⚠️ 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 an ER 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

• Can you map 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.

Next week and beyond

You will receive Google Calendar invitations for all scheduled meetings.

Standup and check-ins take place at your regular Phase 4 Zoom classroom.

Standup starts Monday 12/14

10-15 min meeting that recurs daily.

• @9:30 am Foster Closet
• @9:45 am This Land

First check-in is on Monday 12/14

One-hour meeting that recurs every Monday and Thursday to mark the beginning and end of each sprint. Your instructor, staff, and an alum will be at this meeting to hear your progress updates and to provide technical and product feedback.

• @1:30-2:30 pm Foster Closet
• @2:30-3:30 pm This Land

Today’s topics

• Finalizing your product idea
• Turning user stories into tasks
• Creating your Trello board

Create user stories 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 as you go.

• This Land
• Foster Closet

Slides

• Trello & Tasks

Resources

• Atlassian: Writing User Stories
• FreeCodeCamp: How and Why to Write User Stories

Today’s topics

• Creating a product roadmap
• Thinking about features and implementation
• Finalizing your product idea
• Writing user stories

Finalizing Your Project Idea

What is your app and what does it do?

The goal for today is to be able to answer the above question definitively. Micah and Dawn will join our class this morning to hear your ideas and offer feedback to help you shape it.

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

Defining MVP and prioritizing features

Use the following resources 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
• Atlassian: Writing User Stories
• FreeCodeCamp Video: How to Write User Stories

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 your peers.

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.

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

TODO before 2:00 pm

Please fill out this form so we can assign people to teams. This form is completely confidential.

TODO tonight

Talk with your team about project ideas. Come prepared tomorrow with one really good idea, or more than one idea if you can’t decide. We will discuss and refine together tomorrow.

Slides

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

References

• Beginner’s Guide to Scrum and Agile
• 12 principles from the Agile Manifesto
• 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!

Today, we are going to look at how to use React Router to make front-end applications that have multiple URLs and use client-side routing to make it easy to navigate between them.

We will also look at how to deploy our React applications to Netlify.

Assignment

React Booklist - due Thursday, Dec 3

Resources

• React Router
• A delightful React Router tutorial video
• dev.to post on deploying React apps to Netlify - note, this uses a file to configure Netlify. Most of what is done in this article can also be done through the web interface.