Its all over!!! - final blog entry!

Well, its over! I can't believe I'm finally saying this! Its been a long and very interesting year. When I look back now, I must say that I'm very proud of my achievements in this year, especially in IE.

When the project started I honestly didn't know what to expect. My major concern at the very beginning was the actual type of our project - when I saw we got the php driven website, I wasn't too happy. In the semester before that, I failed the subject that introduces php (hahaha) so my concerns were valid. Team members were another concern - I only knew Steve from before so I wasn't sure what to expect from the others. If only I knew....

The project

Regardless of how much we complained about our client and the project itself, this turned out to be an enjoyable project to work on. Jon (the client) is definitely a strange guy, but once you learn how to deal with him (which I must say, I mastered in the end), he's not too bad ;). We managed to finish most of the stuff he put as his requirements and the ones we were unable to do, we offered alternative which he accepted in the end.

What have I learned?

I think this project taught me more then I ever imagined! When I look back now, I realise how many things I've improved as a direct result of being involved in the project. From technical skills such as php (non-intentionally, I became a project coder) and mySql, to interpersonal skills like client and team interaction. Maybe I was lucky to be involved in the project that had everything that you want to be tested on - difficult client, lazy team members(hehe), short timeline, etc. Combine that with other subjects and assignments and my lack of php coding skills and you get one heck of a ride! But as I said earlier - it was priceless! I feel much better prepared for real world after being exposed to so many different situations throughout the project.

Team members

I mentioned earlier that I never knew what I was getting myself into when teaming with these guys. I have one big weakness - I always want things to be perfect and if I can't achieve that 'perfection' I tend to look for alternatives. This also happens with other people's work - I expect it to be as close to 'perfection' as possible and this wasn't the case with some of the guys in the group. In the first semester, I corrected things myself but I learned my lesson in the second semester - I pushed them a lot harder and it worked really well. I'll try to give you a quick overview of other team members...

Steve

Great guy, socially and professionally. He coded probably around 60% of the project and did a really good job. He always asked for more work when he had none and everything he did was really good. He's a kind of guy I would love to work with on any project! Grade - HD

Jason

Jason improved a lot in the second semester! His work rate increased dramatically and he was much more aware of what was going on in the second semester. He couldn't do any coding but he always had helpful logic and served as an extra pair of eyes (and brain). Grade - D

Paul

He also improved in this semester. He attended more meetings and tried to help with whatever he could. I'm a bit surprised that he lack basic IT knowledge seeing that he studies IT. He helped with documentation and did a solid job. Grade - C

Craig

Well, what to say about Craig...he was definitely the biggest disappointment in this project! When someone doesn't have certain skills to do something but has the right attitude, you tend to put up with it. But Craig did not have any of those! He missed most of our meetings - he saw client only twice for a whole year! He simply failed to show any interest in how things were going; he would not contact any of us for more then a week and when he did, it's like nothing happened! As I said, my main problem with him was his complete lack of interest in the project - I can freely say that he was a typical 'free rider'! Grade - very very tough one! As much as I don't want anyone to fail, he brought this on himself! Maybe Pass but if you guys are feeling very generous....

Final words

So it comes to an end...it's been a very interesting ride and I enjoyed it very much! Dave, you've been fantastic - thank you very much for your advice and help throughout the year! Special thanks goes to Janet who gave us precious advice with php on more then one occasion....now off to couple of months of rest and then IBM here I come!!!!!

Its crunch time - week 11

Its there - we've uploaded the website and put it online last Wednesday! There were few hiccups and ups and downs but in the end it all worked fine. As I mentioned earlier, there are still some things that we need to finish, but the core of the website is online and functional. Jon was happy as well, although he found few errors when he tried to use the website but we managed to correct them very quickly.

When we started with uploads and downloads two weeks ago I was constantly insisting to have multiple backups on various locations. God was I right....during the main upload on last Tuesday, we encountered few problems. Because Steve did some of the work directly online without having a copy of it on his offline server, we accidentally overwrote some of the stuff he created!! Luckily, I made one final backup of the server the night before and we were able to recover.

