⚠️ Before you start writing code

Today should be used for finalizing planning and doing research on data, technology, and tools you might need. We’ll also go over using git and GitHub as a team.

The following checklists will help you know when you are ready to start writing code.

✅ Checklist for the whole team

• Every team member is clear on your MVP, and you know what you are building.
• You have added user stories and tasks (at minimum, for MVP) to your Trello board.
  • Your tasks should reflect the decisions you have made about how you will implement things.
  • Make sure your tasks are labeled according to what responsibilities belong to the front end or back end.
• You have created a team organization on GitHub and added every team member.
• You have created your project repo or repos on GitHub.
  • Make sure you have a .gitignore file! You can get one that is specific to your project at gitignore.io.
• You are clear on the git and GitHub workflow for your team.
• 🚨 Make sure you are using django-environ and a .env file. This will be especially important for secret keys and sensitive info, like AWS credentials. DON’T COMMIT YOUR SECRET KEYS!
• Consider appointing a rotating team lead who can be responsible for running standup, leading at check-in, and looking after the Trello board.

✅ Checklist for the back-end

• Make sure you are using Postgres and not SQLite.
• Models! What models will you need?
  • What fields belong on those models? Use the Django Model Field Reference.
  • What relationships exist between your models? (one-to-many, many-to-many?)
    • Consider using the CRC model to help guide your discussions.
    • You should create a diagram for your models to map relationships. This may change as you work, but you should have a good plan to start with.
• What URLs will the front end need?
• What data will the front end request?
  • Are you returning HTML? -> What templates does the front end need, and who will make those?
  • Are you returning JSON? -> How will you structure your data?
• Deploy early and often – who will deploy? Make sure more than one person on your team has the ability to do this.

✅ Checklist for the front-end

• Have you mapped out a user flow through your app?
• Wireframes for each interface the user will see
  • With backend, can you say what URL corresponds to each page or interface the user sees?
  • If using React Router (with a separate front-end application), what urls do you need?
• What data will you need on each page or interface? Where is it coming from?
  • What requests will you need to make from the front end?
• Are you making forms? Discuss data with the backend.
• What assets will you need?
• General strategy for css and design so that you can budget time for it.
  • Are you using a css library (e.g. Material UI, Bulma, Tachyons)? What is the general look and feel of your app?
  • Start to think about UI/UX and design
• Deploy early and often – who will deploy? Make sure more than one person on your team has the ability to do this.

Reminders

• Standup starting Monday 4/19 @9:30am or 9:45am (check your email for a cal invite)
• First check-in Monday 4/19, time TBD (I will let you know in Slack but also check your email for a cal invite)

Standup and check-ins will use the regular Zoom classroom.

Today’s topics

• Finalizing your product idea
• Defining users & writing user stories
• Turning user stories into tasks
• Creating your Trello board

Create tasks on your Trello board today

Your team’s trello board is ready with columns predefined to start you off. You are welcome to adapt it and create additional columns to support the way your team works.

• Team Tipsy 🍻
• Team Recipes 🌮

Slides

• Trello & Tasks

🔖 Resources

• Atlassian: Writing User Stories
• FreeCodeCamp: How and Why to Write User Stories
• Designing User Flows
• A shorthand for designing UI flows
• Creating Perfect User Flows for Smooth UX

Example Trello Boards

• Open Mic Trello Board
• Live Music Trello Board

Today’s topics

• Refining your product idea
• Thinking about features and beginning to think about implementation
• Creating a product roadmap
• Writing user stories

TODO: Finalize your app idea

What is your app and what does it do?

One representative on behalf of your team should fill out this form by tomorrow to tell us what product you are building. Please make sure the responses represent everyone on your team.

Defining MVP and prioritizing features

Use these slides to guide your team discussions today. We’ll go over them in class, followed by time to work on creating your product roadmap with your team.

• Product Roadmap Slides

🔖 Resources

• Atlassian: Writing User Stories
• FreeCodeCamp: How and Why to Write User Stories
• Getting the Most Out of Personas
• Creating Personas
• User Journey Mapping
• Stack Overflow Podcast: Building a web app

The past twelve weeks have prepared you to take on the challenge ahead in these next four weeks. Your goal is to design and build a real-world software product, working collaboratively on a small team using agile development practices and all the tools you’ve already learned – and some you will learn as you go.

At the end of the phase, your team will present your product to an audience of local tech professionals, hiring partners, and the Momentum community.

The experience of working on a team during this phase and the product you build will form the foundation for your job search after graduation. The people skills you’ll use will be just as important as the technical skills!

You will not begin writing code for your project until Thursday of this week.

Today’s topics

• What is agile development?
• Forming final project groups
• Brainstorming product ideas

Final Project Teams!

• Cam, Dawud, Grant, Laura, Tip
• Albany, Arthur, Ben, Tatiana, Tristan

Slides

• Phase Overview
• Agile Development
• Coming up with your idea

🔖 Resources

Idea Generation 💡

• awesome-react
• awesome-javascript
• awesome-django
• awesome-python
• public apis
• data is plural

Agile Development

• Beginner’s Guide to Scrum and Agile
• 12 principles from the Agile Manifesto
• The Power in Agile, a talk by Sarah Mei A critical look at the power dynamics implicit in Agile methods.
• Command Line Heroes Podcast Produced by RedHat and hosted by Saron Yitbarek, this is a scripted podcast that tells the story of software from the last 40-ish years or so. Season 1 has an episode of the origin of Agile Development. The whole series is really well done. If you enjoy understanding the history of things like I do, you will like this podcast!
• What is Code? by Paul Ford Read this for the stakeholder perspective – really long but really well written and produced!

Today’s topics

• Project check-in

🎯 Project

The phase project is due on Thursday. Presentations will be on Thursday afternoon at 2.

(We have a little flexibility with the schedule this week, so if we had to postpone to Friday, we could. But I would MUCH rather give you all Friday off!!)

Go back to the project requirements and make sure you are able to do the things the project requires. Also check to make sure that you are not building features or functionality that you don’t need!

By tomorrow you should have registration and login/logout working and data returning appropriately scoped to the logged-in user. CRUD functionality for questions and answers and user profile displays should be in place so that you can start working on the additional features (marking an answer as accepted, search, and starring questions).

All of the above should be working in production (Heroku for back-end and Netlify for front-end).

Schedule this week: project check-ins

We won’t have class at the regular times this week, and instead will use our time to finish our project. We will also meet at a scheduled time to see how things are going.

Tuesday & Wednesday this week

At your appointed hour, please come to the Zoom classroom to meet with Amy and Jeanette. This is our scheduled time to make sure everyone is on track and things are going well. If we need more time, we can schedule it for later in the day.

Meeting times

Meet in the regular Zoom classroom at your assigned time.

9:30-10: Team Torpedo Shark & Team Rainbowfish

10-10:30: Team Swordtail & Team GloFish & Team Neon Tetra

Thursday

No class or check-in meeting in the morning. Use the morning to prepare for presentations. Presentations at 2:00 pm in the classroom.

Friday

Huddle and Career Services in the morning, but no project! Take the afternoon and weekend for some well-deserved R&R before Phase 4!!