Tag Archives: project management

Project Management and Final Project Updates

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What resonated with me the most this week was stated in the Agile Manifesto:

“Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.”

I want to be able to continue thinking like this as I approach both the final project and future web/digital projects. I tend to overthink things and get bogged down in the granular tactics instead of focusing on the big picture. I overcomplicate and get frustrated. I have to learn to be flexible, take a step back and look at the project as a whole in order to be as successful as I can be.

The Agile Best Practices video had great concepts that I think can be translated for any managing any project—planning, feedback and testing. For the final project, I will need to create a plan, ask my classmates for feedback and continue testing for the user on the front and back-end.

Updates on the final project: I had SO much trouble getting my site to be hosted on my server on my computer. I did see that it slowed my computer down a little bit, but it was not anything too significant. However, I have not had as much time to go into the code and begin updating it to fit my needs. I’ve begun taking pictures, short video clips, and creating content for the site, since I think that will be the easiest portion of the project. Moving forward, I hope to use a more efficient project management tool to keep me on track of small things I can do every day to alleviate the workload and added stress as we finish up the summer semester. Something I hope to be able to keep in mind is looking beyond the front-end and UX of my site and approach the customizations with a problem-solving lens, as explained in our reading.

Wrapping Up PHP and Reading Up on Project Management

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A small update on last week’s PHP assignment because I was still having trouble with it on Wednesday: I think I was finally able to get my basic poll to work and show up correctly in my browser. After doing a bit more Googling, I think my issue had something to do with the way I was naming my files. Once I adjusted the name of my PHP and HTML files both in the code and in the individual file names, the poll ran correctly.

In terms of the readings for this week, I have to say being totally new to project management, it was a little difficult to keep up with our discussion last week. I was still confused about the difference between waterfall and agile methodology. However, the readings — especially the agile manifesto and the best practices video — helped me better understand the agile methodology at least. It kind of seems to me like this is the more popular method since it’s more team-oriented and focused on customer input?

I really enjoyed Jared Spool’s piece on design thinking, particularly the section about design being more than just a way to make things pretty, because that is an issue I’ve found myself having as I’ve begun working on my project. In terms of my project, I’ve been slow to start this week, but I hope to have a child theme created and begin working on a custom post type for my blog before Wednesday. I think I’ve been too caught up in thinking about how to make it look pretty — thinking about which theme is the best looking, what aesthetic I want — rather than remembering I need to be focusing on functionality and the idea, as Spool puts it, that design is about problem-solving and end-to-end solutions. On a less serious note, I also really loved his reference to the stone soup folktale because I’m pretty sure I heard the Russian version as a child. 

Finally, I’m including a link to my WordPress site here once again and want to give a shout out to Victoria for answering my questions about how to set it up last class! Also, here is where the code will show up on GitHub.

Project Management and Creating My Child Theme

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The video about agile project management best practices was very timely as I begin working on my final project site. I completed a certificate in project management through the School of Continuing Studies back in 2015 and am familiar with most of the terminology and concepts that were covered in the video and in Greg’s lecture, but I found it helpful to revisit these concepts and think about how to apply project management principles to my final project site. I imagine that the ability to be agile and flexible will be important as I work on my site, knowing there will be some obstacles along the way that I’ll have to work to overcome. The concepts of sprints and iterations might be a good way to approach all of the code I’m going to be writing — breaking the work that needs to be done down into more manageable chunks and keeping to a defined schedule of coding over the next three weeks before the project due date. I’m hoping that devoting six or seven hours a week to working on my site will be enough! I also want to be careful not to try to do more than I had originally planned for and outlined in my pitch post, as this could result in me getting distracted from completing the customizations that are most important to me.

As I read through the Agile Manifesto, it reminded me of the Zen of Python, which was one of the first reading assignments for this class. Both the Agile Manifesto and the Zen of Python espouse the importance of simplicity when working on a project. In terms of my final project, a simple solution can make my site more accessible and user friendly for my readers, which is something that the article about design thinking suggests is critical to creating a well designed, customer-focused site. As that article explains, design isn’t just about making things look pretty, but is also about creating the best and most fluid user experience. Design is something that should be thought about from the beginning, and not simply as an afterthought at the end of the project.

I also started some early work on my final project site this weekend. I purchased my domain and hosting on GoDaddy last week, and after several attempts of uninstalling and reinstalling WordPress on my hosting, I think my site is officially up and running at The Running (G)lover. I followed these instructions to install WordPress on my hosting, and I’m hoping that I did it correctly. I had initially installed WordPress on the https:// version of my domain, but it was very easy to uninstall and then reinstall it to the http:// version instead.

I downloaded the Retina theme from WordPress and have been poking around in the code to see what it looks like and how I will alter it using CSS and my other modifications. My most exciting achievement this week was creating my child theme using the instructions on the WordPress Codex. The process was pretty straightforward due to WordPress kindly providing all of the code to use, but I was definitely confused when reading through some parts of the instructions. For example, the instructions mention that “if your child theme has more than one .css file (e.g., ie.css, style.css, main.css), then you will have to make sure to maintain all of the Parent Theme dependencies,” but it is unclear what this means. There are no follow-up instructions for what to do if your parent theme has multiple .css files. My chosen theme has a main style.css file, but also has a separate subfolder called CSS that contains .css files called bootstrap.css, editor-style.css, and font-awesome.css. I’m not sure if I am also supposed to enqueue these three files in addition to the main style.css file, and if so, I have no idea where to start with doing this. I enqueued only the main style.css file, and my child theme did indeed show up in my local site’s administration panel and I activated it, so I am praying that I did this correctly. Greg and fellow classmates, have any of you encountered a similar issue when creating your child theme, and if so, what did you do?

Now the real work (and fun, hopefully) begins…