For my ICS 414 Software Engineering II course, I had my first experience working with a client to develop a web application. With a lot of problem-solving and opportunities to learn, my team and I successfully worked together to develop an amazing website that would satisfy our client’s requests.
Our client, the Hawaii HOME Project, is a non-profit organization that operates via a mobile clinic to provide health care to O’ahu’s homeless population. Due to the nature of their clinic, data tracking is an essential, yet difficult task. The Hawaii HOME Project currently utilizes an internal system to place orders for medication and vaccines. However, the workers are also required to separately complete a Google Form and Google Sheet to track inventory. The clinic has admitted that this results in input errors and leads to unreliable, hard-to-read data. The Hawaii HOME Project requested an intuitive inventory application that would alleviate these errors and could eventually be integrated into their internal system.
One of the main things that separated this project from previous projects I’ve completed is the clients. With regular classroom projects, the professors have set learning goals that they expect out of students. While the opportunity to go above and beyond is available, there is a standard expectation for these types of projects. However, with clients, the expectation is to fulfill their requests to satisfaction. These requests may conflict with other each, the developers’ skill levels, etc. Regardless, it is still expected that the request is satisfied in one way or another. For my team and me, this meant communicating with our clients and each other to prioritize certain features. It also meant going outside that standard learning goals and researching different ways to implement the clients’ requests.
The biggest contributor to the successful completion of this project was the team I worked with. As previously mentioned, the client for this project kept us working hard with a constant flow of requests and updates. Thankfully, my team was able to quickly develop a smooth system to manage the workload. Through bi-weekly meetings and open group chats, my team was also available to share ideas and assist one another in an organized fashion.
Overall, this project and the ICS 414 course has been amazing experience. The course provided a great opportunity to work in a close-to-professional setting, allowing students to put their software engineering skills to the test by developing a project that will hopefully satisfy a real client’s result.