1 of 28

Let’s continue with

Computational Action!

Making an impact in your community using technology

2 of 28

Teamwork, project management, and implementation

How to meet your project deadline and manage technical implementation on a team

3 of 28

Recall: the computational action process

3

05

01

4. How to make your project come to life and work with a team

How do you keep on top of tasks and deadlines? Organize your project and team with the agile method

04

02

03

1. Finding a real problem, defining what you care about

What is a problem you want to explore? Who are affected? What currently exists and what is needed? Brainstorm ideas and seek inspiration from community and your passions

3. Designing responsibly for and with users and communities

What are the key things you’re creating? Design with users, wireframe, and rapidly prototype.

2. Understanding who you’re impacting, understanding real users

What does a day in the life look like for the user? What are their issues and concerns? Conduct user research with surveys and interviews to understand and validate your ideas for solutions

5. Planning and making a long-lasting impact

What do you want to put into the world? How do you get it into the hands of people? Validating your project in the world with users

4 of 28

How to organize a technical project with a team

Use agile and scrum
Communicate frequently with team members using regular check-in’s/ “stand up”
Take advantage of helpful industry tools: Trello, Notion, Github, Asana, Google Sheets/Docs/Drive

1

Task management is something you probably already do without knowing it. If you’ve ever made a to-do list, you’ve done task management!

So why are we taking a day to talk about managing timelines? In a project with many people, what may seem simple at first can get confusing to track who’s doing what and what task is at what stage. In industry, engineering projects follow a common path from planning, research, design, implementation, and launch - which as you may notice, seems super familiar! It’s the same steps we’ve been discussing this week in our computational action process.

Engineers, project managers, designers, and product managers in industry use tools like Trello, Asana, and Jira Confluence to help keep them on track. You may have heard of these companies before. The guidelines they follow for tracking tasks are also commonly what is called agile project management.

Here is also an example of a Gantt chart, which is a nice way to make a timeline for yourself easily in a spreadsheet or table.

5 of 28

Managing a project to meet a deadline is like an iceberg

Above is the visible progress of your project

UI designs, feature progress, code implementation, prototypes

Below is a lot of behind-the-scenes work: processes, organization, and communication

Regular communication via email/text/in-person among the team
Frequent check-in’s on progress & blockers
Documentation of technical decisions and designs
Updating technical tasks based on progress/blockers

I liked using this visual as an illustration of what goes on during a project process. I saw a lot of this firsthand when I was a product manager at tech companies like Tumblr and Google. Above the surface is usually the visible progress like app screens you make, and code you write that you share with your team, or the work you fill out in the computational action toolkit that you can share with everyone around you.

But there’s a lot more going on under the surface to get a project ready. As you may already know, there is organization you have to put into place if you’re working with a team, documentation so you understand what you’ve done and what is next to do, and regular communication between team members or frequent status checks.

This can all get messy - quick.

Luckily, there are some tools you can utilize that help this process.

6 of 28

PLAN HIGH LEVEL

Plan using this simple kind of Gantt chart with your team how long each part of your project will take, and what needs to get done when to meet your deadline

2

7 of 28

Gantt chart

7

	Week 1							Week 2
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
Task 1
Task 2						◆
Task 3
Task 4											◆
Task 5									◆
Task 6
Task 7
Task 8

8 of 28

What does it mean when a company says they use the “agile methodology”?

AGILE and SCRUM

Agile

is a process focused on iterative development. The scrum process includes having a backlog: which is all the tasks that need to be completed. Generally, it’s good to make a task card for each specific task that needs to be completed. Each task has an assignee, who is the person in charge of completing the task. After a period, the team checks in to update the board. In companies, this is usually done weekly or biweekly. At this time, team members also raise any issues: blockers that have caused them to be unable to complete a task, or more.

Scrum

The scrum process includes having a backlog: which is all the tasks that need to be completed. Generally, it’s good to make a task card for each specific task that needs to be completed. Each task has an assignee, who is the person in charge of completing the task. After a period, the team checks in to update the board.

