Labs

Retrospective Labs

Deliverable retrospectives are mandatory labs that take place in lab the week each deliverable is due. During the retrospective, each team member will individually talk with the TAs to describe their deliverable. Expect questions about your design, data structures, algorithms, and development challenges. The TAs may also ask to see specific commits of source code in your repository and to see your development history. The debrief will be used to assign your deliverable multiplier (as described in the syllabus).

Students who have not adequately contributed to their group's progress can expect to have difficulty with the retrospective. It is expected that you will have shared the development tasks; while you should be able to describe your own work in detail, you should also have a workable understanding about your partner's code as well.

The checkpoint debrief labs are also the planning labs for the subsequent checkpoint, so when you are not meeting with the TAs you should be forming your DevPlan for the upcoming deliverable.

IMPORTANT

Missing your retrospective lab or submit to commit your contribution survey will result in a retrospective score of 0.

Milestone Labs

These are the rest of the labs during the term where you will work together with your teammate to make sure you are on target for the deliverable due date. TAs will be available during these times to help you with specific roadblocks you have encountered. TAs will probably not be able to sort out specific environment problems on your computer, but your other lab mates should be able to help with these.

NOTE: TAs will necessarily be reserved in their answers during the labs. While they will try to help you, they will not make your design decisions or write your code for you. Expect them to push for additional logging, debugging, or tests if you are encountering situations you do not understand.

While these labs are not mandetory, they are a great time to meet with your partner in person to check in and plan out the next week, as well as get assistance from your TAs as office hours can get quite busy.

Early Weeks and Group Formation

You will need to form a group for the course project, and coming to labs is one of the best ways to find someone to partner with. If you do not have a partner, coming to labs during the team formation period (typically after Checkpoint 0) is critical as TAs will help you get into a group.