CS2103/T Website - Admin: Project: mid-v1.0 [week 4]

Decide on requirements (user stories, use cases, non-functional requirements).

💡 Given below are some guidance on the recommended progress at this point of the project (i.e., at week 4, which is the midway point of the milestone v1.0)

This is a good time to analyze requirements with a view to conceptualizing the next version of the product (i.e. v2.0).

Step 1 : Brainstorm user stories

Get together with your team members and brainstorm for user stories for the v2.0 of the product. Note that in the module project you will deliver only up to v1.4 but here you should consider up to v2.0 (i.e. beyond the module).
- It is ok to have more user stories than you can deliver in the project. Aim to create at least 30 user stories. Include all 'obvious' ones you can think of but also look for 'non obvious' ones that you think are likely to be missed by other teams.
- Refer [Textbook Specifying Requirements → UserStories → Usage → (section) Tips] for tips on how to use user stories in this task.
- You can write each user story in a piece of paper (e.g. yellow sticky note, index card, or just pieces of paper about the size of a playing card). Alternatively you can use an online tool (some examples given in [Textbook Specifying Requirements → UserStories → Usage → (panel) Tool Examples ]).
- Note that you should not 'evaluate' the value of user stories while doing the above. Reason: an important aspect of brainstorming is not judging the ideas generated.

Requirements → Specifying Requirements → User Stories →

Introduction

User story: User stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually a user or customer of the system. _{[Mike Cohn]}

A common format for writing user stories is:

User story format: As a {user type/role} I can {function} so that {benefit}

Examples (from a Learning Management System):

As a student, I can download files uploaded by lecturers, so that I can get my own copy of the files
As a lecturer, I can create discussion forums, so that students can discuss things online
As a tutor, I can print attendance sheets, so that I can take attendance during the class

We can write user stories on index cards or sticky notes, and arrange on walls or tables, to facilitate planning and discussion. Alternatively, we can use a software (e.g., GitHub Project Boards, Trello, Google Docs, ...) to manage user stories digitally.

^{[credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakuza/2682466984/]}

^{[credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakuza/with/2726048607/]}

^{[credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:User_Story_Map_in_Action.png]}

a. They are based on stories users tell about similar systems
b. They are written from the user/customer perspective
c. They are always written in some physical medium such as index cards or sticky notes

a. Reason: Despite the name, user stories are not related to 'stories' about the software.
b.
c. Reason: It is possible to use software to record user stories. When the team members are not co-located this may be the only option.

Critique the following user story taken from a software project to build an e-commerce website.

As a developer, I want to use Python to implement the software, so that we can resue existing Python modules.

Refer to the definition of a user story.

This user story is not written from the perspective of the user/customer.

Bill wants you to build a Human Resource Management (HRM) system. He mentions that the system will help employees to view their own leave balance. What are the user stories you can extract from that statement?

Remember to follow the correct format when writing user stories.

User story format: As a {user type/role} I can {function} so that {benefit}

As an employee, I can view my leave balance, so that I can know how many leave days I have left.

Note: the {benefit} part may vary as it is not specifically mentioned in the question.

Given their lightweight nature, user stories are quite handy for recording requirements during early stages of requirements gathering.

💡 Here are some tips for using user stories for early stages of requirement gathering:

Define the target user:
Decide your target user's profile (e.g. a student, office worker, programmer, sales person) and work patterns (e.g. Does he work in groups or alone? Does he share his computer with others?). A clear understanding of the target user will help when deciding the importance of a user story. You can even give this user a name. e.g. Target user Jean is a university student studying in a non-IT field. She interacts with a lot of people due to her involvement in university clubs/societies. ...
Define the problem scope: Decide that exact problem you are going to solve for the target user. e.g. Help Jean keep track of all her school contacts
Don't be too hasty to discard 'unusual' user stories:
Those might make your product unique and stand out from the rest, at least for the target users.
Don't go into too much details:
For example, consider this user story: As a user, I want to see a list of tasks that needs my attention most at the present time, so that I pay attention to them first.
When discussing this user story, don't worry about what tasks should be considered needs my attention most at the present time. Those details can be worked out later.
Don't be biased by preconceived product ideas:
When you are at the stage of identifying user needs, clear your mind of ideas you have about what your end product will look like.
Don't discuss implementation details or whether you are actually going to implement it:
When gathering requirements, your decision is whether the user's need is important enough for you to want to fulfil it. Implementation details can be discussed later. If a user story turns out to be too difficult to implement later, you can always omit it from the implementation plan.

