Submission Form: https://airtable.com/shrthf2d3UzVM32lC
Big Picture Goals
Ultimately we are having this checkoff with the students to make sure they're getting off on the right foot and that they know what they're getting into.
We want to make sure they're going to be as successful as possible, and while they're going to procrastinate, it's going to be much better of a project if they all have defined tasks to work on.
Your goals within the 20-30 minutes you have with this team are to:
- Offer any feedback you have on their design doc (everything's on Airtable): e.g., points of clarity needed, details missed
- Get them started by breaking down and assigning their "first tasks"
Before the Checkoff
- Please read your team's document and provide critical feedback on the different parts.
- Does everything seem reasonable? Should they think deeper about their features/division of labor?
During the Checkoff
- Be positive! Even if their doc isn't perfect, that's what this is for, we can help them get there
- Go through your comments, and walk them through the schema. Ask questions like "How will <complex relationship here> work with the tables?
- Discuss reasonability of features and specifically division of labor. Ask them what they're going to have by the next week! Every member should have some sort of "task" assigned to them.
- Some Ideas for suggestions:
- They shouldn't have some people on "front end" and some people on "back end". Ideally everyone should touch everything at least a little bit. For the apps that interact with more complex APIs, it's tempting to just assign them the entire API, but make sure they have good initial tasks
- Encourage them to think about how to break it up into controllers that people can tackle without too much dependence on eachother. Additionally, it can be helpful to think about it in terms of features/user flows: "Sign in", "Creating and viewing posts" , and so on.
- You don't have to be the mastermind of their project! Ask them questions so that they figure it out
After the Checkoff