1.
Start early and Manage time efficiently
Rome
is not built in one day, so does CrossView. Given the time constraint and the
complexity of our application CrossView, efficient time allocation and time
management does play a big role in such a gigantic project. Always start early, thus the project can be
finished in a more elegant manner. Due
to the overwhelming mid-term exams and
FYP projects
belonging to the penultimate year students in the project team, our project has
been constantly lagging behind those of other teams almost till the start of
the progress presentation after putting in days and nights’ of hard work. This is the cost which has to be paid due to
improper schedule and vague milestone given at the start of the project.
Luckily, all group members can sacrifice their biological needs and devote
themselves into the project for two weeks’ long time. And the project cannot be
done without the kind guidance provided by the TAs and Colin.
It
took us two days’ time for to just set up the programs properly in order to
test our hello world code. Although detailed instructions have been posted on
the official website of phonegap, it is rather hard to follow it exactly as the
eclipse always has problems here and there. It takes time to figure out the
places where have been gone wrong. It is assumed either the phone or the
emulator will work. It turned out to be somewhat false at the start due to
technical glitches. It is a project consisted of four members. Thus it is
imperative for us to get all the eclipse function gracefully throughout the
project. If we have started early, this would not hinder our way to meeting our
milestone.
2.
Read the documentation carefully before sticking to any existing
framework
Originally, we
chose backbone.js as our main framework. However, it is replaced by Sencha
touch 2 sometime later after the start of the project due to some unsolvable
technical problems existed. Precious time is wasted as we all have tried to
familiarize ourselves with the backbone.js for several days.
It is a pain for
us to read the documentation of Sencha touch 2. It is undeniable that Sencha
touch 2 is such a powerful framework which supports web application and native
application in multiple platforms. Sencha Touch 2 has a tendency to skip some
essential explanations in its documentation. E.g. in order to access the
camera, some header must be included in the particular Javascript file in which
the camera function is called upon. As we are all new to Sencha touch 2, the
debugging process or rather the “googling” process is more helpful in
developing our application. Pertaining to the Sencha touch framework, trying to
follow the existing demo on the web is much better than drilling into the
Sencha documentation in terms of efficiency.
3. Effective Communication Saves time
Effective
communication within the team always helps save time.
a>
Case
1: models and store (collection of model) were created without reaching the
consensus from the backend and frontend designer. In the end most of the models
were recreated.
b>
Case
2: A problem has been solved earlier by one of the team player. However, since
one of the team members was absent, he was not aware of the fact. What happened
on the next day was that, he spent four hours to solve the same problem one
more time.
c>
Case
3: Github Overwritten. As most of the time, team members were working on the
same MVC. Overlapping was sort of unavoidable. That was precisely why version
control software like Github is necessary to avoid the collision. It did not work out quit well in this
project. Half of us were using the easy GUI version which the other half were
using the command line Gitbash. As the same file was always modified by two
different people on the same line of codes. The merge function provided by the
Github fails epically. This further slowed the progress of the project down.
4. McDonald
always closes at 11. Subway closes at 10. Subway is much healthier than
McDonald. DO NOT EAT McDonald EVERYDAY!
5. Calm down
while doing project. Do not get mad.
6. SOC sometimes
got hot chicks and fried chickens at night, said by Siaw Kz.. haha