Techrens Alert – part 1

So I want an app similar to Motorola Alert I have been using this app for quite some time. Recently my wife and I got new phones and I no longer like Motorola products so I went with an LG phone. The problem is I lost access to the app since only seems to be compatible with Motorola phones.

What I like most about the Motorola app was that when I took a road trip, I would have it send people alerts every half hour as I traveled. It was a great process in that people could track my location and know how soon I would arrive. I also viewed it as a safety measure and told people if I stayed at the same site for more than a hour (two alerts) to call me. So the app was very useful if to take a lot of trips!

So what can I do about this? I can create my own app with the functionality that I need 🙂

I decide to chronicle my thought process of how I will create the application and maybe even get some user input. In the end I hope to submit my creation to the Google play store.

So let’s get started:

Part 1

So we are in the planning and the analysis  (P&A) phase. In this phase we look at what needs to be done and why. We can also look to see if there is anything similar to what we are doing?

So for my P&A I will use an Agile like approach to create user stories.

Here is the template of a user story:

As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>.

So for this project here are my initial user stories:

• As a user I want to be able to periodically message select contacts so that they can track me as I travel.
• As a user I want to be able to select the type of alert message sent to my contact.
• As a user I want the ability to set the time intervals of the message.

The above stories are the core of what I want!

As part of the planning stage I will define the tools of the trade:

• Android Studio (for development)
• Java programming language
• Bitbucket (for source control)
• A lot of prayer and soda 😛

Since I am trying to be Agile like I plan to have a weekly sprint and produce a feature every week (we will see if that happens).

So I invite you to come along for the ride 😉 You can start by posting a comment below! Tell me what you think of the project. Or even try your hand with creating a user story.

Also you can follow me on twitter @techrens (tweets to come in the future).