Studio: Finish the Study Plan, Ratify the Sprint

Session: Thu Oct 1 · Studio: Finish the Study Plan, Ratify the Sprint · 65 min

One spine: leave today with a finished study plan, a ratified sprint objective each, and a declared band. This is the last in-person session before the async sprint, and it replaced the operations talk, which moved to Mon Oct 19 so it lands three days before Game Day 1. There is nothing new to teach today.

Why it exists. Yesterday's Part 2 didn't have time to finish, and Monday never reached the sprint menu. Both need the room, and both are due tonight.

Structure. Work first, because the room fills slowly.

• Part 2, finished (~25 min, one slide). Up as people arrive. Teams finish the study plan in user-research.md.
• Swap (~7 min, one slide). The swap they didn't get to yesterday.
• Title and what changed (~5 min, two slides). Two syllabus changes, announced before the band declaration.
• How the next two weeks run (~5 min, one slide).
• Ratify, then declare (~12 min, protected, one slide).
• Up next (~1 min).

That is about 55 of 65. The slack goes to Part 2 if it needs it.

Before class: check that user-research.md is still in all four team repos, and that the band declaration survey is open.

Transition: The "Finish Part 2" slide stays up as people arrive.

Finish Part 2

Sit with your team. Open user-research.md and pull. Finish Part 2, about 25 minutes:

• When your study runs: early (in the sprint), mid-project on a prototype, or late on what you shipped
• Who: five people in the right role, and how you'd reach them
• Three or four tasks, or "the last time you..." questions
• What you'd watch for, and what result would change your plan

Commit and push as you go.

Due tonight, 23:59: Team Workspace & Charter (with section 8) · Declare Your Target Band

Up before anyone arrives, and left up. Tell each team as it settles: finish the plan, don't restart it.

Circulate and read the question lists, with the same three problems as yesterday: questions about the future, questions that describe the solution, and no line saying what result would change the plan.

Push each team to pick a timing. A team that picks "late" needs a baseline: the same tasks on today's system, run now, so there's something to compare against in November.

Recruiting still goes through you. Nobody contacts anyone until you've seen the list.

Transition: At about 25 minutes, swap.

Swap

7 minutes. Office Hours with Usability. Paper Exams with Cloud Workspaces.

Read the other team's Part 2 in their repo and add two lines under Swap:

• A leading question
• An assumption their study doesn't test

The reviewing team writes in the other team's file, which means pulling their repo or using the GitHub web editor. Either is fine.

Take one example from the room of a leading question someone found, if there's time. It's the fastest way to make the "say versus do" rule stick.

Transition: Everyone together for a few minutes.

CS 4535: Software Design & Delivery

Studio: Finish the Study Plan, Ratify the Sprint

©2026 Jonathan Bell, CC-BY-SA

One sentence: today you leave with a study plan, a sprint objective each, and a declared band, and before the band, two changes to what Pass requires.

Transition: Two changes to the syllabus.

Two Changes to Pass

Added: a user study. Your team studies its project area with at least five real users. You help plan, run, or analyze it, and the findings are written up in your team repo by Checkpoint 3 (Dec 3). It can study the current system, a prototype, or what you shipped. (LO6)

Removed: Drill Zero. Game Day 1 on Oct 22 is your first incident, and it's announced and narrated. In exchange, each game-day postmortem names an action you took during the response. (LO5)

Both are in the syllabus now. Declare your band with them in mind.

Say both plainly, and say why they're announced today: the band declaration is due tonight, and a student should declare knowing what Pass asks for.

The user study. LO6 is "decide from evidence about real users rather than assertion", and until now the only Pass item for it was shipping a user-visible change. Yesterday's worksheet is the start of it. A team of three or four can split the work, as long as each person has a hand in planning, running, or analyzing.

Drill Zero. It was going to be an unannounced broken stack during the week you're away, with nobody to help. Game Day 1 does the same job with support in the room. The postmortem line keeps the part that mattered: every student triages something themselves, not just watches a teammate.

Oct 8 is still a class slot. It's now your team's first meeting, in class time, and being named as present in the meeting summary is your attendance.

Transition: Here's how the next two weeks run.

The Next Two Weeks

When	What	Counts as
Mon Oct 5, by 10:30	Standup #1, a Discord post: done, blocked, next	Attendance
Wed Oct 7	Activity: Agents & Workflows, posted in Discord that morning. Your post in its thread by Fri Oct 9	Attendance
Thu Oct 8, class time	Team meeting 1. Summary in your channel within 24h	Attendance
Fri Oct 9 to Mon Oct 12	Team meeting 2 and summary, by a different author
Tue Oct 13, 23:59	Your artifact: one page plus a link, in notes/	Pass
Tue Oct 13, 23:59	Your team's tickets for Oct 15–29, filed as labeled issues on the platform
Tue Oct 13, 23:59	Checkpoint 1 survey: where you stand against your band	Pass
Wed Oct 14, in the room	Standup #2	Pass

Details and rubric: async sprint handout. Clinic is by appointment while I'm away.

Two minutes on the table, then one point that matters. The rubric reads cadence: at least four substantive contributions a week, on at least three distinct days. A sprint worked in one Sunday is visible in the git history.

Explain what a standup is, because most of them have never done one. A short status update every team member gives on a schedule, named for meetings held standing up so they stay short. Three questions: what did you finish, what's blocking you and what do you need from whom, and what's next. The point is to surface a problem while a teammate can still help. A good post has links and a specific request under "Blocked"; "still working on it" isn't a post.

Meeting summaries answer one question: does anything we've learned change our plan?

Transition: The last ten minutes are yours.

Before You Leave: Ratify, Then Declare

1. In your team (5 min). Each person reads their sprint objective aloud: the question it answers, what they'll be able to explain afterward, and its shape. The team agrees, and each person writes their line in section 8 of charter.md.

2. On your own (5 min). Open Declare Your Target Band in Pawtograder. Pick the band you want. At Distinction, pick your four options, and name a first artifact for each if you can.

Both due tonight, 23:59. Change your band any time through Thu Dec 3, in either direction, with no penalty.

Protect these ten minutes. If Part 2 runs long, shorten the sprint-logistics slide, not this one. The sprint starts tomorrow and the instructor is away for two weeks, so nobody gets to ratify objectives or declare a band in person after today.

Push on "what you'll be able to explain afterward". That's what they're accountable for at meeting 2 and Checkpoint 1. An objective whose answer an AI could summarize in a paragraph isn't one. Reproducing a bug on its own no longer counts either; it has to be traced to where and why it fails.

Ratify first, because the objective informs the band. Someone aiming at Distinction's "evidence about users" should notice whether their sprint objective moves toward it.

A sprint objective can come out of the study plan. A team whose study runs early can make running it someone's objective (O7 and U8 on the menu), once recruiting is cleared with you. Say that, briefly, before they start.

Say the syllabus line out loud: declare the band you want, not the one you're confident of. Declaring Distinction and finishing at Credit costs nothing that finishing at Credit would have cost anyway.

Checkpoint 1 (survey due Oct 13) reads against what they choose here, including the Distinction options. That's why the survey asks for the options and not just the letter.

Survey source: surveys/band-declaration.survey.json.

Transition: Here's what's next.

Up Next

Mon Oct 5, Async Standup (no meeting)

The sprint starts tomorrow. Monday's standup is a Discord post by 10:30.

Tonight, 23:59:

• Team Workspace & Charter, with section 8 filled in
• Declare Your Target Band

Close on the transition, not the reminders. Students should leave with a study plan, a ratified objective, and a declared band, and know that the next thing they owe is a standup post on Monday morning.