SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This blog post will discuss these topics as they relate to Oregon State’s CS 467 Capstone course. I took this class the Winter of 2024, currently still in it with about 2 weeks or so left of working on our project. The project in question is called Online Trading Card Game Maker. It is essentially a CRUD app with some nuances and I am working on it with a team of 3 other people.
Strengths
The freedom. Capstone is structured in such a way that you are given a very wide breadth of freedom to impelment your project. The requirements of your project are more or less your first and last guidelines and it is very much up to you on how you go about implementing them. This lets people focus on their strengths and lean into them, or conversely it allows them to learn something new if they’d like. It provides you with autonomy that other courses in the program come close to but do not surpass.
The variety of project choices. The choices available for projects are numerous and suitable for a variety of interests. Some are very relevant to our coursework while others would like require a non-insignificant amount of self-study to make work. This variety is nice as gives the student opportunity to pursue something that’s aligned with their interests.
Weaknesses
To some degree, the freedom. This is really the only thing I would categorize as a weakness but it also happens to be the course’s strength and arguably it’s most unique quality.
If you or your groupmates are not familiar with CI/CD or unsure of how to go about starting, it can make things more difficult. You’re also liable to encounter rework if a certain approach turns out to be non-viable for whatever reason. If that happens, you might be left putting in significantly more time in order to catch up to the progress you need to be at.
You need to be competent at communication as well as project management. If those qualities are lacking in you or your group, things become more difficult as it takes more time to discover changes, know what has been and hasn’t or delineate future responsibilities.
Opportunities
Mandate the use of Jira or some similar tool. It’s nice that it’s optional but having it be mandatory could help more groups and get the students more familiar with similar tools. They’re used frequently in industry so it’d be a useful skill. I would say that it’d be a better component of the course than the discussions which I think should be made into Extra Credit assignments for those that would like to do them.
Provide some additional clarity on how projects are to be assessed. This is certainly something that the team can discuss with the Professor or the TAs but it would be nice to have more information on that generally-speaking from the start. My understanding mostly comes from the project standard and stretch requirements for that, which is more-so a check-list of functionalities.
Threats
I don’t think that this class has anything that is particularly serious about it that affects it’s quality. I think your mileage may vary based on your experiences and competencies but overall it’s what I had expected out of capstone. It has been a memorable learning experience through its challenges. This course in particular I feel like got the closest to real-life development out of any courses that I took, which in turn made it a notable way to cap off the program.
Looking forward to it!
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