UMass Lowell Dept. of Computer Science
COMP 4620 — GUI Programming II
Spring 2016 Semester, Section 201
Prof. Jesse M. Heines
Assignment No. 2
Project Milestone #2: Alpha Version
Date Due:
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Contents
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What This Assignment Is About
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This assignment pertains to the next software engineering step for
your semester project: presenting an alpha version for review.
What You Are To Do
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You submitted a project proposal stating what you planned to do in concrete
terms with a schedule of milestones specifying when you planned to do each component
task. The project alpha assesses where you are in terms of that proposal.
The purposes of an alpha version are therefore to:
- review the goals of the project proposal and assess whether the work is on track
to meet them
- address any new issues that may have arisen since the project proposal was approved
- evaluate currently working features against the original acceptability criteria
- assess whether all not yet implemented features have been fully tested for
feasibility
- decide what contingency plans will have to be activated
- assess whether the project can be delivered by the originally scheduled
deadline
- determine what resources not currently on the project need to be allocated
to it
- decide which aspects of the original project plan have to be scrapped
- set the final look and feel of the project and its list of features so that
the marketing department work can begin its work
- provide management with a clear picture of where the project is so that
all appropriate decisions related to is completion can be made
All but the ninth of these purposes (and perhaps part of the tenth) are relevant to our class.
This assignment requires you to present your project to the class in its current
stage. This is an informal presentation to a friendly audience, so you
shouldn’t have to spend much time preparing to talk to the class
about your project. Note that only 4 of the 20 points on this assignment
are for your presentation. The other 16 points are split evenly between
how well you have made progress toward the goals laid out in your project plan
and a short memo (2-4 pages) that you are to hand in which address each of
the issues listed above.
Some of you may not have thoroughly researched and tested out the various features you proposed in your proposals. By now, however, you should know for certain what you can and cannot do.
Your alpha version should serve as a “feasibility test” to ensure that
everything you’re proposing to do at this point will actually work.
At the very least, your alpha version should be a “shell” that envelopes
all of the features that will be included in your final project, although some may
not yet be implemented or fully functional.
I expect your memo to be an honest, comprehensive, explicit, and concrete self-assessment
of your project at this stage. Please read carefully the points listed
in the grid under How You Will Be Graded. Make sure that you address each
of the required issues. If you do not understand an issue, please ask
for an explanation.
Please review the corrections I made to the paper you handed in for your last assignment and my Common
Writing Mistakes and Their Corrections one more time. I expect all
papers to be written to that standard.
Approaches to Making Your Presentation
Each group will have 10 minutes to make their presentation, including responding to questions. There are a few different approaches you might take to do this.
- You can designated one of your members as the group spokesperson and have him or her make the presentation. In this case, everyone should help prepare the presentation, but only one person stands up in front of the class and makes that presentation. Of course, if a question is asked that someone on the team other than the presenter is most qualified person to answer that question, the presenter should defer that question to the more qualified team member.
- You can divvy up the presentation and have two or more team members present. This approach is preferrable when a project has multiple facets and different team members have expertise in each facet.
- You can create a video as all or part of your presentation, upload it to YouTube or some other video sharing service, and show that in class. This approach is desirable if you want to do a live demo, as you can ensure that it works rather than taking a chance that something might go wrong in a live demo.
- You can do some combination of the above or come up with a different approach that I haven’t thought of.
Tentative Presentation Schedule
Tuesday, March 8, 2018
- Abdelaziz-Chen-Daigneau-Prakash: invisaWear Technologies (company website)
- Anderson-Cabral-Flores-Meza: 5-Track Portastudio (audio recorder and mixer)
- Bainbridge-Cushing-Erardi-Nevers: Prism (art portfolios)
- Bejaniance-Rudzki-Wetherald: Sudoku Zen Garden (Sudoku puzzles)
- Bousquet-Downing-Shepple-Huynh: Dynamic Ski Maps
- Calcano-Cruz: Fete (event promo social network)
Thursday, March 10, 2016
- Goncalves-Mulkern: Webcars (car ads)
- Lam-Lora-Nguyen(Son): ClockWork (time management social application)
- Leung-Moran-Wong: Music Practice Manager
- Li-O’Leary-Quaratiello-Welby: HuddleHere (team meeting organizer)
- Lo-Nguyen(Justin)-Paredes-Soth: Onsemble (musicians’ social network)
Submitting Your Assignment for Grading
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Post your memo to one your team’s GitHub accounts and use the Assignment Submission form to submit its URL. The memo itself should be
written in the same style as your proposal. Please review the comments
that I wrote on your proposal and make sure you correct any problems I noted
with that submission.
Be sure to address all of the points in the grading criteria listed below.
Important Note regarding the Assignment Submission program: If you do not receive an email within a few minutes confirming that your assignment has been submitted, something
has gone wrong. Try submitting again or contact our teaching assistant
or me.
How You Will Be Graded
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This assignment will be graded on a 20-point system with points awarded as
follows.
| Criteria |
Possible
Points |
Assessment of Project Status (written memo)
- review goals
- address new issues
- evaluate current features
- assess if not yet implemented features can be implemented
- decide on contingency plans
- assess delivery schedule
- determine if new resources are needed
- decide what to scrap
- set final look and feel
- provide clear overall picture of where things stand right now
|
8 |
Program Functionality (at this stage)
- progress toward per project plan
|
8 |
Presentation to Class
- review of your project’s goals and where things stand right
now
- discussion of what’s been changed from your initial plans
and why
|
4 |
