As the end of the Fall Term is almost here, so is the beginning of the Development of our project. With that have come new challenges, and learning new technologies.
Team Workflow
As we have all gotten to know each other better and work with one another more often the team is functioning as an actual development team. Our communication is amazing, and we have been utilizing Microsoft Teams as our main means of communication. We keep each other informed and up to date and provide meeting notes for those members unable to attend. When one member has a question it does not take long for another member to respond to help that member.
Git Workflow
One of the more complicated things is using version control with one another, and trying to avoid any merge conflicts that may arise. We set up some standards for how branches and commits should be named. This was to hopefully create an easy way to track branches and commits in our Jira workplace.
Most importantly we designed a preliminary approach to how we want to create deployments and releases. For this, we wrote out documentation outlining these principles for all Team members to follow, and in our first week of having these principles most team members are following them exactly.
Releases
Until we have a CI/CD pipeline fully defined the Git Workflow we plan to have is centered around releases. With every release will come a list of issues with that project. Most likely these will be the issues handled in every sprint, and we will create that release branch from the main branch. Once the issues are completed each issue’s branch will be tested thoroughly before being integrated with the release branch. Next, a pull request will be made for that branch, and another developer will review the committed changes. After the developer reviews and okays the code, then it will be merged into the release branch. Finally, once all issues are integrated with the release branch another round of thorough testing will be made on the release branch before merging to the main branch.
Gitlab Ci/CD
The CI/CD pipeline is still being researched, but one of the more exciting details is the use of GitLab as our CI/CD tool. Our project mentors want us to aid in developing a pipeline for them, so this will be an exciting addition on top of building out this awesome project.
Conclusion
I truly have a great opportunity to be part of such a great team and these past few weeks have shown me how strong we are moving into the Winter term. There is a lot to learn and a lot of challenges still to come. I have no doubt that we will handle them in the best way we can, our communication and teamwork are strong. All of us have hopes to build out the requirements of this project, and also build out any nice to-haves off our project mentors checklist. I could not be more excited for the upcoming term.
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