Labs

C0: Office Hours

During C0, all Labs will act as Office Hours.

C1-C3: Mandatory Weekly Scrum Meetings in Lab

Each week after the C0 deadline during lab, you and your teammate will have a Scrum meeting with your assigned mentor TA.  This will be a 15-20 minute individual check-in where you state what you have done and ask any questions, and express any concerns about progress.  

First Scrum: Group Formation

You will need to form a group for the course project. If you do not  have a partner, TAs will help you find one in the first lab during Checkpoint 1. 

Retrospective Labs

Checkpoint retrospectives take place in lab the week after each checkpoint is due. During the retrospective, you will briefly summarize your contributions to your teammate and TA; expect questions about your design, data structures, algorithms, and development challenges. TAs may also ask to see specific commits of source code in your repository and to see your development history. Additionally, your TA will evaluate your non-code tasks for the checkpoint in the form of a discussion.

This debrief will be used to assess your contribution to the project checkpoint. 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 working understanding about your partner's code.

Retrospectives are an ideal time to reflect on your team's process and assess what aspects have been working well and where you would like to improve. It is also when you should create a plan for the next checkpoint.

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 checkpoint 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.