💡 Recommended: You can use GitHub issue tracker to manage user stories, but for that you need to set up your team's GitHub organization, project fork, and issue tracker first. Instructions for doing those steps are in the panel below.

Organization setup

Please follow the organization/repo name format precisely because we use scripts to download your code or else our scripts will not be able to detect your work.

After receiving your team ID, one team member should do the following steps:

Create a GitHub organization with the following details:
- Organization name : CS2103-AY1819S1-TEAM_ID. e.g. CS2103-AY1819S1-W12-1
- Plan: Open Source ($0/month)
Add members to the organization:
- Create a team called developers to your organization.
- Add your team members to the developers team.

Repo setup

Only one team member:

Fork Address Book Level 4 to your team org.
Rename the forked repo as main. This repo (let's call it the team repo) is to be used as the repo for your project.
Ensure the issue tracker of your team repo is enabled. Reason: our bots will be posting your weekly progress reports on the issue tracker of your team repo.
Ensure your team members have the desired level of access to your team repo.
Enable Travis CI for the team repo.
Set up auto-publishing of docs. When set up correctly, your project website should be available via the URL https://nus-cs2103-ay1819s1-{team-id}.github.io/main e.g., https://cs2103-ay1819s1-w13-1.github.io/main/. This also requires you to enable the GitHub Pages feature of your team repo and configure it to serve the website from the gh-pages branch.
create a team PR for us to track your project progress: i.e., create a PR from your team repo master branch to [nus-cs2103-AY1819S1/addressbook-level4] master branch. PR name: [Team ID] Product Name e.g., [T09-2] Contact List Pro. As you merge code to your team repo's master branch, this PR will auto-update to reflect how much your team's product has progressed. In the PR description @mention the other team members so that they get notified when the tutor adds comments to the PR.

All team members:

Watchthe main repo (created above) i.e., go to the repo and click on the watch button to subscribe to activities of the repo
Fork the main repo to your personal GitHub account.
Clone the fork to your Computer.
Recommended: Set it up as an Intellij project (follow the instructions in the Developer Guide carefully).
Set up the developer environment in your computer. You are recommended to use JDK 9 for AB-4 as some of the libraries used in AB-4 have not updated to support Java 10 yet. JDK 9 can be downloaded from the Java Archive.

Note that some of our download scripts depend on the following folder paths. Please do not alter those paths in your project.

/src/main
/src/test
/docs

Issue tracker setup

We recommend you configure the issue tracker of the main repo as follows:

Delete existing labels and add the following labels.
💡 Issue type labels are useful from the beginning of the project. The other labels are needed only when you start implementing the features.

Issue type labels:

type.Epic : A big feature which can be broken down into smaller stories e.g. search
type.Story : A user story
type.Enhancement: An enhancement to an existing story
type.Task : Something that needs to be done, but not a story, bug, or an epic. e.g. Move testing code into a new folder)
type.Bug : A bug

Status labels:

status.Ongoing : The issue is currently being worked on. note: remove this label before closing an issue.

Priority labels:

priority.High : Must do
priority.Medium : Nice to have
priority.Low : Unlikely to do

Bug Severity labels:

severity.Low : A flaw that is unlikely to affect normal operations of the product. Appears only in very rare situations and causes a minor inconvenience only.
severity.Medium : A flaw that causes occasional inconvenience to some users but they can continue to use the product.
severity.High : A flaw that affects most users and causes major problems for users. i.e., makes the product almost unusable for most users.

Create following milestones : v1.0, v1.1, v1.2, v1.3, v1.4,
You may configure other project settings as you wish. e.g. more labels, more milestones

Project Schedule Tracking

In general, use the issue tracker (Milestones, Issues, PRs, Tags, Releases, and Labels) for assigning, scheduling, and tracking all noteworthy project tasks, including user stories. Update the issue tracker regularly to reflect the current status of the project. You can also use GitHub's Projects feature to manage the project, but keep it linked to the issue tracker as much as you can.

Using Issues:

During the initial stages (latest by the start of v1.2):

Record each of the user stories you plan to deliver as an issue in the issue tracker. e.g. Title: As a user I can add a deadline
Description: ... so that I can keep track of my deadlines
Assign the type.* and priority.* labels to those issues.
Formalize the project plan by assigning relevant issues to the corresponding milestone.

