CS3282 Schedule

The info given below is from the previous round, as a reference only. Major changes are highly unlikely, however.

Week 1 [12th Jan]

Todo

  • Check your details in nus-cs3281/2026 [⏰ Deadline: Friday] and update if necessary. You will be given write permission to the repo by Monday.
  • Discuss with other senior team members to plan onboarding activities for CS3281 students.

Monday

  • Attend the CS3281 session if possible, meet new devs (from CS3281), and help them set up the project.

Thursday

  • Lecture : CS3282 Course Intro
    • Hybrid lecture (Zoom link is in Canvas homepage) -- F2F by default unless you obtained permissions to not attend F2F.

Kick-Off Team Meeting

  • Within the first two weeks of the semester (the earlier, the better), you should arrange a 'kick-off' team meeting.
  • All CS3281 and CS3282 students of the project should attend. Even better if other senior devs can attend, if they are available.
  • A food budget of $10/attendee will be given.
  • Minimally, use the meeting for team bonding. In addition, you can do technical briefings, tutorials, workshops etc. to get CS3281 students started on the project work.
  • Suggested duration 1.5 hours. OK to have this on a weekend, if all attendees are agreeable.
  • Approach prof if you need help booking a venue.

Activity: Book Chapter Report

The purpose of this activity is to encourage you to read SE books.

Steps:

  1. Have a quick look at the default recommended book Software Engineering at Google (PDF available for free). You may also pick a different SE book that you have read before or want to read this semester. Pick a chapter that you want to read/use for this activity.
  2. Post an issue in nus-cs3281/2026 indicating which book and which chapter you plan to read. Assign the issue to yourself.
    Doing this early will help you avoid clashing with chapters chosen by others. We prefer not to have multiple book reports on the same chapter.
  3. Read the book chapter.
  4. Post a short summary of the chapter in the same issue. Just a few bullet points is enough. Optionally, you can also comment on the relevance of the chapter to your NUS-OSS project.

Try to finish the above by the end of the recess week.

You are welcome to do more than one book/chapter too.

Week 2 [19th Jan]

Todo

  • Keep updating progress.md and knowledge.md, in the nus-cs3281/2026 repo periodically.
    • progress.md: Your contributions to the internal project(s). Update similar to how you did in CS3281.
    • knowledge.md: Keep evolving your knowledge.md to showcase things you have learned in various areas (e.g., your chosen expertise areas): resources explored, lessons learned, deliverables produced, etc.
  • If you plan to contribute to an external project, start looking for one if you haven't done so already. Once you have found a potential project, you can follow their instructions to get started on contributing. You can even try multiple projects if you are not sure the chosen project will work out.

Thursday

  • Lecture

Week 3 [26th Jan]

Todo

  • Decide primary/secondary mentor allocation for your project

Thursday

  • ~~ Lecture

Week 4 [2nd Feb]

Todo

If you haven't already,

  • [If applicable] get started with contributing to the external project. If you don't make any progress by week 5, you need to find another project.

Thursday

  • Lecture

Sunday

Week 5 [9th Feb]

Todo

  • As you mentor CS3281 students, try to get them to peer-review each others' PRs and to help guide other contributors.

Thursday

  • Lecture

Week 6 [16th Feb]

Thursday

  • Lecture

Todo

Recess


Week 7 [2nd Mar]

For your reference, below are the instructions given to CS3281 students regarding their plan for the second half of the semester.

By the end of this semester, we expect you to,

  1. deliver substantial value to the project, which may be through developing a fairly big feature (working solo or with others) or doing a bunch of tasks in a specific area,
  2. more importantly, to gain expertise in a substantial part of the codebase (while being fairly familiar with the rest).

If you can't work out a plan that achieves the above, you can seek guidance from the seniors and/or the prof as well.

Deliverables for you (i.e., CS3282 mentors):

  1. guide mentees achieve the above goals,
  2. to ensure CS3281 students collectively gain expertise in the full codebase, and is able to 'manage' the project in future by themselves.

Todo

  • ⏰ by Monday
    • [If applicable] Some progress expected on the external project

Thursday

  • Team-specific discussions (if there's time left)

Week 8 [9th Mar]

Todo

  • ⏰ by Sunday
    • Update the progress page

Thursday

  • Lecture :
    • Team-specific discussions

Week 9 [16th Mar]

Todo

  • ⏰ by Thursday
    • Have a sync-up meeting with CS3281 mentees (at least, your primary mentees) and ensure they are clear on expectations and timelines of any significant deliverables expected from them.
      Also brief them on project management tasks they are supposed to gradually take on in the coming weeks (as they enter the managing phase).

Thursday

  • Lecture:
    • Team-specific discussions

Week 10 [23rd Mar]

As CS3281 students are now entering the managing phase, get them more involved in management activities of the project.

Todo

  • ⏰ by Thursday [If applicable] Document your observations about the workflow of your external OSS project:
    • Info to include:
      1. Links to any online documents about the workflow of external project
      2. Important things you learned from contributing to that project, if any
      3. Practices/tools of the external project that you think can be adopted by your NUS-OSS project
      4. [Optional] Suggested areas of improvement for the external project
    • Submission:
      • Add your observations to the file https://github.com/nus-cs3281/2026/students/yourName/observations.md.
        Afterward, your additions will appear in the Observations page.
      • Recommended length: about 0.5 - 1 A4 page
    • If you contributed to multiple projects, you may document all those projects in your observations or choose one of them to include.
    • If some of your classmates contributed to the same project, you should still write your own observations.

Thursday

  • Lecture:
    • Discussion about observations from the external project.
    • Strategize how to wrap up the semester's work

Week 11 [30th Mar]

Help to maintain a healthy supply of beginner-friendly issues: If you encounter small non-urgent issues (so called 'low hanging fruits'), it is best to leave them for future new contributors, because we expect several new contributors to join the project during the upcoming summer.

In fact, go the extra mile to create such issues when you can, as a good supply of such beginner-friendly issues is an essential asset for an OSS project.

Todo

  • Help CS3281 students finish ongoing (and new) PRs by end of week 12, with one week to spare.

Thursday

  • Lecture

Week 12 [6th Apr]

Thursday

  • Project-specific discussions:
    • Discuss the future of the project, for the summer and beyond

Todo

  • before week 13 Thursday: Have a project wrap-up meeting with mentees and brief them on any leftover tasks, summer plans, etc.

Week 13 [13th Apr]

Thursday

  • Lecture : Wrap up