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CS2113/T 2021 Jan-May
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  • Week 1 [Mon, Jan 11th]
  • Week 2 [Mon, Jun 21st]
  • Week 3 [Mon, Jun 28th]
  • Week 4 [Mon, Jul 5th]
  • Week 5 [Mon, Jul 12th]
  • Week 6 [Mon, Jul 19th]
  • Week 7 [Mon, Jul 26th]
  • Week 8 [Mon, Aug 9th]
  • Week 9 [Mon, Aug 16th]
  • Week 10 [Mon, Aug 23rd]
  • Week 11 [Mon, Aug 30th]
  • Week 12 [Mon, Sep 6th]
  • Week 13 [Mon, Sep 13th]
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  • Week 5 [Mon, Jul 12th] - Tutorial

    1 Choose tP user stories for v1.0

    • Show your list of tP user stories to the tutor (for progress tracking).
    • Choose user stories for v1.0 as explained below.
    Project planning, with a twist

    Intuitively, you might think the right thing to do is to decide what features will be in v2.1 and then plan the intermediate versions based on that. But that's not what we are going to do.

    Why? Given the difficulty of reliably estimating the effort each feature will need, any such long-range plan is likely to be inaccurate.

    Instead, what we will do is to assume the current iteration is the last iteration, plan that iteration to deliver the product (based on available time), and try to follow that plan as best as we can. After the iteration is over, we plan the next iteration as if it's the last iteration. But that time, you can factor in the experience from the previous iteration to do a better job of planning.

    How is that better?

    • Shorter-term plans have a better chance of being accurate and doable.
    • You get multiple clean shots at project planning. Each try can learn from the previous tries. Hence, more learning.
    • As each iteration produces a working product, you always have a working product, which practically eliminates the risk failing to deliver a working product by the final deadline.

    The goal of this activity is to come up with the smallest possible product that is still usable so that it can be implemented as v1.0, to be delivered at the end of the first project iteration. We try to make it small because you will have only two weeks to implement v1.0 and coding as a team is a lot harder than writing code alone.

    Do not discuss features, UI, command format, or implementation details yet. That would be like putting the cart before the horse. At this stage we are simply trying to choose which user needs to fulfill first.

    • If the product can be of some use without a given user story, that user story should be left out of v1.0, even if the omission makes the product hard to use, as long as the product is not impossible to use e.g., in most cases a product can be used without an 'edit item' feature because the user can always delete an item and add a new item instead of editing an existing an item.
    • Don't worry about v2.0. You can design v2.0 after v1.0 done.
    • Don't worry about v1.0 being 'too small'. You can always add more features to v1.0 if you finish it ahead of schedule.
      You can also select an additional set of user stories that are nice-to-have in v1.2, to be done but only if there's time left.
    • If possible, narrow the scope of v1.0 further e.g., narrower target user, a smaller value proposition.

    Suggested workflow:

    • First stage:
      • Divide the user stories among team members.
      • Each member will go through their user stories to discard (e.g., cross out, or move to a different location, but not delete) which are definitely not needed for v1.0.
    • Second stage:
      • All members discuss the remaining user stories (i.e., the ones not discarded in the first stage), and try to trim the list further.

    2 time permitting Create a feature list for v1.0

    • If there is time left, do the following tP task that is scheduled for the following week.
    • Based on your user stories selected previously, conceptualize the product in terms of how it will look like at v1.0 in the form of a feature list.
      Note down the feature list in your online project notes document.
     

    Requirements → Specifying Requirements → Feature Lists →

    What

    Feature list: A list of features of a product grouped according to some criteria such as aspect, priority, order of delivery, etc.

    A sample feature list from a simple Minesweeper game (only a brief description has been provided to save space):

    1. Basic play – Single player play.
    2. Difficulty levels
      • Medium levels
      • Advanced levels
    3. Versus play – Two players can play against each other.
    4. Timer – Additional fixed time restriction on the player.
    5. ...