Student/Developer - software project management

[alessandrofelder]

Stage 1

Your PI’s collaborator would like your help with analysing some data. The data is stored in CSV files, and the processing consists of computing the average value for each column.

For example, for an input file with the contents

2, 10, 200, 2
0, 20, -200, 5

the output of the analysis should be

1, 15, 0, 3.5

You must write a library that lets someone read a file and save the results (average values) in a different file.

The different parties should work together to understand what exactly is needed, decide on a plan of action, then write some code to solve the problem. Work in steps:

Agree on what the program will do (what the inputs and outputs are)
Decide a general structure for your file (the main functions you need)
Decide a detailed structure (the inputs and return values for each function)
Write the code
Questions may come up which are not covered by this description. Make your own decisions according to your judgement!

For students/developers: Be as detailed as you can when asking for requirements. Once you have reached agreement for a step, don’t go back and change it in future steps.

Stage 2

Your PI’s collaborator has come back with more requests. This time, things are not as clear, and requirements will change as you work. Create the code over several iterations, gradually adding functionality or making changes. At each iteration, make sure you have something that works, even if it’s not the complete product. Your workflow may look something like this:

1. Decide on a new feature to add or a change to make.
2. Make the required changes to the code.
3. Present the result to the collaborator and your PI.

As before, make your own decisions when something is unclear. Do not worry about completing all of the requirements that may come up.

For developers: You can choose to incorporate multiple changes in an iteration, as long as you have something that partially works at the end of that cycle!