From milestone v1.2:

Define project tasks as issues. When you start implementing a user story (or a feature), break it down to smaller tasks if necessary. Define reasonable sized, standalone tasks. Create issues for each of those tasks so that they can be tracked.e.g.
- A typical task should be able to done by one person, in a few hours.
  - Bad (reasons: not a one-person task, not small enough): Write the Developer Guide
  - Good: Update class diagram in the Developer Guide for v1.4
- There is no need to break things into VERY small tasks. Keep them as big as possible, but they should be no bigger than what you are going to assign a single person to do within a week. eg.,
  - Bad:Implementing parser (reason: too big).
  - Good:Implementing parser support for adding of floating tasks
- Do not track things taken for granted. e.g., push code to repo should not be a task to track. In the example given under the previous point, it is taken for granted that the owner will also (a) test the code and (b) push to the repo when it is ready. Those two need not be tracked as separate tasks.
- Write a descriptive title for the issue. e.g. Add support for the 'undo' command to the parser
  - Omit redundant details. In some cases, the issue title is enough to describe the task. In that case, no need to repeat it in the issue description. There is no need for well-crafted and detailed descriptions for tasks. A minimal description is enough. Similarly, labels such as priority can be omitted if you think they don't help you.
Assign tasks (i.e., issues) to the corresponding team members using the assignees field. Normally, there should be some ongoing tasks and some pending tasks against each team member at any point.
Optionally, you can use status.ongoing label to indicate issues currently ongoing.

Using Milestones:

We recommend you do proper milestone management starting from v1.2. Given below are the conditions to satisfy for a milestone to be considered properly managed:

Planning a Milestone:

Issues assigned to the milestone, team members assigned to issues: Used GitHub milestones to indicate which issues are to be handled for which milestone by assigning issues to suitable milestones. Also make sure those issues are assigned to team members. Note that you can change the milestone plan along the way as necessary.
Deadline set for the milestones (in the GitHub milestone). Your internal milestones can be set earlier than the deadlines we have set, to give you a buffer.

Wrapping up a Milestone:

A working product tagged with the correct tag (e.g. v1.2) and is pushed to the main repo
or a product release done on GitHub. A product release is optional for v1.2 but required from from v1.3. Click here to see an example release.
All tests passing on Travis for the version tagged/released.
Milestone updated to match the product i.e. all issues completed and PRs merged for the milestone should be assigned to the milestone. Incomplete issues/PRs should be moved to a future milestone.
Milestone closed.
If necessary, future milestones are revised based on what you experienced in the current milestone e.g. if you could not finish all issues assigned to the current milestone, it is a sign that you overestimated how much you can do in a week, which means you might want to reduce the issues assigned to future milestones to match that observation.

As a user I can add a task by specifying a task description only, so that I can record tasks that need to be done ‘some day’. As a user I can find upcoming tasks, so that I can decide what needs to be done soon. As a user I can delete a task, so that I can get rid of tasks that I no longer care to track. As a new user I can view more information about a particular command, so that I can learn how to use various commands. As an advanced user I can use shorter versions of a command, so that type a command faster.

Step 2: Prioritize the user stories

Suggested workflow:
- Take one user story at a time and get team member opinions about it.
- Based on the team consensus, put the story (i.e. the piece of paper) onto one of these three piles:
  - Must-Have : The product will be practically useless to the target user without this feature.
  - Nice-To-Have : The target user can benefit from this user story significantly but you are not certain if you'll have time to implement it.
  - Not-Useful : No significant benefit to the target user, or does not fit into the product vision.
- If using physical paper to record user stories: After all stories have been put in the above three piles, you can make a record of which stories are in the three piles.
Step 3: Document requirements of the product

Based on your user story categorization in the step above, given module requirements/constraints for the project, and the current state of the product, select which user stories you are likely to include in v2.0.

Document the following items using a convenient format (e.g., a GoogleDoc). Do not spend time on formatting the content nicely; reason: these will be ported to the actual Developer Guide in your project repo later.
💡 Some examples of these can be found in the AB4 Developer Guide.
- Target user profile, value proposition, and user stories: Update the target user profile and value proposition to match the project direction you have selected. Give a list of the user stories (and update/delete existing ones, if applicable), including priorities. This can include user stories considered but will not be included in the final product.
- Use cases: Give use cases (textual form) for a few representative user stories that need multiple steps to complete. e.g. Adding a tag to a person (assume the user needs to find the person first)
- Non-functional requirements:
  Note: Many of the project constraints mentioned above are NFRs. You can add more. e.g. performance requirements, usability requirements, scalability requirements, etc.
- Glossary: Define terms that are worth defining.
- [Optional]Product survey: Explore a few similar/related products and describe your findings i.e. Pros, cons, (from the target user's point of view).

