Week 6: Sprint 2 + Assessment Q&A
| # | Mission | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 📋 Assessment orientation | First 30 min |
| 1 | 🗣️ Standup + sprint planning | 25 min |
| 2 | 🤝 Pathfinder checkpoint | During session |
| 3 | 🔬 First user sessions | Self-paced |
| 4 | ⚙️ Prototype — ship something | Remaining time |
Mission 0 — Assessment orientation
Section titled “Mission 0 — Assessment orientation”No direct questions to Stefan during this block. Post to the Live Q&A instead — Stefan works through the queue live in Hour 3.
Missed the walkthrough or want to revisit it? The video covers all deliverables for the second half of semester.
What is due and when
Section titled “What is due and when”| Deliverable | Weight | Due |
|---|---|---|
| Smart Product Challenge video (3–4 min) | 10% | April 10, 23:59 — this week |
| Project Brief (lock date) | 5% | April 10 — freezes after this |
| Development Log (7 entries, Weeks 3–9) | 20% | Week 11 |
| Validation Report | 10% | Week 11 |
| Technical Documentation | 15% | Week 11 |
| Demo Day | 40% | Week 10 |
Download your templates — do this now
Section titled “Download your templates — do this now”The Technical Documentation and Validation Report are due Week 11 — but you build them from evidence collected every week. Start the documents now so you have somewhere to put that evidence.
| Document | Pages | Download |
|---|---|---|
| Technical Documentation | 6–9 pages | ⬇ Download template |
| Validation Report | 4–6 pages | ⬇ Download template |
What to do right now:
- Open both templates (links above)
- Save copies to your team’s OneDrive folder:
Session[X]Group[Y]_TechnicalDoc.docxSession[X]Group[Y]_ValidationReport.docx
- Fill in the cover page on both — group number + all 7 student IDs
- That is it for today — the sections fill themselves as you build and test
Mission 1 — Standup + sprint planning
Section titled “Mission 1 — Standup + sprint planning”This is a standing ritual — every session from now until Week 9 opens the same way. Three questions each, two minutes per person:
- What did I do since the last session?
- What will I do in this session?
- Any blockers?
After the standup — update your Kanban board together:
- Move completed tasks to Done
- Every developer has exactly one task in Doing with their name on it
- If your sprint goal from Week 5 is not met — say so explicitly. Adjust this week’s goal now, before you start building.
Sprint planning question: By the end of this session, what will a real user be able to do that they couldn’t do last week? Write that one sentence on your Kanban board. Everything you build today should connect back to it.
Mission 2 — Pathfinder checkpoint
Section titled “Mission 2 — Pathfinder checkpoint”Checkpoint 1 must happen by the end of this week. If you haven’t booked it yet, message your pathfinder today — slots fill up.
What to bring:
| What | Details |
|---|---|
| Kanban board | Open and current — all tasks named, all owners visible |
| Sprint status | One sentence: are you on track for your sprint goal? |
| Working prototype link | Something a user can click — even partial is fine |
| Validation plan | Who are you testing with? When? What are you showing them? |
| One question | Something you are genuinely unsure about — pathfinders are most useful when you ask directly |
What your pathfinder is looking for:
They are not checking whether your product is impressive. They are checking whether your team is making decisions deliberately, tracking work, and building something testable. A team with a modest prototype and clear reasoning scores higher than a team with complex code nobody can explain.
See Checkpoint Prep for the full question list they work through.
Mission 3 — Validation — first user sessions
Section titled “Mission 3 — Validation — first user sessions”Your User Researcher should have booked 2–3 sessions in Week 5. This is the week to run them.
How to run a session
Section titled “How to run a session”Before:
- Pick one user story to test — just one
- Prepare 3–4 tasks (not questions) that a user would do with your feature
- Bring a way to record observations (notes on phone, shared doc)
Opening (2 min):
“Thanks for helping us. We are building [one sentence]. We want to see how you interact with what we’ve got so far — we are not testing you, we are testing our design. There are no wrong answers. Please think out loud as you go.”
During (10–15 min):
- Give them a task: “Imagine you just [context]. Show me what you would do.”
- Do not help them. Where they get stuck IS the data.
- Note: what they try first, where they pause, what they say out loud, what they skip
After (5 min):
- “Was there anything confusing?”
- “What would you expect to happen when you [the thing that failed]?”
- “Would you actually use this? Why or why not?”
What counts as a finding:
- Something a user tried that didn’t match your design
- A feature they expected that doesn’t exist
- A label or button they misread
- Something they didn’t notice at all
Mission 4 — Prototype — ship something
Section titled “Mission 4 — Prototype — ship something”Week 6 is not a planning week — it is a building week. By the end of today, something new should be in GitHub that wasn’t there at the start.
If you’re blocked:
| Blocker | What to do |
|---|---|
| Can’t agree on what to build next | Look at your acceptance criteria — pick the smallest one not yet done |
| AI output doesn’t work | Paste the error back in, add your stack and exact error message |
| Dependency missing | Use npm install or the equivalent — ask a TA if stuck on setup |
| Nobody on the team can code | Use a no-code/low-code tool for the prototype, then document the approach |
| Scope too large | Cut a Must-have to Should-have — your pathfinder will agree if you can justify it |
Commit standard:
feat: user can submit a new cat feeding log entryfix: feeding form no longer clears on validation errordocs: add acceptance criteria to feeding log section of PRDClear commit messages are part of your Technical Documentation. Commit links in your Dev Log are how your pathfinder sees individual contributions.
Assessment reference
Section titled “Assessment reference”See Mission 0 at the top of this page for the full deadline table and template downloads.
The Development Log and Demo Day together are 60% of your grade. Your Dev Log is live all semester — your pathfinder reads it. There is no “write it all at the end.”
See Assessment Overview for submission format and the peer evaluation rubric.
Before you leave
Section titled “Before you leave”Four things to have done today:
- Checkpoint 1 — done or formally booked with a confirmed date
- Posted or upvoted at least one question on the Live Q&A
- Smart Product Challenge video — submitted to LMO (or recorded and ready to submit before April 10, 23:59)
- At least one validation session run — findings in your Dev Log
- At least one new commit pushed to GitHub — link in Dev Log
- Week 6 Dev Log entry written — traffic light, what shipped, who did what
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