To manage the transition from trimesters to hexamesters in 2021, UNSW has established a new focus on building an in-house digital collaboration and communication tool for groups and teams to support the high intensity learning environment.
Rather than re-invent the wheel, UNSW has decided that it finds the functionality of Microsoft Teams to be nearly exactly what it needs. For this reason, UNSW has contracted out Penguin Pty Ltd (a small software business run by Hayden) to build the new product. In UNSW's attempt to try and add a lighter note to the generally fatigued and cynical student body, they have named their UNSW-based product UNSW Streams (or just Streams for short). UNSW Streams is the communication tool that allows you to share, communication, and collaborate to (attempt to) make streams a reality.
Penguin Pty Ltd has sub-contracted two software firms:
- BlueBottle Pty Ltd (two software developers, Andrea and Andrew, who will build the initial web-based GUI)
- YourTeam Pty Ltd (a team of talented misfits completing COMP1531 in 21T3), who will build the backend Python server
In summary, UNSW contracts Penguin Pty Ltd, who sub contracts:
- BlueBottle (Andrea and Andrew) for frontend work
- YourTeam (you and others) for backend work
Penguin Pty Ltd met with Andrea and Andrew (the frontend development team) 2 weeks ago to brief them on this project. While you are still trying to get up to speed on the requirements of this project, Andrea and Andrew understand the requirements of the project very well.
Because of this they have already specified a common interface for the frontend and backend to operate on. This allows both parties to go off and do their own development and testing under the assumption that both parties will comply with the common interface. This is the interface you are required to use.
The specific capabilities that need to be built for this project are described in the interface at the bottom. This is clearly a lot of features, but not all of them are to be implemented at once.