Development Log Template

The Development Log is worth 20% of your module grade. You write one entry per week, from Week 3 to Week 9 — seven entries total. Your pathfinder reads it throughout the semester to track your team’s progress and your individual contribution.

Updated based on your feedback

Students told us the “What we did this week” and “Individual contributions” sections felt like the same thing written twice. They were right. We have updated the template: “What the team shipped” is now a group-level sprint summary. “Individual contributions” is your personal reflection. They are genuinely different — see the flowchart below.

Step 1 — Set up your document

👉 Open the Dev Log template on SharePoint

1. Open the link → File → Save a copy into your team’s SharePoint folder
2. Share the copy → set to “People at XJTLU with the link can edit”
3. Paste the link into your Project Brief and send it to your pathfinder

Two things that break submissions

Use SharePoint, not Google Docs — the submission requires SharePoint version history. Set sharing to edit, not view — if teammates cannot edit, only one person can write entries.

Step 2 — Share the link

Paste the link in two places:

1. Your Project Brief (Dev Log Link section)
2. A message to your pathfinder (email on LMO)

How the Dev Log naturally emerges

Trust the process. The standup and sprint planning are the inputs. Everything else follows.

flowchart TD
    A["🤝 TRUST THE PROCESS"]
    A --> B["🗣️ Run the standup\n+ plan the sprint\nat the start of each session"]
    B --> C["📋 Dev Log fills itself\nevidence accumulates as you work\nno separate writing session needed"]
    C --> D["👀 Pathfinder sees your progress\ncheckpoints have something to discuss"]
    D --> E["✅ SUCCESS IN THE MODULE"]

    style A fill:#1d4ed8,color:#fff,stroke:#60a5fa,stroke-width:2px
    style B fill:#0369a1,color:#fff,stroke:#38bdf8,stroke-width:2px
    style C fill:#15803d,color:#fff,stroke:#4ade80,stroke-width:3px
    style D fill:#b45309,color:#fff,stroke:#fbbf24,stroke-width:2px
    style E fill:#7c3aed,color:#fff,stroke:#c084fc,stroke-width:2px

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Week 3 entry — practice round

Week 3 is a practice entry — you can still update it during Week 4

Use Week 3 to get the format right. You can edit your Week 3 entry any time before your Week 4 session starts.

From Week 4 onward, entries are assessed as submitted. Write them at the time — not weeks later.

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Document Header (top of your Word document)

ENT208TC: Industry Readiness — Development Log
Team Name: [Your team name]
Session & Group: Session [X] Group [Y]
Academic Year: 2025–2026

Team members:
  [Full name] — [Student ID]
  [Full name] — [Student ID]
  [Full name] — [Student ID]
  [Full name] — [Student ID]
  [Full name] — [Student ID]
  [Full name] — [Student ID]
  [Full name] — [Student ID]

Pathfinder: [Name]
Dev Log link included in Project Brief: ✅ / ❌
Dev Log link sent to pathfinder and module leaders: ✅ / ❌
GitHub repository: [link]

Who to share the link with

Send your Dev Log link to three people:

1. Your pathfinder — their email is on LMO
2. The module leaders — contact details on LMO

The SharePoint sharing setting should stay as “Anyone at XJTLU with the link can view and comment”. This covers all of them without needing to add each person individually.

The quickest way: paste the link into your Project Brief (the Dev Log Link section) AND send one message to your pathfinder with the link. Module leader details are on LMO — send them the link too.

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Evidence Quality Guide

Weak evidence	Strong evidence
”Made progress on the app”	GitHub commit link showing the specific code change
”Talked to users”	Link to interview notes with direct quotes
”Worked on design”	Figma link showing before and after
”Researched the market”	Document with 3+ competitor names, features, and gaps
”Fixed a bug”	GitHub issue link + commit that closed it

Why evidence links matter

Your pathfinder assesses your individual contribution partly through your Dev Log. A entry with no links cannot be verified — it scores lower than one with functional evidence, regardless of how much work you actually did. Link everything as you go.

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Week 3 Example Entry

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WEEK 3 — 17/03/2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🟢  Status: On track
We chose our project today and have a clear direction going into Week 4.


── What the team shipped ──────────────────

- Chose our project — expense tracker, approved by team vote
- Set up GitHub repository with all 7 members as collaborators
- Completed wireframe sketches for 3 core screens
- Researched 4 competitor apps (Splitwise, Settle Up, IOU, Tricount)
- Started and shared Project Brief draft (Section 1 complete)


── Evidence links ─────────────────────────

- [Wireframe sketches photo — Google Drive link]
- [Architecture sketch photo — Google Drive link]
- [GitHub repository — github.com/ourteam/projectname]
- [Competitor research notes — SharePoint link]


── Key decision ───────────────────────────

Decision: We chose to build a shared expense tracker (mobile app) rather than
          continuing James's ENT207TC project.
Why: 5 of 7 team members voted for the expense tracker. James's ENT207TC
     project would have required significant new user research to meet
     ENT208TC requirements, and the team felt more motivated by a fresh start.
Alternative considered: Continuing the ENT207TC chatbot project — ruled out
     because the team lacked the AI/ML skills to rebuild it properly in 8 weeks.


── Challenges ─────────────────────────────

Challenge: Two team members had never used GitHub before.
How you dealt with it: Mei ran a 15-minute onboarding during Mission 5.
     Both members successfully cloned the repo by end of session.


── Next week's plan ───────────────────────

- Wei: Complete Section 1 draft of Project Brief and share with team
- Sofia: Conduct 2 user interviews before Wednesday to validate the problem
- Cheng: Add wireframe photo to Dev Log and start Figma mockup
- James: Build "add expense" screen skeleton in React Native
- Mei: Set up GitHub Projects Kanban board with Week 4 tasks
- Yuki: Finish and proofread Project Brief, submit via LMO by Tuesday
- Alex: Write individual contributions section for this entry


── Individual contributions ───────────────

Wei: I led the opening individual thinking session and wrote down 5 specific
observations from my own flat experience. I suggested the expense tracker idea
after realising three of my teammates had the same frustration. I also helped
Sofia structure the HMW discussion format.

Sofia: I facilitated Mission 2 by timing each person's share and writing ideas
on the poster. I wrote the final HMW statement on the board and ran the dot
voting. Next week I will conduct two user interviews to validate our problem
assumption before James starts building.

(... continue for all 7 members)

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Group Reflection (Week 11 only)

At the end of the semester, add one final section to the document before submitting:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
GROUP REFLECTION — Week 11
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[150–250 words, written collaboratively]

What did your team learn across the full Product Studio?
What would you do differently if you were starting again?
What was the most significant moment — technically or as a team?