You are senior/graduate-level Computer Science students. As such, you are expected to have a high standard of communication. You need to be able to communicate clearly and effectively in a team setting, but as importantly - concisely and effectively communicate your needs with the teaching staff.
You will see a theme throughout this course centred around communication. This is a very important skill that you will need to develop in order to be successful in your career.
- Your team will have a standup configured via a Slack workflows and team members will be expected to respond to it at least once per week.
- You will use GitHub Issues to communicate with your team and show your work throughout the term
- Missing demos and other aspects of the class can and will be penalized if you do not communicate in advance. I cannot stress this enough - this class is very accommodating of your time and schedule, granted you respect the time of others (including the teaching staff).
- The class is not that large, I know who is attending lectures. I expect you to be able to communicate your needs - are you going to be late due to work? Are you going to be late because you have a class on the other side of campus? Talk to me, and we it won't be an issue.
There are, just as you will find in a startup, various methods of communication. Please hold group online discussions on Quercus, Slack or another tool of your choosing. You will receive invites during the first week of the course. Likewise, Zoom may be used at points during this course. Please ensure you have it installed and signed into an account.
Communication, as we will discuss in the course, is vital to the success of any business. As your startup gains traction and becomes successful, you will find that communication methods and culture become a bottleneck within your company. As such, we will ensure students are exposed to different means of communication and include the following table to help you understand the various mediums.
| Medium | When to use |
|---|---|
| Slack | Team and repo registration. Individual profile set-up. General discussions and questions. The instructor for CSC491/2600 (Michelle Ark) also prefers this communication method. |
| Private matters. The instructor for CSC454/2527 (Mario Grech) also prefers this communication method. | |
| Quercus | CSC454/4527 uses Quercus extensively. CSC491 uses Quercus for Announcements, and for the Participation assignment writeup submission and grading, as well as grading and assignment feedback for all other assignments. |
| In Person | Hallway conversations. If you decide anything here, write it down somewhere else on your Team's GitHub Repo |
| Issues and tracking boards | Team: Use this heavily as a decision record on most topics. Making use of GitHub Issues shows participation from all users (including non-technical) and will be a part of your grade in CSC454/2527 CSC491/2600: When you have a problem that needs to be fixed and are comfortable talking about it in the open |
| GitHub Releases | For your team repository, use this as a method to record assignment submission for CSC491/2600 |
| Internal Wikis | You can keep team docs in your team repo on GitHub. I ask that you avoid using the wiki feature as it makes grading more difficult |
| GitHub Issues | You are required to use this for roadmapping and planning |