Requirements → Specifying Requirements → Use Cases →

Introduction

Use Case: A description of a set of sequences of actions, including variants, that a system performs to yield an observable result of value to an actor.[ 📖 : uml-user-guideThe Unified Modeling Language User Guide, 2e, G Booch, J Rumbaugh, and I Jacobson ]

Actor: An actor (in a use case) is a role played by a user. An actor can be a human or another system. Actors are not part of the system; they reside outside the system.

A use case describes an interaction between the user and the system for a specific functionality of the system.

System: ATM
Actor: Customer
Use Case: Check account balance
1. User inserts an ATM card
2. ATM prompts for PIN
3. User enters PIN
4. ATM prompts for withdrawal amount
5. User enters the amount
6. ATM ejects the ATM card and issues cash
7. User collects the card and the cash.

System: A Learning Management System (LMS)
Actor: Student
Use Case: Upload file
1. Student requests to upload file
2. LMS requests for the file location
3. Student specifies the file location
4. LMS uploads the file

UML includes a diagram type called use case diagrams that can illustrate use cases of a system visually , providing a visual ‘table of contents’ of the use cases of a system. In the example below, note how use cases are shown as ovals and user roles relevant to each use case are shown as stick figures connected to the corresponding ovals.

Use cases capture the functional requirements of a system.

Requirements → Requirements →

Non-Functional Requirements

There are two kinds of requirements:

Functional requirements specify what the system should do.
Non-functional requirements specify the constraints under which system is developed and operated.

Some examples of non-functional requirement categories:

Data requirements e.g. size, volatility, persistency etc.,
Environment requirements e.g. technical environment in which system would operate or need to be compatible with.
Accessibility, Capacity, Compliance with regulations, Documentation, Disaster recovery, Efficiency, Extensibility, Fault tolerance, Interoperability, Maintainability, Privacy, Portability, Quality, Reliability, Response time, Robustness, Scalability, Security, Stability, Testability, and more ...

Business/domain rules: e.g. the size of the minefield cannot be smaller than five.
Constraints: e.g. the system should be backward compatible with data produced by earlier versions of the system; system testers are available only during the last month of the project; the total project cost should not exceed $1.5 million.
Technical requirements: e.g. the system should work on both 32-bit and 64-bit environments.
Performance requirements: e.g. the system should respond within two seconds.
Quality requirements: e.g. the system should be usable by a novice who has never carried out an online purchase.
Process requirements: e.g. the project is expected to adhere to a schedule that delivers a feature set every one month.
Notes about project scope: e.g. the product is not required to handle the printing of reports.
Any other noteworthy points: e.g. the game should not use images deemed offensive to those injured in real mine clearing activities.

We may have to spend an extra effort in digging NFRs out as early as possible because,

NFRs are easier to miss e.g., stakeholders tend to think of functional requirements first
sometimes NFRs are critical to the success of the software. E.g. A web application that is too slow or that has low security is unlikely to succeed even if it has all the right functionality.

Given below are some requirements of TEAMMATES (an online peer evaluation system for education). Which one of these are non-functional requirements?

a. The response to any use action should become visible within 5 seconds.
b. The application admin should be able to view a log of user activities.
c. The source code should be open source.
d. A course should be able to have up to 2000 students.
e. As a student user, I can view details of my team members so that I can know who they are.
f. The user interface should be intuitive enough for users who are not IT-savvy.
g. The product is offered as a free online service.

(a)(c)(d)(f)(g)

Explanation: (b) are (e) are functions available for a specific user types. Therefore, they are functional requirements. (a), (c), (d), (f) and (g) are either constraints on functionality or constraints on how the project is done, both of which are considered non-functional requirements.

Project: mid-v1.0 [week 4]

Brainstorming

Introduction

Organization setup

Repo setup

Issue tracker setup

Project Schedule Tracking

Using Issues:

Using Milestones:

Introduction

Non-Functional Requirements

What

Product Surveys