CS 481 - Team 49
Meeting Minutes
Project Meeting
Friday, August 24, 2007
10:30 - 11:30 am
JEB 324
Recorder: Brandon Riggers
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Meeting Summary
   This was the first project meeting between the team members (us) and Dr. Junk.  Most
of the discussion involved Dr. Junk informing the us about the requirements of this
semester's project.  (For example, the need to prepare meeting agendas and minutes each
week, create a project web site, and develop project milestones.)  Dr. Junk also
discussed our project sponsor, Bruce Mayes, and talked about a team's vision statement
and values.  Other topics included the online Project Reporting System, scheduling
over the next two weeks, and I volunteered to be the first recorder for the project.

Attendees
   Brandon Riggers, Shruti Upadhyaya, Peter Brown-Hayes, Travis Thoroman, Bill Junk

Topics Discussed
   Dr. Junk informed us of some of the requirements for the project, which include:
     - Meeting agendas and minutes.  Agendas need to include things we want to cover,
     and need to be communicated to Bruce when he'll be involved.  The agendas (as well
     as other necessary files) need to be delivered and posted by 8:00 am on the day of
     the meeting.  The meeting minutes need to be emailed as plain text by the start of
     the next business day, and both the agenda and minutes need to be posted on the
     project web site.
     - Decisions about the schedule of recorder and team leader.  I volunteered to be
     the first recorder, and no decision was made about the first team leader.
     Additionally, no decisions were made about future recorders or team leaders.
     - Documents and information provided on the project web site.  These include:
       - A brief project description, which we will develop through discovery of what
       we have to do.
       - A vision statement, two or three sentences long.  Dr. Junk suggested we
       imagine what we'd like to say about the experience upon completion of the
       project.  Dr. Junk also mentioned team software development and an "enjoyable
       collaborative experience."
       - Values, which consist of five or six ideas of how we want to work together and
       what we expect of each other.  Typical ideas include Quality, Communication,
       Committment, and Documentation.  Dr. Junk elaborated by talking about everyone
       contributing equally, splitting up the work appropriately, and bringing each of
       us bringing quality work back to the group in a timely manner.  We also need to
       let each other if a committment won't be met so tasks can be reassigned.  Our
       communication needs to be such that each of us knows what the others are doing.
       - Technical documents such as operational and design specifications, a risk
       assessment, and legal/ethical reviews.  The versions and release dates of these
       documents will be included.
     Dr. Junk also mentioned that a basic, functional web site needs to be in place soon,
     and that the web site is more of an archive; posting information doesn't take
     the place of emailing or communicating with each other.  Team 46's web site from
     Spring 2007 was used as an example.
     - The online Project Reporting System.  We need to fill in our hours worked in the
     appropriate place as we go along, and our week ends at midnight on the night before
     our weekly meeting.  Dr. Junk talked about some of the categories under which we
     report our hours worked; planning and scheduling goes under the "Project Management"
     title, figuring out what to do to complete the project goes under the "Requirements"
     title, and how the work and solution(s) will be split up goes under the "System/
     Software Design" title.  The PRS also provides a means to report defects, and we are
     individually emailed when a defect is found in our contribution.
     - A task list, which may end up with close to 200 tasks reported by the end of the
     project.  We will customize an initial version of a task list posted on the general
     CS 481 web site, and Team 46's task list (from Spring 2007) was used as another
     example.  Dr. Junk mentioned that if all four of us are assigned to a task, the scope
     of that particular task may be too broad.
   Dr. Junk also talked briefly about Bruce, mentioning his liking of being involved with
   CS 481 projects.  Indeed, Bruce will be on the phone with us next week, and will be in
   Moscow on September 6.  This gives us an opportunity to not only learn about the
   project's requirements and what we'll have to do to fulfill them, but also to get a
   sense of Bruce's priorities and communicate with a customer in person.

Decisions/Outcomes
   Few decisions were made during this meeting.  Things set in place include:
     - My status as recorder
     - Our next meeting to occur at 10:30 am on Wednesday, August 29.  Our usual meeting
     time remains 10:30 am on Fridays.

Actions Assigned
   No actions were formally assigned to any individual during this meeting (aside from the
   expectations of the recorder to distribute and post the meeting minutes).  Again though,
   we were all made aware of the need to produce weekly documents, create a basic web site,
   and begin discussing our Concept Presentation, which is about two weeks away.