CST489/499 - Week 13

What project milestones did you accomplish this week? If you're working in a team, please list what you personally contributed, not the project status overall.

This week, I primarily worked on outlining my certificate project and continued progress on my fast.ai project, which I hope to wrap up soon.

What is your plan for next week?

Next week, I plan to finalize all deliverables and begin creating visuals for my slideshow, as well as start recording and editing, so I can avoid rushing near the deadline.

What challenges, if any, are you currently facing in project development? Do you need instructor assistance?

I'm not facing any major challenges at this time. However, I am currently waiting to hear back from Dr. Tao regarding a few questions I included in my certificate learning update email regarding some deliverables.

CST489/499 - Week 12

What project milestones did you accomplish this week? If you're working in a team, please list what you personally contributed, not the project status overall.

This week, I completed the Cloud Quest Cloud Practitioner and earned the badge.

What is your plan for next week?

I plan to work on the capstone festival presentation outline. I would like to complete the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam, but I'm not sure I will have the time.

What challenges, if any, are you currently facing in project development? Do you need instructor assistance?

I'm not currently facing any major challenges with project development. My main consideration is determining whether I have enough time to pursue the additional certification.

CST489/499 - Week 11

What project milestones did you accomplish this week? If you're working in a team, please list what you personally contributed, not the project status overall.

No real project updates for this week. I decided to complete the AWS Cloud Quest course before taking the other exam, as it provides more hands-on interaction in addition to the certification of completion and overall enhances my understanding.

What is your plan for next week?

I have no set plans for next week besides studying. I should have the Cloud Quest course completed by then.

What challenges, if any, are you currently facing in project development? Do you need instructor assistance?

I am not experiencing any major problems with project development and don't need any assistance at this time. However, I have been somewhat lacking in confidence in taking the AWS exam, which is why I decided to complete Cloud Quest first. 

CST489/499 - Week 10

What project milestones did you accomplish this week? If you're working in a team, please list what you personally contributed, not the project status overall.

No new project updates. However, I did begin a new class this week to fulfill a requirement I was missing for graduation.

What is your plan for next week?

By next week, I should have completed my AWS exam and, hopefully, passed. If I do pass, I will immediately begin my project.

In the unfortunate event that I do not pass, a classmate recommended the AWS Cloud Quest: Cloud Practitioner course for those who fail the exam or are unable to schedule. This is a hands-on program that provides a certificate/badge.

What challenges, if any, are you currently facing in project development? Do you need instructor assistance?

No challenges to report at the moment.

CST489/499 - Week 9

What project milestones did you accomplish this week? If you're working in a team, please list what you personally contributed, not the project status overall.

I've decided to use my weather service website that I previously created in CST336. It makes API calls to fetch the local weather based on the user's zip code.

What is your plan for next week?

I plan to schedule my AWS exam for about a week from now, so I hope to have my AWS certification around March 20th if everything goes according to plan. I did have scheduling issues previously, so I hope that won’t be a problem this time.

What challenges, if any, are you currently facing in project development? Do you need instructor assistance?

I am not currently facing any issues with project development. Last week I finished my Scrum project, and I have an overview of what my AWS project will be.

CST489/499 - Week 8

In the final week of CST489 before we transition to the capstone class CST499, I spent some time reviewing a few more AWS topics in preparation for my exam. Then, I spent some time creating my Mini Project for my Scrum certificate, which I finished last week, and you can read about here 

Final Project Scenario

"Your team has been tasked with developing the back-end product catalog for an e-commerce website. Stakeholders require the ability to create, retrieve, update, and delete products from the catalog, along with features like indicating product likes and hosting on a cloud environment with automated deployments."

For this project, I played the roles of a product owner, scrum master, and developer. As the product owner, I create user stories for my team and organize them into the product backlog. As the scrum master, I create a sprint and ensure a subset of the stories is ready for the upcoming sprint plan. As a developer, I create the sprint backlog and complete the stories by moving them across the Kanban board in a simulated sprint.

Below are a few screenshots of the completed project demonstrating the sprint process and how effective user stories were created and managed. 

Click the 3 vertical dots on the slideshow to enter full-screen mode.

Completed Project Overview

CST489/499 - Week 7

This week, I completed IBM's Introduction to Agile Development and Scrum course through Coursera.

Link to view completed certificate

The course covered Scrum roles such as the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team, as well as Kanban and other Agile planning tools. I also learned how to set up and manage a Kanban board in GitHub and how to write effective user stories, though I was already familiar with this from CST438.

A few other topics included sprint planning and how to conduct a "daily stand-up," where each team member briefly reports on their progress. I learned about burndown charts and how they can be used in GitHub projects to track sprint progress.

The course explained the difference between a Sprint Review and a Sprint Retrospective. A Sprint Review involves a live demonstration for all stakeholders that shows what was accomplished during the sprint. In contrast, a Sprint Retrospective is typically attended only by the Scrum Master and the Development Team so that team members feel comfortable speaking openly about what went well and what could be improved.

There were many additional topics related to Agile development and Scrum principles, but these were the main hands-on concepts covered in the course.

I did not spend much time studying for my AWS certification this week, so I will need to focus on that along with finishing my Scrum project next week.