3

9 of 28

HELPFUL INDUSTRY TOOLS YOU CAN USE

No need to reinvent the wheel!

4

10 of 28

CHECK OUT THESE

TOOLS FOR:

Managing tasks among your team
Implementation
Documentation
Team communication

1.

Trello

Notion

Github

2.

Github

4.

Email/text

when2meet

3.

Docs/

Sheets/

Drive

5

11 of 28

Let’s take a look at task management

Using Trello, Asana, Notion, or Github

6

12 of 28

Important categories for project management

Backlog

All your to-do tasks.

It’s good to make every task that needs doing and first put it in “Backlog” category.

Then you can drag each card to its updated category as relevant to reflect their status.

Doing / Blocked

The “Doing” category is for current tasks.

“Blocked” is a very helpful category. Put tasks here that can’t move forward. Everyone on the team should keep an eye on “Blocked” tasks.

Code Review

In industry, code review is standard to get approval before committing code to a project.

Depending on your project, you might find code review among your team helpful to your team’s workflow.

It is always a good idea to have another pair of eyes to check your work!

7

13 of 28

Let’s look at making Trello work for your project

8

14 of 28

Trello templates give you a board to start from

Try a Trello template

Take a look at project management template vs. the Kanban board template

You can use either one or both - decide with your teammates how you want to organize.

The project management board has “blocked” “pending” and “questions” categories, and the Kanban board is focused on implementation, testing, and code categories. You can always add more columns. I like to add a “blocked” category to the Kanban board so you can update tasks that are not able to continue.

In industry, an eng team usually meets every 1 or 2 weeks to review the board.

9

15 of 28

How to make a card to track each task

10

Name your task & add a description. E.g.: “Make app menu homepage”, “Create chat feature”, “Create user submission form on app” to break up a big task into smaller tasks.
Add members. Add another team member if this person should be in charge of the task.
Add due date. This is the ideal date for when this task should be completed.
You can check “watch” in order to get updates when this task is moved or updated.
To move a task, drag the card to the column that makes sense for the current task status

16 of 28

Example:

Let’s look at a student team project

Student project: �AI Spy

MIT Futuremakers program 2021

17 of 28

The Problem

02

Object Detection for the Visually Impaired

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

18 of 28

The Problem

In 2018, 32.2 million adults in the US reported experiencing vision loss
For people with visual impairments, objects are identified through touch, but what if the object cannot be located?
Our end-users
Theme 4: new and inclusive approaches

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

19 of 28

— Mary Pat Radabaugh

Director of IBM’s National Support Center for Persons with Disabilities

“For people without disabilities, technology makes things easier. For people with disabilities, technology makes things possible.”

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

20 of 28

Market Research

Over 90% use their smartphone daily, but less than 30% utilize their phones’ camera to find objects in their surroundings
Primary reasons:

Only recognized a limited number of objects
Difficult to use
Lack of awareness
Doesn’t provide navigation to object

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

21 of 28

Our Solution

03

AI Spy

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

22 of 28

AI Spy

AI Spy is an app that helps people with significant visual impairments detect objects in their camera’s frame of vision and navigates them to it

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

23 of 28

Key Features

Voice Recognition

Audio Notifications

Haptic Feedback

Improving accessibility while maintaining privacy

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

24 of 28

Technical Components

All computation is done on-device, ensuring the privacy of users is not compromised

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

25 of 28

Demo

Project by: MIlan Ferus-Comelo, Annabella Tian, Aaron Qi, Rhea Jethvani, Tiffany Kuang

26 of 28

Putting it all together, and practicing with your team

Plan with tools like Github, Trello, Notion

Implement (code & document)

Keep track of progress & communicate frequently

27 of 28

Check out the Teamwork Worksheet to keep going!

28 of 28

Let’s move on to topic 5 of

Computational Action

Credits:

Special thanks to all the people who made and released these awesome slide resources for free!

Presentation template by SlidesCarnival
Some photographs by Unsplash