I found the Agile scrum methodology to be quite interesting. The emphasis on following the rules and the critical role of good communication in keeping projects on task was fascinating to me. It was also something that I felt, when applied correctly, could be applied to anything, not just coding projects. I was a little confused by the idea of change however. In the video, it was made clear that mid-sprint, things should not be changed. It throws off the team and leads to potential failure. Rather, goals should be established at the beginning of the sprint and everyone needs to stick with them. In the Agile Manifesto however, it states that:

Welcome changing requirements, even late in 
development. Agile processes harness change for 
the customer’s competitive advantage.

I assume that these two elements of Agile are likely not as contradictory as I seem to think they are but for a novice like me, it still seems a little complicated.

One aspect of the video I found especially interesting, as is apparent by the title of this post, is the term ‘done’ and the many contradictory understandings people have of it. Our website projects are done today but are they actually done? Probably not. They were done last week as well and look at how much more work everyone has put into them! I think everyone has their own understanding of what an assignment being done means. Because of this, it is critical for everyone working together on projects or on the same team to share these understandings to maximize success.

Some last thoughts to leave you all with:

1. I wrote this post entirely in WordPress using the expanded page view Greg shared with us rather than copy pasting from Microsoft Word. It was my first time doing so and although it wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be, having the page background fade in and out of white while I was typing was incredibly distracting.

2. I had a nightmare last night about getting stuck in traffic and not being able to post an analysis post by 5 p.m. I wish I was kidding.

The most common critiques were about white space and descriptions for my photos. Unfortunately, I was only able to resolve the latter. I added brief descriptions to the photos that I felt weren’t self-explanatory, or that I thought had especially interesting stories behind them. The remainder of the photos I left at a thousand words…

I wasn’t able to resolve the white space issue, at least not completely. On the content pages, I was able to adjust sizes to decrease some white space, but on a large enough screen the white space is unavoidable. At least as far as I can tell. On the home page, I was able to address the white space a few different ways, but each of them created a new and worse problem. It’s something I’ll have to continue to research and work on, and something I may not resolve before the course is complete. Another suggestion was too bring the image headers closer to the bottom of the image, when viewing category pages. This is something I have struggled with. I’ll continue to work on it, but I’ll probably need to submit the question to a help site.

There was one aesthetic suggestions, which was where to place the home link. I left that one open for now, because even though I don’t want to move the home button location, I think I can draw more attention to it with some styling.

Other issues that classmates brought up were resolved more easily, and they are as follows:

1. Header not centered on larger screens (resolved).
2. Like buttons not working (resolved).
3. Misspelled url on “Architectures” page (resolved).
4. Unnecessary info above Twitter widget (resolved).

Additional issues I noticed this week:

1. Admin comment highlighter not working (resolved).
2. Menu not centered (resolved).

I’m still working on a lot of other things that I’m finding online. There’s too much honestly. I think I’m going to burn out and a year from now you’ll clink on my link only to find the page covered in cobwebs. 🙂

The statement that popped out to me in the video you assigned us to watch is that better planning means less wasted effort. Looking back at my prior entries, I noticed a trend. That trend was that I often mentioned that I should have done something earlier.

This statement can pretty much be applied to anything, but regardless, it is an important concept to keep in mind, especially in code world. The second statement that popped out to me is that it’s important to have a shared definition of done. As DJ’s post says, you’re never really done with your site/project. When referring to agile practices, it’s most important that everyone is on the same page and understands the point in which they are trying to reach. I have kept this in mind when thinking about/referring to my site. There are so many improvements that can and should be made to my site, but all of those changes will not necessarily be made by Sunday. I learned that it is important for me to set a goal of what it is that I want, and just get there. Everything else that may come to mind later on that I want to add can be added at a later time as well.

What I learned most through the reading/video is that the teachings are close to identical to what you’ve taught us from the beginning of this class. We were asked to pick the functionalities of our sites (keeping them realistic) and we were given a deadline. We were encouraged to test them before deadline to ensure all of the bugs were worked out. As we critiqued one another’s sites, we played the user role.

I can honestly say that now that I’ve seen not only my progress, but my classmates’ progress as well, this whole coding thing is starting to make sense to me. Initially it is hard to accept that you’re taking a class that you’ll probably still leave as a beginner in. You repeatedly warned us that by no means will this class make us coders, but it is not until very recently that I was able to piece together the reasons why we did a lot of what we did. I still hate JavaScript, and it may still take me hours to figure out how to fix my broken codes, but I have made so much progress. I understand concepts, how important it is to Google and so many other things that I would have never touched on without the push of this class. And with that being said, me, myself and I have agreed that this post is DONE.