Organization:
Everyone in the team is equally important and responsible to this project. We do not believe in any hierarchy. For every task there is a person responsible to carry out the task. We are carrying the tasks in a pipelined approach where tasks are divided amongst each team member and each software development phase overlaps the other to have the most efficiency and output.

XP Approach:
We believe in XP approach of accountability and have decided to divide the work amongst ourselves through out the software development cycle. Even though each one will be held responsible for their part, it is the collective responsibility of the team to maintain the following:

• Web page
• Meeting Time
• Weekly schedules
• Deliverables
• Documentation (This includes risk analysis, requirement specifications, use cases and all other related documents)

We are using XP partially. XP does not need any problem analysis and requirement gathering documentation but we believe that this is necessary and we will have such documentations even if they are informal. We will have pair programming, as this is the need of hour. We all believe in simplicity and agree to this XP approach. We all need to invest time in system design, as we need to think about our architecture robust and scalable enough to support invocation of the GeneX, VGL, and Protein tool individually as well as in an integrated mode.

Why XP?

• we expect to make frequent, small releases of MGX beginning as early as possible.
• we anticipate that there will be many changes in the technical specifications of the project.

Communication:
We are using CS Forums to communicate with each other. If there needs to be a communication between two persons only, we send private messages to each other through CS Forum or send personal emails.We are sticking to a bi-weekly meeting in which we update each other about our end and all the tasks that have been accomplished. All our to do's for the week ahead are set in Thursday meetings.

For assisting each other in development and resolve issues, few team members use voice conferencing.

Development:
We are focussing on MGX stand alone modes first as MGX is impossible if the application suite does not conform to the same technology and look and feel. Legacy code of previous years is being used, bugs are being removed depending on the severity and priority during development.  

Testing:
We have fully tested the legacy Genex code during the winter and reported all the bugs in a document that has been converted to XML. Same will be done for VGL. New implementation in the applications has introduced more bugs. Testing will be done by the devleopers, client and users.