I'm still a bit annoyed with Craig and Paul - I got to uni last Tuesday at 10.30am and left at around 5.30pm. Both of them came at around 3 pm and left around 4.30pm!!!! Dave I'm serious, if they get the same mark as three of us, I'll be pissed off!!!

This week we have a meeting with Jon, just to go over few things. We also have to test the final pieces of the website before we put them online - user forum and advanced search function...lots of things to do, so little time

Start of week 10

I cannot believe that its week 10 already! This week is crucial for the project!

We started uploading files last week via research network and to be quite honest, its not as fast as we thought it might be! We had to go back three days to get everything up and there are still few files that I'll need to upload myself! We managed to download all the files that are on the server so we have the original backup. I need to upload all php files tonight (Sunday) so tomorrow and Tuesday we can actually switch the website to the new version. Scary I know! I'm still wondering if we could've done more...?

Jon's been annoying as always with his questions and now I have to write him a schedule of when things will be done because he wants to know! Get a life mate...!

I am still not 100% happy with the contribution from Paul and Craig but thats something that I'll talk to Dave in that final interview. To be honest, I'll be pretty pissed off if I get the same mark as those two! And I know that Jason and Steve will be also!

As for the site...I need to upload those files tonight and then, there are so many little tweaks that we need to do in order to get everything working! I haven't finished the search function yet - its 95% done. The only thing I'm really worried about is that we might run out of time! I can see now that we should have done some things differently from the beginning but it too late now...

After this week, we've got a "week off" in which we'll have to work 110% in order to get everything done by the beginning of the week 11! It must be done, there's no excuses!

week 9 - brrrrr

I almost forgot to write this week also! Its been so busy couple of weeks and to be quite honest, this is not on my priority list with all due respect. But anyway, I'll give it a go (hopefully Dave hasn't finished reading them already)

This is THE week! On Tuesday, we are transferring the offline version of the website to the server!!! It is a huge pressure! The client is very very obsessed with the thought that the website MUST be up 24/7, so we can't afford any mistakes.

We decided to follow these procedures:

- Firstly, we'll backup the whole website that is on the server currently (mind you there is over 5 GB of data there!)
- We'll create a new directory on the website called 'Original Site' where we'll them move the current website. This also includes renaming the database
- The next step is to upload the new database and the file structure to the server
- Then we have to make sure everything works fine!

It sounds simple and easy but there is no simple and easy in IT ;).So many things can go wrong so we have to be prepared to tackle any potential issues...

Week 7 - Half way there!

Firstly, apologies to David for failing to write an entry last week! Completely forgot about it quite honestly!!!

We're half way through the semester - only 7 or 8 weeks left before it all ends! Cool and scary at the same time! Looking forward to finishing the course but at the same time feeling pressure to finish the project on time and at the same time keep up with other assignments...

Last week we finally set the date for data transfer! Its going to happen on the 9th of September so we have to try to finish everything by then. There will be few smaller things that we won't be able to completely wrap up before the transfer but it is easy to work on the live site in order to make them work. We need to come up with the strategy of how we're going to do it. We'll probably create a new directory and run the site from there for couple of weeks to make sure it all works fine....but we'll discuss this on Tuesday probably...

I have following things to finish (this is a good chance to see if I'm missing something):

- Quiz: the front end is done and working sweetly! The only thing that is left is the final configuration of the back-end. Its all coded and it only need to be connected with the rest of the back-end site so the client only uses one log in.

- Advanced Search: oh...I haven't done much (read anything) on this for quite some time! The majority is done but I still have some important bits to finish...the good thing is that this is already online so I'm not bothered by the deadline (well not this one anyway)...main thing I need to do is to put some javascript checking and to make sure that if a user does not enter a search string, everything is displayed from that category

- User Forum: this is also 90% done and it only needs some final tweaking. It shouldn't take more then couple of hours to finish so I'll probably leave it last

That's it! There are few things that Steve has to finish but that is all from my side. I'm very happy with the progress of the project. Other guys have been in charge of all documentation and the real challenge for them will be the Test document. I'll have to make sure that they do a proper job...

Thats it for now...will come back with some more next week ;)