Things to Do Following Sprint #1

Well after today's (5-19-08) meeting we're going to be changing gears a bit in order to get the application stabilized and get the framework in place to keep the application from degrading as we go forward.

1. Find bugs holding up your particular story/stories.
   • Document these bugs in fine detail in their ticket/story or in a new ticket. If you're creating a new ticket, it should likely be mentioned in the story that brought that ticket to light.
   • Documenting these bugs means more than just describing their effects. Steps to recreate them are also necessary for the sake of context. This is especially important in the case of bugs that only seem to manifest through GUI interaction.
   • Implement JUnit test cases for each of these bugs.
2. BEFORE fixing the specific bug, improve the robustness of the application & server as it relates to handling that bug.
   • That is, the application shouldn't fall into some infinite loop or otherwise cause the user to restart it just because of a bug. The application should catch these errors and recover as best as possible.
   • Test cases can be developed for these instances as well.
3. Lastly, fix the bug in question!

In order to make this happen, some conventions will likely need to be adhered to regarding the testing framework. There are some examples of JUnit testing in the javasig package, and that can be used at a starting point.

Also, should any downtime occur, or if you need a break from looking at bugs, fixing items from the checkstyle/PMD reports is a good way to clean up the code and learn a bit about how it all ties together. Plus, it needs to be done.

Also, it appears that a chunk of the documentation is out of date and/or missing. For example, the documentation for building from subversion and (re)loading the database is questionable. This should also be fixed. There are tickets (or will soon be) for logging issues, debugging issues, and database (re)loading issues. As these tickets are completed, they should be converted into front page documentation in the form of howtos and manuals.