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SDE Project Checkpoint 2: Development Sprint Deliverables

Deliverables

First Sprint – 130 points – due Friday, October 23rd, 11:59pm

Process & Implementation Snapshot (80 pts)

By this point every member of your team should already have the project building and its tests passing locally, from Assignment 2 and Checkpoint 1. Once that is true for everyone, you can start development.

You should follow best practices for collaborative development such as using feature branches, pull requests, and code review. Individual changes should be committed to properly named branches for each core feature being implemented and make use of pull requests to merge changes together.

Be sure to review each other’s code - both from a quality assurance standpoint, but also so you have a better understanding of the codebase. Although code reviews can be done asynchronously, we encourage the first few to be done synchronously so you can discuss the changes with your teammates and learn more about the codebase.

Every member of your team must contribute to the implementation. One way we will evaluate this is that each team member must have at least one commit as a part of the solution. Failure to do so will result in a significant penalty to your grade.

You must merge all of your changes into the main branch of your team repository before the deadline. All of your work stays inside your team repository — you should not open pull requests against the upstream project.

Submit a link to your repository and your Github Project board to Webcourses. For grading, we will take a snapshot of your repository and board right at the deadline and grade based on your progress there.

AI Agent Requirement

You are required to use an LLM-assisted or agentic software engineering tool to implement at least one of your user stories or technical requirements. You are welcome to use it on more.

You set your logging up in Checkpoint 1; keep using it. Commit this sprint's sessions to ai-logs/checkpoint-2/<your-github-username>/, and follow whatever your team wrote down in docs/cen5016/standards.md about flagging AI-assisted work.

Pick one issue to write up in detail: recount, in the issue itself, the positive and negative experiences you had using the agent on it. Label that issue "🤖 AI AGENT ISSUE" so we can find it easily in your repository.

Checkpoint Presentation (50 pts)

Your group should prepare a 10-20 minute video presentation describing your progress.

Your slides should include the following information (the recommended slides amount is in parentheses):

  1. Title Slide (1 slide)
    Include your team name & the names of each team member

  2. Project Planning (~1-2 slides)
    What user stories did your team choose to focus on? What feature(s) did you plan on implementing to fulfill them?

  3. Development Progress (~1-2 slides per person)
    What have you changed so far? How did you test your changes? What have you learned about the codebase? How does this compare with your original milestone goals? If your team did not meet your goals, why?

    Each team member should describe the contributions they made. In this section, you must include a video demo of your current progress; if you were not able to make a working build, include screenshots that show your current progress and clearly explain what factors impeded your progress.

  4. Feature Demos
    Please include a screen-share demo of the various features your team implemented.

  5. Process Overview (~1-2 slides)
    What process strategies (i.e. meeting frequency, code reviews) did your team use for the first sprint? Was it effective? Did you encounter any difficulties or have to make any changes?

  6. AI Use Retrospective (~1-2 slides)
    What was your experience using LLMs or AI agents to assist in your software development process? What worked well? What did not work well? Are there any ways that you wish AI tools would work differently?

  7. Looking Ahead (~2-4 slides)
    What are some current risks and/or questions that your team has after completing your sprint(s)? Has your experience working over the last few weeks affected your planning of the project? Do you need to rescope? Do you need to reevaluate your process?

    If you did not meet your development goals, you should outline what you plan to proactively change for this upcoming sprint. This is meant to be a forward looking reflection on what you might do differently should the project continue beyond the due date.

A Note on Participation

Participation from all team members during the presentation is required.

The presentation slides should be exported into a PDF and a video recording of your presentation should be submitted to Webcourses by the deadline.

Grading

To receive full credit for the implementation, we expect:

  • Fulfillment of implementation goals as outlined by the planned milestones, or a clearly written justification in the milestone description of why elements fell through
  • An updated Project Board for the current progress
  • Reasonable code structure and style, including documentation where appropriate
  • Coherent commits of reasonable size with meaningful commit messages by all team members
  • High quality usage of Git/GitHub tools, such as issues, milestones, pull requests, and commits

To receive full credit for the presentation, we expect:

  • All team members to contribute towards presenting their team’s progress
  • All of the material described above covered in the presentation
  • PDF Slides uploaded to Webcourses for grading & feedback

Resources & Documentation

Working in a Large Codebase

We highly recommend that, before starting development, you take the time to analyze the codebase with your team using the code archaeology techniques you have learned. One good place to start is determining where the frontend/middleware/backend split is and trying to make a small change in each section.

Your project's own CONTRIBUTING.md and architecture documentation are the most useful things you can read. Beyond those, you will find general resources at the link below: