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On-Site Customer and Planning Game
It is the case in most real-world projects that there exists a well defined customer, external to the project team, for whom the product is being made for. This is true for several of the groups in CS 327 this semester, as they are working on products to benefit several organizations on campus. Our project however was an idea developed by two of the members within our team, Phil Wenstrand and Paul Tongyoo. While our product is meant to be of use to individuals outside of our group, we have found it more useful and convenient to have a member of our team play the role of the on-site customer. In particular, we have had one of the co-creators of RandyLoops, Phil Wenstrand, play the part. This choice has worked well because the visionary of a product is the most familiar with what that product should contain and be capable of. To begin the customer/developer dialogue, the first several group meetings consisted of Phil telling the rest of the team what functions he wanted to be available to the user from our product. From these user stories estimates were given by the rest of the group. In particular, each pairing gave estimates in the context of their component if applicable. Based on the estimates, Phil then decided what user stories should be contained in particular releases of our product. The communication between Phil and the team has increased an awareness within the group of what RandyLoops cabilities should be and the resource investment assoicated with realizing these capabilities.