This was my second Capstone project I’ve completed, the first being during the completion of my Mechanical Engineering degree, so I’ll go over the SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) that I think are applicable to this Capstone course.
S – Strength
I found that one of the best aspects of this class was getting to work with a company (Levrum), to develop a solution for a real-world problem. This made the project feel like it really mattered, especially compared to many of the projects that we work on during school — projects that had been completed thousands of times over by other students before me.
Working with a company also had the advantage of being able to work on a larger project than we could work on otherwise since they worked on the backend while we worked on the frontend, the combination of which would have been too much for us to complete on our own. This separation of responsibilities also helped to demonstrate how software can interreact with independent software being developed by other teams using different tech stacks.
W – Weaknesses
The primary weakness of this course was too much “busy work” which distracted from the actual project work. Every blog post, discussion post, or even the progress reports felt like a distraction from the goal of the course — to complete an awesome project. Of these three tasks, the progress report does seem to be a necessary requirement, however I felt that the format of it was ill-suited. The rigid structure for the progress report slides and other team members communicating your work for you in a prerecorded presentation made it difficult to effectively demonstrate progress.
O – Opportunities
The biggest opportunity for improvement would be a restructuring of the progress report. In the real world, weekly progress reports are more informal and conversational and don’t follow a rigid requirement. I can think of two ways to improve the progress report:
- Have the progress report be a document that is submitted rather than a prerecorded presentation. This document would have a looser structure with individual as well as group sections. Individual sections could include individual progress and blockers, group sections could include overall progress and communication updates (in contrast to individual slides for communication, which led to a lot of duplicate information being shared). The biggest advantage of this would be that it would be easier to communicate complicated topics, as we wouldn’t be relying on our team members to communicate our individual work, and let’s face it, talking to a one way microphone is one of the least effective (and least enjoyable) ways to communicate concepts.
- Have the progress report be an informal group meeting with the GTA, which is my preferred option. I see this as being more inline with how a real progress report would be. It would allow the GTA to ask questions so that they understand the project better and can provide more effective feedback. The GTA could have a list of questions for the group in order to gauge the progress of the project and ensure it is progressing as expected. This conversational format would be more more effective at ensuring the team and GTA are on the same page, would make it much easier to communicate our individual progress and issues we are facing, and would give the GTA an opportunity to provide guidance and feedback.
T – Threats
The biggest threat to this course is the where the grading emphasis is placed. While the class is not a traditionally “hard” class as far as grades are concerned, too much emphasis is placed on the fringe assignments and progress reports rather than actual progress on the project. The GTA only has the progress reports as a window into how the project is going, which as discussed above is not very effective in its current form. This makes it difficult for the GTA to give productive feedback, which is unfortunate because active GTA involvement, along with an emphasis on the project rather than on fringe assignments, is what makes a successful Capstone course.
Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed the project we are working and I think it is giving us excellent experience. However as I said before, I think the course itself needs work to foster the most important part of a Capstone project — completing an awesome project.
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