[CSCI2194] response to 2/01 minute essays

[Berna Massingill]

Since we only meet once a week, I thought I'd respond to some
things said in this week's minute essays by e-mail:

Several people asked about stages of the project, milestones,
schedule -- in general "what's the big picture?"  I had been
thinking in terms of two phases, analysis and design, with the
analysis part due right before spring break (the "midterm report"
on the schedule Web page), but I think something more fine-grained
would be useful.  I'll plan to talk about that more next week.
For now you should be focusing on the first step, which is a
"requirements analysis".  My recommendation is that you do this
in terms of use cases, but the overall objective at this point is
to turn the vague prose of the project description into something
more detailed and specific.  (And the prose is meant to be vague,
so you get a chance to practice doing this.)

One person also asked whether the goal is a program/system that is
specific to the CS department's scheduling situation or something
more general.  Ideally it would be as general as you can reasonably
make it -- and if that sounds a bit vague, yes, it is, but my
idea is that as you start to sketch out details you can also be
thinking about how general a program/system is feasible.

"FYI", as they say.  

-- blm