From this vantage point I apologise for how bad clients our group is. I explain, yesterday we met to do the requirements acquisition in the morning in a libray, but as we didn't finish; we had to meet again in the afternoon in a bar (the libraries are closed on Saturdays' afternoon, why?? ). Anyway, with only two cokes for person and working we were in the pub called 'La eñe' (in Leganés, Madrid) around 5 hours. So from here sorry, but we will acknowledge you on our possible success.
In a positive point of view, we think we did a great acquisition yesterday reaching half hundreds requirements in the first step. All that is left to it, is what will Juanmi think?
Keep in touch
Nieves
Second meeting!!
Ohh this meeting was way better than the first one. At first we were nervous about what Juanmi was going to tell us and the mistakes that he would expose.
Finally they weren't a lot and the changes were minimum and also he told us that it was a very good document. So in summary we congratulated each other in a work well done.
Now our purpose has been keep on the same path with the quality of the work although it's going to be difficult 'cos we have to give two documents with the same deadline and based on those documents all the project will be defined.
Fear and tremble, here comes the Requirements Acquisition!!!
Nieves
Problems and solutions!!
After the fall out of our first proposal, we had to work on two documents at the same time, but we managed.
Sadly, we had to be a bit overworked, but we made all the corrections that our customer told us, following the motto The client is always right!! At the same time, we realised the configuration document and in it, we had to sit down and think the rules and conventions that everybody has to follow; let me tell you it's hardship.
But anyway, we are happy, because we get up after the fall out, we kept working and we are on the road towards the next milestone.
Nieves
Almost off!!!
Today we have discovered life is not easy for a software engineer. No matter how hard do you try not to leave any mistake on your documents, any can be always spotted. And that's what happened today, but many times. Our documents presented a fairly good appearance according to our opinion, but it happened to contain lots of errors.
At least, the document has not been crossed out. However, it is an important drawback to have all those errors, since a revision has been forced and time goes by while we try to present a third document in time. To solve this, we have rearranged our workload to handle the new situation.
A plan has been adopted to solve this situation and we expect to have it solved by Thursday.
There's quite a lot of work to do.
Mariano
New meeting:
Hello!
Today we had our second o seocnd and a half meeting. We were discussing some things about the project and there were a LOT times that we were not thinking the same aabout a topic. At the end as we were taking more time confronting each other than making good decisions; we decided taking the democratic route: we vote everything and with this voting process we could finally advance.
Yeah I know, that it's not always the best solution, but if the people really believes in what they are defending, there is no convincing the others.
Another topic was about how did we plan to do the work, because each one has to write in the reports and we can create collisions. we talked about using repositories, but it'd take much time to be fast with them, so finally we make a group account and in there the last document is the valid. At the same time, 2 persons are not going to work on the same part, so at the end is a valid solution.
That's all
Tomorrow there'll be more
Last friday we had our first meeting and we took some important decisions:
Hello everyone!
We want to give you a warm welcome to our blog. :-D In it you will find how a group work is done in a real situation and how our meetings to solve found problems have been.
We hope to help anyone with the same problems and that also you give us ideas on how to solve things if you know it. So feedback is always welcome!!!
At the end of January we hope that we reach an answer to the main question of this blog: How do we pass SE-III? Give us you opinion too
Until next post
The Team members
