Assignment 1: Agile Basics [100 MARKS]

• Due date: 6th of August (Sunday) 2023, 11:55pm
• Assignment Weighting: 5% of total grade
• Submission: Submit your through Wattle - See further instructions below
• Individual Assignment FAQ: See the FAQ for this assignment
• Policies: For late policies, plagiarism policies, etc see the policies page

For this assignment, you will need to submit a report to Wattle. Make sure to carefully read the instructions for each task.

Activity 1 [40 MARKS]#

You are given a set of user stories (namely, its product backlog) ¹. Activity 1 is a case study work; this means, that every question has to be answered for the case study that is assigned to you. You cannot give generic answers, and your answers have to apply to your specific case study. You will be marked against your specific case study system.

Locate the file containing the user stories you are required to analyse on Wattle by previewing the quiz.

Task 1.1. [10/40 MARKS]#

Carefully read all the user stories for your allocated case study. What is the product vision for your assigned system?

Using Moore’s Vision Template, write a paragraph or two explaining how you interpreted the user stories to craft this (some initial questions to guide you on this justification):

• What stories justify or lead to this vision?
• Is there anything not explicitly written in the user stories but you “considered” while writing this vision?

Feel free to discuss anything else you find relevant to this product vision. Your paragraph should be at most 300 words (do not paraphrase the same sentence multiple times). Your product vision does not count towards this word limit.

Task 1.2. [15/40 MARKS]#

Which technologies constraints and business needs can you infer from the user stories of your allocated system? Why did you infer them?

Note: According to Cambridge Dictionary, to infer means “to form an opinion or guess that something is true because of the information that you have”. Therefore, you have to both: list the items, and explain why you think that is a constraint/need.

Task 1.3. [15/40 MARKS]#

Pretend that you are about to start the Scrum Cycle to develop your allocated system. What are the states of the PBI (Product Backlog Items) for your product backlog? What would you do with those items? Select 2-3 user stories from the allocated datafile for each PBI state, and provide justification for why they belong to this state. Write up to 300 words per PBI state justification. Example user stories do not count towards this word limit.

Your justification should convey all factors that led you to such categorisation, discuss problems/issues with the product backlog and the user stories, possible risks that could arise from developing straight away, possible missing information.

Your response should not be ambiguous, this means, that what you wrote should make all your reasoning explicit. The marker will not “read between lines”, and will assess only based on what is written and what is missing. Do not paraphrase sentences multiple times or drag out any responses/examples longer than is required.

Activity 2 [35 MARKS]#

You are required to read and analyse the user stories on Github for the “Solid” project and complete the tasks below.

The “Solid” project is a real specification that lets people store their data securely in decentralized data stores called Pods (namely, secure personal web servers for data). Everything they develop is MIT-licensed and available in their GitHub organisation. Solid (not to be confused with SOLID Principles) allows users to submit their user stories through issues in a GitHub project.

Activity 2 is a case study work, and every question has to be answered for the case study “Solid”. You cannot give generic answers, and your answers have to apply to this case study. If you answer these questions with the user stories of previous activities, you will not receive any marks.

Click here to go to the GitHub repository with Solid’s user stories. The stories are submitted as the titles of the issues. Remember to check both the open and the closed issues.

Task 2.1. [10/35 MARKS]#

Find 3 examples of Solid’s stories that do not follow the corresponding template. List the examples, and for each user story, explain in 2-3 sentences what is wrong and how you would fix it.

Task 2.2. [15/35 MARKS]#

Collect a group of Solid’s user stories (between 3-5) and reverse-engineer it to an imaginary scenario (write it in 2-3 paragraphs). Explain in a paragraph (up to 250 words long) what inferences you made regarding those selected user stories to create that scenario. As before: be explicit and concrete, do not paraphrase the same statement multiple times to reach the word limit, and be clear–if we do not clearly understand why you created this scenario and not another, you will loose marks.

Task 2.3. [10/35 MARKS]#

Find 2 examples of Solid’s user stories that are well-written features and that have the three characteristics of features. List the selected examples, and for each of them, write 2-3 sentences explaining each characteristic and why do you think the selected user story has that characteristic.

Task 3 [25 MARKS]#

You are working at an edtech-startup which wants to develop a K-12 School learning management system powered by AI. The main focus should be on usability by teachers and students alike. For this, you spend some time in user understanding by interviewing potential users and customers of the product. One of the respondent persona description is given below:

Emilío, age 36, is a high-school geography teacher. Originally from Spain, he has a Bachelor of Arts from University of Barcelona. Originally, he worked as a sustainability evaluation specialist at the United Nations by doing fieldwork in various countries. He transferred with his partner in Mallacoota, Australia in 2015, when after working for 3 years they decided to settle here. After that, he switched his career as a high-school teacher.

He believes that his work as a teacher doesn’t just happen at the school—it happens all the time, everywhere. Emilío started attending educator conferences last year and is excited at the prospect of digital transformation in education. They plan to incorporate technology into new lessons and learning experiences into their classroom. He is currently upskilling himself in video production so that he could record lessons from around the state to share with students.

The aim of this activity is to gain an understanding of the ideation process from personas to deriving features.

Task 3.1. [10/25 MARKS]#

Based on the persona above, come up with an imaginary scenario description based on our understanding of how the system might be used by the end user. The answer may vary in length from two to three paragraphs up to a page of text.

Task 3.2. [8/25 MARKS]#

Extract 2-3 user stories from the scenario (including the justification for the action using the phrase so that at the end of the sentence).

Task 3.3. [7/25 MARKS]#

Come up with feature descriptions using the generated user stories. They can be in any amount but should try to be creative and explore the potential space for the generated user story. Finally, also explain each feature and what are the trade-offs between factors in feature set design.

Submission Instructions#

You must submit your finalised report as a PDF via TurnItIn on Wattle under the section Assignment 1 Submission Link

You must also fill-in and submit the quiz containing Statement of Originality and Activity 1 datafile)

FAQ#

A FAQ for frequently asked questions about the assignment.

Can i reference a user story/stories by line number?#

Yes, as long as it is clear you are referring to your story file.

Do references count towards the word limit?#

No, references do not count towards your word limit. You can also use footnotes to reference.

There are things missing from the user stories I have been provided/There are things I assumed, is this okay?#

Yes, as stated in the assignment instructions for task 1.1

Is there anything not explicitly written in the user stories but you “considered” while writing this vision?

You have the opportunity to state anything you considered or assumed.

My user stories seem to be based on something real, should I assume they directly relate to the real thing?#

It would be best to not assume they directly relate to the real thing where possible, but rather use whatever information you are provided first in your allocated file. If you assume anything from the real thing, make sure to note it down.