Beyond the Balance Sheet: A Creative Dive into Financial Literacy Reflection 2024

Finances rule the world… but cracking the code can be tricky!

As a student of software engineering, I have come to realize that teamwork is fundamental to the development of any project. I experienced this firsthand with my recent project, where having a good team made a significant difference in delivering results to the customer. There is no doubt that working as a team allows for greater efficiency, better code quality, and faster adaptation to change. For example, we initially agreed to start this project using new tools like Next.js and MySQL, believing that we would learn a lot and gain experience with these technologies. However, we soon encountered unexpected challenges. Thankfully, due to the attentive responses from everyone in the group, we were able to agree to proceed with the technologies we already knew. Given the complexity of the project itself, we decided it was best not to add extra stress by trying to learn new technologies while developing a new product.

Reviews

A significant part of the project involved team reviews. If you’re not familiar with what team reviews are, let me explain. In this class, our team selects recently modified code or code that is considered in need of review. We describe the purpose of each file or collection, and then we follow a checklist.

This checklist includes items that help ensure the code adheres to architectural principles, such as using lowercase for directories and following the correct directory structure, for example:

app/
    imports/
        api/
        startup/
        ui/

We also check the design for dead code, ensuring comments are clear and adding comments where necessary. For JavaScript, we avoid using console.log and make sure ESLint is enabled with no errors. Additionally, we review aspects related to Meteor, React, and testing.

After reviewing the code, we hold a 10-minute call to discuss the issues each team member found and their proposed solutions. Once everyone is clear on what to do, we close the review, and everyone continues working on their designated tasks. This process has been tremendously helpful in improving both the code quality and the overall quality of the product we are delivering.

Customer Milestone

As part of the project, it was necessary to have several meetings with the customer, in this case, Spire. We held meetings every 3-4 weeks, during which each group in my class presented the implementation they had completed. After each presentation, the customer provided input and suggestions for improvement. They were there to help us and guide us through the UI design process, letting us know how they wanted the interface to look and the features they desired for the website, as well as the overall purpose of the site.

This part was crucial because, during the first milestone, we had very little guidance, resulting in a slow implementation. As a group, we were unsure about what to implement and how to meet their expectations, which made us a little afraid of disappointing them. However, after this time, we developed a clear understanding of what the customer was looking for, and then we could move forward.

Conclusion

In this project, working as a team was extremely important because if someone didn’t deliver their part on time, it could cause the whole project to fall behind. As a group, we encountered challenges, such as team members not attending meetings and losing members along the way. Despite these difficulties, I found this experience to be very satisfying because it provided me with a reality check; in the real world, you will mostly work in teams.

This experience taught me the importance of communication and the necessity of delegating tasks. It’s essential not to take on the entire project yourself but rather to distribute responsibilities so that everyone can focus on one task instead of having them work across different aspects of the code.

If you want to learn about our group project, here is our group’s Github Mixedplate.