Throughout this semester I was able to learn and experience software development as well as build skills to be able to become a good software developer. Some concepts like Coding Standards, and Agile Project Management among others really stuck with me and will help me to improve outside of software development as well.
The concept of Coding standards is something that I will take with me and use for everything I do. It is the most basic of fundamentals that I have learned. but is one of, if not the most important concepts that I learned throughout my software development journey. Coding Standards in a nutshell are basically the basic rules you should follow when coding. Things like indentation, naming conventions, line length among others is what coding standards is all about. Now what makes coding standards so important, well if it wasn’t for coding standards then it would be really hard when other people look at your code to figure out what is going on. Without proper indentation it would be really hard to figure out when one paragraph of code starts and ends. WIthout naming conventions it would be hard to follow along and actually figure. out what is going on with your code. Simple things like this really do go a long way and really does help with the readability of your code.
Agile Project Management is basically optimizing the work done by a group of people by completing tasks, and effectively managing project milestones. I was able to use one such project management in my ICS 314 class for my final project in which I had to work in a group to create a web application, and use this concept to work with my team. One variation that we used in that class was issue driven project management. We were able to use Github’s tools in order to do this. Using things like the project boards and issues my team were able to communicate with each other what issues we had, and what each member was assigned to do for each milestone. I would say this really helped to keep us on track in order to finish not only the milestones, but the entire project on time. As at the start of the project, we really had a hard time in trying to meet up and get to be able to talk to each other because of our conflicting schedules, but by using the project board, and issues tools on Github we were able to better communicate with each other despite these problems.
As far as future uses that I have for these two concepts, well there are many. This course really did help me to learn to work better in groups and both these concepts were staples in doing so. What agile project management taught me was one way to manage a group of people to work on the same project. Although my group’s process wasn’t perfect, and could definitely use some work, it was still able to give me a heads up on how to effectively work in groups and what I need to work on, and what I have done. As far as coding standards, that taught me that in working with groups communication is very key for a project to be successful, and if I were to not follow the rules given to me and make it hard for my group members, then I am not doing my job as far as being a good group member to my group, and that is in my opinion what being a good team member is, being able to communicate with your group effectively, and not only do your part of the project, but to do it in a way that you won’t be a hindrance to your other group members.