Tasks, Bugs, Tests & Spikes in
MANDAROON
The Problematic Story
- As a <learner>
- I want to <hear a vocabulary item pronounced when I click on it>
- So that I can <reinforce my pronunciation and work on listening while I study new vocab>
- And I know I am done when <
- the button is positioned to the right of the vocabulary item
- the button is labeled with a “speaker” icon
- the sound is generated from a publicly sourced website, such as Google Translate
- the sound begins with no unreasonable lag
- the user is prompted to increase their system volume if it is muted or set too low for the pronunciation to be heard (less than 10%?)>
Tasks & Tests
For the story above, the dev team may decide to break the build into the following tasks (not exhaustive):
Task #001: Choose the best “speaker” icons from the libraries we use
Test #001: determine that the icon chosen is acceptable
Task #002: Mockup the button with its icon on our wire-framing software
Task #003: access the vocabulary sound files for all items visible on the page so they are ready to play when prompted
Test #003: insure that the sound files are downloading and that they are not causing the page to lag to the point that the user would notice
Task #004 Create a trigger for the button that plays the sound when clicked
Task #005 Create a trigger that stops a previously clicked sound item when a new one is clicked
Task #006 Create a prompt for the user if the volume is muted or below an acceptable threshold (10%?)
Test #006: Make sure that 11% system volume is adequately loud, or if the trigger should activate at a higher volume setting
A Bug
In completing Test #003, it is discovered that the download process does cause the page to lag in a noticeable way, so a bug is created:
Bug #003: page now takes 2 seconds to load when sound files are introduced (previously .5).
A Spike
Before working on implementing the sound files, we need to try out several 3rd party options and choose the one that fits our needs best. We also need to determine what the development team will need to do to incorporate the selected option into our code.
Description
Determine which sound file source best meets the following criteria:
- Has human-like pronunciation
- Has recordings for (nearly) all of the vocabulary items included in our book series
- Is free for us to use
- Downloads quickly (presents minimal lag when downloading all visible lexical items on a page)
- Downloads consistently
- Integrates easily into our system (i.e., incorporating this feature would require a story of no more than 1 complexity point)
Timebox
4 hours: Spend no more than 4 hours to
- create a list of options
- rate them by the criteria above
- write up the basic technical requirements to implement the #1 option
Important Note
This spike would actually be written up and assigned to a previous sprint. It would be assigned to the same story as the tasks above, but it would have already been completed, probably before any tasks are written.