The Development Journey

Hello again!

I have been in full app development on my Senior Capstone project Ops Normal all winter, and the team and I have made fantastic project with the app so far! It’s been quite the journey, so I wanted to talk a bit about why I chose this project and everything we have been able to accomplished so far, and also share some insights and lessons learned!

Why Ops Normal?

I chose this project becasue I’ve always had a love of nature, and being in the forest is my happy place. I’m an avid hiker, rock climber, backpacker, and camper, and loving these activities as much as I do, I wanted to do my part in helping to protect the forests.

Me walking to Pyramid Island, Jasper National Park, Canada

Growing up and living in California, I’ve seen firsthand the devastation of wildfires. Each year, there are new wildfires that breakout and spread so fast from the dry and hot conditions, each one permanently changing the landscape and ecosystem. An app like Ops Normal can dramatically increase the response time to wildfires and help Wildland Firefighters quickly get the equipment they need to stop the fire from spreading. I think this is an incredible project, and I was/am very excited that I get to be apart of it!

Lessons Learned

Communication is everything!

Communication is EVERYTHING

As cliche as it sounds, communication really has been the cornerstone of what’s made this project successful so far. With weekly meetings, Discord message boards, emails, video calls, etc. we have kept in constant contact about the project, and developing these relationships has helped us better work together and make decisions as a team.

Each new feature we’ve added has been the result of a team discussion on what we think could make the app more useful, or what improvements we can make to existing features. I can’t emphasize enough how having good communication has helped us act as a team during all phases of the development cycle.

Don’t Forget Documentation!

Documenting the work you do not only helps to show all the progress you’ve made, it makes it easier for everyone on the team to know exactly what changes you made to the codebase and why!

This can apply to adding those extra comments in your GitHub commit that explain what you changed and why, adding comments on GitHub Issues and Trello boards (or any other team task tracker), as well as communicating any larger feature changes to the team using other communication channels. This seems like a simple step that”s easy to overlook, but taking an extra minute to add this information will help the entire team!

Ops Normal Progress

Ops Normal logo

Ops Normal has officially been launched on the App Store and Google Play! This was a huge step for the team. All of our hard work in developing a stable app payed off and we were able to get it ready for public distribution. Having the app published on the app store is going to allows us to get more widespread feedback from the Wildland Firefighting community, which will help us make improvements and add new features.

Moving forward, we are currently working on completing a government requirements document and a White Paper that we will submit to the National Wildland Coordination Group (NWCG) under their Innovative Ideas program. Having the support of the NWCG will allow us to quickly get the app out to different Wildland Firefighter districts around the country, which will hopefully generate even more feedback for us to make improvements!

There’s so much on the horizon still for Ops Normal, and we’re looking forward to all the positive impact we can make through our app!