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Project Progress Summary

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Project Progress Summary

Overall, we are confident to say that our project is on schedule, although we admit we encountered a lot of unexpected and unforeseen difficulties. We had some modules, e.g. User related functions, that were delayed in the first and second iterations. However, with team collaboration and extra effort, we were able to catch back up in the third iteration. So it doesn't impact the overall schedule. Although more works are needed to improve user related functions, we think it is acceptable as we also planned an iteration dedicated for improvements after UAT and mid-term feedback and we are confident to finish the trivial touch up work in forth iteration too.

Since the acceptance, there are quite some changes in the project and we admit we have under estimated the complex level of User Interface Design and the lack of artistic design skills. Further more, fully grasp of symphony is not an easy job. To solve the problems, we reallocated the man-power in the group and let those strong coders help the delayed function group. Also, in order to bring more focus to the core function, we decided to put off the admin function because there is not much administration needed at the beginning stage and also as we explore the build-in backend functions of Symfony, we believe we will finish it in a later integration.

Facing all the challenges, our group are still confident about the completion of the project. As we are all getting more familiar with Symphony, we are programming at an increasingly faster speed with higher quality. Evidence being, despite the fact we were behind the schedule for almost one iteration, we were still able to catch back up. And our biggest obstacle --- UI, is also finalized and progressing at a steady rate. We are still cautious towards other unexpected difficulties, but with an attitude of learning and can-do, we are confident we can conquer them, like we did this time.

Project Highlights:

Unexpected events that occurred:

  • Team members has other commitments and Delay in Progress
  • Under estimated the sophistication of UI Designing and Implement
  • Longer time needed to learn Symfony
    • We have downloaded video and borrowed books to learn and we also share our learnings on weekly basis
  • Deploy environment is drastically different from development environment, take extra effort to configure
  • The comparison model is more complex than we expected, for example how many items can one comparison have
    • We have discussed and debated and referred to like websites in order to build our platform,and solved all the difficulties ranging from database design,number of items per comparison to UI

Project Management

Provide more details about the status, schedule and the scope of the project. Describe the complexity of the project.

Project Status:

Tasks Status Confident Level (0-1) Comment
Comparison Function's Main Coding Done 0.9 Comparison is assigned to Jiang Hao and Wan Feng and the core function is almost finished besides Search, we are confident with finishing it and add on some more touches on the User Friendly Prospective.
User Function Almost Done 0.9 User is assigned to Zhao Liang and Chen XueZheng, the core function of this function is also done, but some trivial part like Message Notification, Read Status are not done yet.
UI Finalized 0.7 UI Design is assigned to Yu SiKan and Li Qi, after 3 main version and countless small versions, we are finally finalizing on one. As we lack knowledge and skill towards UI design and visual effects, we are cautious towards this part. We are confident we will complete this part, we are more worried over the design quality.
Admin Put Off 0.8 This part is assigned to Zhao Liang. However, after the first Iteration, we realize this not much work to be done on Administration Function till the Site is being deployed. And after explore the powerful build-in backend function from Symfony framework, we are confident this will be done with only one or two iterations in later stage.

Project Schedule (Plan Vs Actual):

Iterations Planned Actual Comments
0 Detail UI Design 10 Dec 2010 31 Jan 2011 UI has gone through many changes and only settled down till recent.
1 User Profile 14 Jan 2011 9 Feb 2011 Function was delayed due to Chen XueZheng has other commitment and has difficulty in picking up the Symfony. It was done in Iteration 3 after Zhao Liang is assigned to help.
2 User Supporter/Rival 1 Oct 2010 9 Feb 2011 Function was delayed due to Chen XueZheng has other commitment and has difficulty in picking up the Symfony. It was done in Iteration 3 after Zhao Liang is assigned to help.
Admin Related Function 29 Jan 2011 Put Off Rescheduled in Iteration 4. We discover the need for a Administration Backend is minor at the beginning stage. It is better to focus the energy in other functions. Zhao Liang was in charge with this and later reallocated to concentrate on Database structure and User Function.
3 Comparison Search 12 Feb 2011 N/A Search Plug-in is tedious to configure and cost extra effort, and later Wan Feng was temporally assigned to help out in deploy with Zhao Liang and Yu Sikan, and Jiang Hao was temporally assigned to help UI integration with Li Qi and Yu Sikan. This part is being temporarily delayed.
Public Deploy 19 Mar 2011 15 Feb 2011 Since we were able to catch back up on schedule, and it is a requirement of mid-term, we have made an effort to make the website deployed early. Zhao Liang and Yu Sikan is assigned to take charge of the job.

Project Metrics:

Idea Metrics:

Idea Metrics was inspired by our Client and Supervisor: Dr. Zhu FeiDa in Week 3. Therefore there is no data on Week 1 and 2:

Weeks Ideas Approved Star of the Week Comments
Week 3 7 2 Zhao Liang
Week 4 3 2 Wan Feng
Week 5 2 1 Jiang Hao
Week 6 0 0 No One No Idea Updated during Spring Festival
Week 7 5 N/A N/A Week 7's Idea will be discussed in the regular meeting on next Monday

Idea Metrics.jpg

Project Risks:

Risk Probability Impact Mitigation
Sponsor want to use Joomla instead of Drupal High High Team evaluating Joomla to write an impact analysis report
Sponsor deployment machine approval and support High Medium (now it is low) Use UPL machine

Be sure to prioritize the risks.

Technical Complexity

Index Task Description
1 Database Our database requires quite alot of sub tables thus results to a very complex schema. For example: all entities may have some overlapping attributes with each other and also its individual attributes.
2 Deployment The deployment environment has a different setting from the one on our machines, since we Windows as our development environment but delply is on Linux and it is a shared host. Especially differences in File System and Security Settings.
3 UI UI is vital to the success of our project, but none of us is strong in UI design, also we implemented lots of JavaScript to create some effects. The problem is how to implement the JavaScript and CSS into Symfony framework. It take quite alot time to fully understand how it works

Quality of product

  • Our project makes uses easier to make decisions on students related life.
  • We have deployed the project on real server and have dozens of active users.


Intermediate Deliverables:

There should be some evidence of work in progress.

Stage Specification Modules
Project Management Minutes Sponsor weeks -10 -5 3 7 Supervisor weeks -2 3 5 7
Metrics Bug metrics
Requirements Story cards CRUD Customer, Trend Analytic
Analysis Use case overall
System Sequence Diagram client, server
Business Process Diagram Here
Screen Shots CRUD Customer, Trend Analysis
Design ER Diagram 1, 2, 3
Class Diagram 1, 2, 3
Testing UAT test plan instructions

Not all parts of the deliverables are necessary but the evidence should be convincing of the progress. Try to include design deliverables that shows the quality of your project.

Deployment:

In an iterative approach, ready to use system should be available (deployed) for client and instructions to access the system described here (user name). If necessary, provide a deployment diagram link.

Testing:

Describe the testing done on your system. For example, the number of UAT, tester profile, test cases, survey results, issue tracker, bug reports, etc.

Reflection

In this section, describe what have the team learn? Be brief. Sometimes, the client writes a report to feedback on the system; this sponsor report can be included or linked from here.

Team Reflection:

Any training and lesson learn? What are the take-away so far? It would be very convincing if the knowledge is share at the wiki knowledge base and linked here.

Benjamin Gan Reflection:

You may include individual reflection if that make sense at this point. The team is uncooperative and did not follow my instructions.

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