Basie Blog

There are two ways to define the midpoint of a trip: you’re halfway to your destination, or you’ve used half of your supplies (so if you’re not halfway there, you’d better either turn around or start eating less).  I think our code sprint marks our halfway point, so let’s compare where we are to where we need to be by the middle of May:

• Authentication: nothing being done (0).
• Admin: no tangible progress yet (0).
• Tickets: making good progress (1).
• Wiki: making good progress (1).
• Mailing list: done as far as I know (1).
• Repository browser: UI sketched, nothing implemented (0.25).
• Search: behind schedule (0.5).
• Localization: done (1).

Overall score: 4.75/8, but then there are the bonuses:

• Web API: making good progress on the bits needed for tickets.
• A graphical dashboard: good progress as well.
• User preferences: ditto.
• Comprehensive unit tests: I have no idea what our coverage is these days…
• Chat integration: not going to happen.

Give us 2.0 for the web API, dashboard, and user preferences, cut in half because they’re bonuses, and we’re standing at 71% of target.  We’re going to be more effective per hour going forward (since we know the problems and the code base better), but we’re going to have fewer hours (assignments in other courses, etc.), so I figure we’re looking at hitting 3/4 of the original target.  (Note that I’m not counting Zuzel’s continuous documentation work, since it was always explicitly experimental.)

So, what should we cut?  Or cut back?  Authentication is an obvious one: nobody at ICSE’09 will care if we’re authenticating against our own user database, as long as we fix it by September, and that’ll get us to 82% of a revised target.  The repo browser is a big chunk of work, so that leaves search and the admin pages.  Given skills and availability, I think it makes sense for Christian to help out with the former, and Eran with the latter.  What does everyone else think?