Now that you have explored and become familiar with a variety of projects and selected one to work on, it is time to become deeply familiar with your selected project. In this activity you will gain experience with your project as a user. Subsequent activities will then require that you acquire experience as a new developer and then as a contributor to the project.

The activities will be completed in sub-teams of 2 or 3. If the full project team has only 2 or 3 members then the full team will also be the only sub-team. Each sub-team will complete the activities independently. However, if a team has multiple sub-teams, they should collaborate, helping each other solve problems, sharing interesting things that are discovered and providing helpful tips. By working in separate sub-teams each individual will be more involved and the experience base of the full project team will grow more quickly.

Because each of the selected projects is different the requirements for the activities are necessarily general. It will be up to your sub-team, in consultation with the course faculty, to decide more precisely how to satisfy the requirements for each of the activities.

Similarly, because each project and each sub-team is different, the amount of time to complete each activity will also differ. To account for this the activities use Completion Criteria instead of uniform due-dates. When your sub-team successfully demonstrates, for the course faculty, all of the Completion Criteria listed at the end of the activity, the activity is complete and the sub-team can move onto the next activity. Each sub-team is expected to invest an appropriate amount of time and effort on the activities each week (7-10 hours/week). In addition the time and effort are to be spread across the week in multiple working sessions. Work on the activities will be assessed via the Project Checkpoints as described in the Course Syllabus.

Preparation

Each project team must create a public Slack channel for their project. This channel should be named with your project's name. This channel will be used for communication between sub-teams and with the course faculty.

Each sub-team must also create a separate public Slack channel. This channel should be named with your your project's name and a clear indication of the sub-team members (e.g. initials). This channel will be used for the sub-team to maintain a Slack live-log of their work sessions. All work sessions should be live-logged. The activity on this channel will be used to assess the time and effort aspects of the Project Checkpoints.

Assignment

In this activity you will gain experience with your project by installing the project as a user and working through some introductory tutorials/activities/etc. You do not need to become an expert user. But you should spend enough time doing this so that you are comfortable using the product and have a feel for how it works and what it does.

When your sub-team believes it has satisfied the Completion Criteria, schedule an appointment with the course faculty for review.

In completing this activity, your sub-team should do things like:

• Watch any introductory videos or screen casts.
• Try out any on-line demos.
• Review the download and installation directions that are intended for users.
• Install the product from a package or binary distribution onto a new virtual machine. Take a snapshot once you have it running.
• Work through introductory tutorials for users.
• Read some "getting started" guides or user manuals.
• Read the FAQ.
• Explore the product's features.
• Invent something you think a user might want to do and figure out how to do it.
• Do something non-trivial with the product.
• Whatever else your sub-team thinks would be helpful in understanding the product from a user's perspective.
• Not sure what to do or if you have done enough? Talk to me and we can generate some ideas specifically for your project.

Use your sub-team's Slack live-log to keep track of things such as:

• Things you have done
• Resources you have used
• Issues, problems, difficulties or confusion that you faced
• Any information that is missing from or is unclear in the documentation/tutorials/etc.
• The solutions you find to any issues you faced
• Whatever else you think might be useful

Completion Criteria

The completion criteria that each sub-team must demonstrate for this activity are:

• A link on your team wiki to a User Install page with the information below.
• A single, nicely formatted User Install page built collaboratively by all sub-teams on the project. This page must include the following sections and information:
  • Directions: Detailed instructions for a clean user install of the latest release of the product. You should link to the project's install documentation rather than repeating it. All clarifications, corrections and deviations from the project's install documents must be included on the wiki. The bottom line here is that a new team starting this project should be able to follow your directions and complete a clean install without issue.
  • Resources:: An annotated list of resources, with links, that you used in familiarizing yourself with the product. Your annotations should indicate the purpose of each resource and assess its usefulness.
  • Possible Contributions: An annotated list of possible contributions relevant to this activity that your team might consider making to the project. Think about things that would improve the experience for other new users (e.g. corrections, clarifications or additions to install documentation or tutorials, etc.) It is not necessary that the contributions be offered to the community. Please consult with the course faculty before offering contributions to the project. Each sub-team must list at least one possible contribution and the sub-team should be identified for each item.
  • Interactions: An annotated list, with links if possible, to any interactions that your team or sub-team had with the community during this activity (e.g. message board posts, mailing list messages, etc.). Please indicate the date of the interaction and the sub-team that had the interaction. Note: Interactions are not required for this activity. However if they occur, please link them here for reference.
  • Contributions: An annotated list, with links if possible, to any contributions that your team or sub-team made to the project during this activity (e.g. corrections/clarifications/additions to documentation, etc.). Please indicate the date of the contribution and the sub-team that made the contribution. Note: Contributions are not required for this activity. However if they occur, please link them here for reference.
• Have made a VirutalBox snapshot of a clean user install.
• Each team member must be able to:
  • Participate competently in a discussion of the installation process.
  • Participate competently in a discussion of the resources used in becoming familiar with the product.
  • Launch the program and give a basic tour/demo of the product.
  • Illustrate non-trivial uses of some of the key features of the product.
  • Any additional project specific criteria specified by the course faculty.