project expectations
Outcomes
The high-level learning outcome of the team project (tP):
Can contribute production quality SE work to a small/medium software project
Accordingly, the tP is structured to resemble an early stage of a small software project in which you will,
- conceptualize and implement a product, and,
- have it ready to be continued by future developers
The focus of the tP is to learn the following aspects:
coding(taken for granted, not focused on specifically)- working in a team
- process/workflow
- documentation
- scheduling and tracking project progress, meeting delivery deadline
- quality assurance
Direction
The final product is to be targeted at users who can type fast, and prefer typing over mouse/voice commands. Therefore, typed user commands are the primary mode of input.
You are strongly discouraged from developing a GUI application as it can increase the workload unnecessarily.
Target User & Value Proposition
You are expected to:
- Define a very specific target user profile.
We require you to narrow down the target user profile as opposed to trying to make it as general as possible. Here is an example of progressively narrowing down target user: anybody → teachers → university teachers → tech savvy university teachers → CS2113/T instructors.
Be careful not to contradict given project constraints when defining the user profile e.g. the target user should still prefer typing over mouse actions.
- Define a clear value proposition that matches the target user profile i.e., what problem does the product solve? how does it make the user's life easier?
You should also define the scope clearly i.e., boundary beyond which the app will not help e.g., the app will help to manage tasks within a single project only (no support for multiple projects). - Optimize the product to the chosen target users i.e., add features that are especially/only applicable for target users (to make the app especially attractive to them).
Example 1: If the product targets CS2113/T instructors, there can be features that are applicable to them only, such as the ability to see a link to a student's project on GitHub
Example 2: If your app manages contacts, you can optimize its features based on,
- the profession of the target user e.g. doctors, salesmen, teachers, etc.
- the nature/scale of contacts e.g. huge number of contacts (for HR admins, user group admins), mostly incomplete contacts, highly volatile contact details, contacts become inactive after a specific period (e.g. contract employees)
- what users do with the contacts e.g. organize group events, share info, do business, do analytics
Your project will be graded based on how well the features match the target user profile and how well the features fit-together.
Functionality Expectations
The expected level of functionality from a team is roughly what you can achieve if each member contributes about the same amount of functional code as required by a .
You will get full marks for implementation effort if you meet the expectation stated above. There are no extra marks for exceeding that bar. You are better off spending that effort in improving other aspects of the project. Try to avoid adding more features than necessary, unless you are doing it out of interest. As mentioned elsewhere, a functionality just the right size and of high quality will earn more marks than a functionality that is bigger (or more difficult, or more interesting/novel) but of lower quality.
In the most recent semester, more than 80% of the students did significantly more work than what was needed to earn full marks for effort. Many of them were likely under the wrong impression that doing more features will earn them more marks. Try to avoid doing the same mistake yourself.
In fact, here is the grading criterion for the individual project effort:
Team Expectations
- Expectation Produce a cohesive product: i.e. ensure,
- features fit together to form a cohesive product,
- documentation follows a consistent style and presents a cohesive picture to the reader, and
- final project demo presents a cohesive picture to the audience.
- Expectation Maintain product integrity/quality: i.e. prevent breaking other parts of the product as it evolves. Note that bugs local to a specific feature will be counted against the author of that feature. However, if a new enhancement breaks the entire product, the whole team will have to share the penalty.
- Expectation Manage the project: i.e. ensure workflow, code maintenance, integration, releases, etc. are done properly.
Individual Expectations
Individual Expectations on Implementation
- Expectation Contribute to the functional code of the product.
- User-visible features are preferred, but it is not a strict requirement.:
- The enhancement(s) should fit with the rest of the software (and the target user profile) and should have the consent of the team members. You will lose marks if you go 'rogue' and add things that don't fit with the product.
Tip: Contribute to all aspects of the project e.g. write backend code, frontend code, test code, user documentation, and developer documentation. Reason: If you limit yourself to certain aspects only, you could lose marks allocated for the aspects you did not do. In addition, the final exam assumes that you are familiar with all aspects of the project.
Tip: Do all the work related to your enhancement yourself. Reason: If there is no clear division of who did which enhancement, it will be difficult to divide project credit (or assign responsibility for bugs detected by testers) later.
In other words, we recommend that the work to be divided primarily based on features/enhancements rather than components. The latter has the risk of a team member becoming a single point of failure and you becoming too reliant on other team members e.g., what if the person assigned to an important component doesn't deliver on time?.
Individual Expectations on Documentation
- Objective: showcase your ability to write both user-facing documentation and developer-facing documentation.
- Expectation Update the User Guide (UG) and the Developer Guide (DG) parts that are related to the enhancements you added. The minimum requirement is given below. (Reason: Evaluators will not be able to give you marks unless there is sufficient evidence of your documentation skills.)
- UG: 1 or more pages
- DG: 3 or more pages
- Tip: If the UG/DG updates for your enhancements are not enough to reach the above requirements, you can make up the shortfall by documenting 'proposed' features and alternative designs/implementations.
- Expectation Use at least 2 types of UML diagrams in your DG updates i.e., diagrams you added yourself or those you modified significantly.
Individual Expectations on Testing
- Expectation Write some automated tests so that we can evaluate your ability to write tests.
🤔 How much testings is enough? We expect you to decide. As you learn different types of testing and what they try to achieve, you should decide how much of each type is worth having. Similarly, you can decide to what extent you want to automate tests, depending on the benefits and the effort required.
There is no requirement for a minimum test coverage level. Note that in a high-end production environment you are often required to have at least 90% of the code covered by tests. In this project, it can be less. The weaker your tests are, the higher the risk of bugs, which will cost marks if not fixed before the final submission.
Individual Expectations on Teamwork
- Expectation Do an equal share of the team-tasks.
Team-tasks are the tasks that someone in the team has to do.
- Expectation Carry an equal share of project roles and responsibilities.
Roles indicate aspects you are in charge of and responsible for. E.g., if you are in charge of documentation, you are the person who should allocate which parts of the documentation is to be done by who, ensure the document is in right format, ensure consistency etc.
Ensure each of the important roles are assigned to one person in the team. It is OK to have a 'backup' for each role, but for each aspect there should be one person who is unequivocally the person responsible for it. Reason: when everyone is responsible for everything, no one is.
- Expectation Review each others work. Reason: reviewing skills is a learning outcome, and it is mutually beneficial.