B5 Bachelor PAM Process Modeling and Management

The Project was both a technologically tricky undertaking, and a means for us to learn how programming projects will work in the future, with a large focus on Agile Development and SCRUM-style Progress management. We started by setting up a regular Scrum Schedule. Sprints were undertaken on a bi-weekly basis, with remote progress meetings every second week between the sprints, regularly on Wednesdays. We started off by examining the original site, and taking a look at the programming language that had been chosen for us. It quickly became clear that each of us had strengths that we wanted to implement in some ways, and so we divided the work between us based on those strengths. Some of us picked up the language quicker than others, and took charge of the programming of the features. Others strengths lay in organisation and presentation, and another had strengths in visual design, so we each focused on using those strengths to the project’s advantage. We set up “daily scrum”-style meetings on Mondays in order to prepare for the Scrum Retros on Wednesdays and be able to present our progress in a proper form as well as discuss the next steps before meeting with the Supervisor to be able to give more satisfactory progress reports. This moment of organization also helped us with getting more on track, as we started clearly defining roles which allowed people to focus on the parts they needed to do while trying not to encroach on the work of others and risk loss of progress.

We quickly redesigned the intro page before getting to work on slowly but surely recreating the original features that the site had that were supposed to be kept. There were a few difficulties when it came to working on the login feature and more, since we had to first gain access to those features from the Company, which took time. After we managed to get past that hurdle, we quickly redesigned the CRUD-Features of the site involving the diagrams and folders. Alongside every feature, our key designer worked on making sure they could translate the design we made on Figma into the new app, the features working as intended, the design being improved bit by bit. After reworking most of the old features, we started adding additional features like the move function, which required synchronization on both the frontend and backend parts, so we took those individual tasks and split them among the programmers. Every two weeks, we presented the results and discussed the difficulties, keeping logs of the scrum meetings to try and slowly build a stronger repertoire using that. And every meeting, we took one or two new features, divided the work and discussed the progress during the monday meetings.

As this is a project on a limited-time basis, we are not planning on adding new features. However, we are going to add enough comments and documentation so that the next group to pick it up and try to improve on it will have an easier time. Future improvements to PAM would include Syntax Investigation of the diagrams, more in-depth filtering, perhaps even a social media share function. We ended up creating a solid base program that can allow for future improvements by the next group to work on it as we pass them the torch.

As for our personal futures, we plan on taking the skills we developed in this project and perhaps improving on them in our repertoire to use in our future jobs and prospects.

Lukas Oswald: While the project was initially off to a rocky start due the new language we had to learn and the fact that we had to organize ourselves, we took our time and quickly managed to settle into roles we were comfortable with. Everyone quickly learned how to use their strengths to provide valuable updates and upgrades to the program, as well as the general working atmosphere, and it definitely helped us all become a more close-knit group as well. Each of us managed to find a way to implement our respective strengths into the project, and used them to support each other in various ways to create a project we can honestly be proud of. I was initially a bit nervous about my role in the project, but once I found out how valuable the organization was and how much it helped everyone, I took to it with gusto and was proud of all the ways I helped people with preparation as well as learning even further how to improve my own presentation skills as well as my organization skills. I’d definitely say the project was an overall success, and we all learned a lot about the Scrum Methodology and Agile Development, as well as learning more about the code and working a programming project. It was definitely a peek into our future if we ever have to work in a similar environment, but all in all, I felt it was a very relaxed and friendly environment. The Supervisors from GlobalGT were immensely helpful, and made us feel like we were part of the company, as well as helping with any questions we had, or worries we had throughout the project. I would say I learned quite a bit, and I’m looking forward to seeing how people take to our project.

Margarita Boiko: I am immensely grateful for this project. I discovered my strengths and also understood what I need to work on, both professionally and personally. For the first time, I created a design from scratch, learned React, practiced SCSS more, and learned a lot about Scrum management.

Anh Phuc-Hoang: Participating in the PAM project for SS2024 has been a great and comprehensive experience for us students. From being newbies in web programming in the early days, we now feel confident in taking on similar tasks. With the dedicated help of the supervisors at GlobalCT, we have learned a lot—not only about web programming but also about teamwork (SCRUM), problem-solving skills, and, importantly, professional presentation skills. These valuable skills will undoubtedly benefit us in the long run. Additionally, the fun and comfortable moments in meetings and lunches are unforgettable. Perhaps this is the catalyst that makes us, the newbies, work productively and effectively (we have completed 95% of the backlog - I’m not lying ^^). In short, I am very grateful to be a member of the PAM project in SS2024.

Hamzeh Hamzeh: The project PAM was a great learning experience for me. I learned how to work in a team by using agile working ways, how and when to communicate with team members to ensure a smooth workflow and I learned a lot about web development. How to use react and some parts of spring boot. I learned about implementing an API. We had some challenges at first with our teamwork regarding which technologies, structure and dividing the tasks among us, but sprint after sprint we learned how to decide together on what to use and how to do things. I am very happy about that. I feel like we had very good team synergy once we learned how to work together. Regarding the project itself I sometimes wished we would’ve had a brand-new project which we did from scratch. Our project already had a backend. We were supposed to create a new frontend for it and we ended up extending the backend. Although it is more fun to do the backend from scratch, I think in the real world I will be working on projects I didn’t create myself, so it was good practice to work with someone else’s code. The code of the backend wasn’t ideal. The structure wasn’t the best, and it took me a bit to understand it because it wasn’t clean code. I had the option to refactor it, but considering the time we had and the fact that it was working, I decided not to touch it and just extend it the way it was. I would’ve enjoyed refactoring it, but it would have taken a lot of time. I also felt like we had very good supervisors. Dr. Sue-Ann Bäsler did a very good job explaining to us how to work in a scrum team and all the aspects of sprints like review, retrospective and planning. Vu Minh Le helped us with technical challenges and sent us in the right direction when we had a problem to solve. So overall I’d say I learned a lot during this project, and I’m happy with the outcome, the teamwork and all the knowledge I acquired.