Professional Reflection Essay

 Information Technology and the Capstone

My experience with the capstone class and Information Technology program as a whole has been enlightening and reflects observable personal and professional growth. When I began working toward this degree in 2017, I was far less confident in my ability to engineer software solutions and I lacked the experience to properly market myself. After pausing my education temporarily and enduring a job layoff with several subsequent career changes, I found a position that I like with an ambitious company and resumed classes to completion. Although it took me six years to finish a program that was intended to take two years, the experiences along the way have helped me grow and develop, and encouraged me to take on challenges that I would never have considered before. I have gained enormous confidence in my skill as an IT professional, and I now know how to market myself with my storied background and natural talent.

The Information Technology program has equipped me to take a general idea or request for a feature, ask intentional and deliberate questions to gain actionable information, and turn that request into some functional product. This skill transcends any platform or sector of the industry. If I need to write code in a new language, I can now learn that language more quickly and leverage it to build satisfactory solutions. For instances in which I can choose my own platform, I have a vast repertoire of utilities to choose from and the knowledge to select the best tool for the job.

Obstacles and Surprises

Perhaps the biggest obstacle that I encountered with the capstone project was my own unfamiliarity with React and underestimating the difficulty of starting up a new Create React App from boilerplate. I expected that my exposure to my employer’s front end code would be adequate to get a general understanding to build a small and simple React application, but we use a number of different packages and imports which I wasn’t prepared to grapple with. I continued digging into React for longer than I should have before swapping to an architecture that I was more familiar with. Should I have taken stock earlier and realized how underprepared I was, I could have switched to Java Springboot earlier and allowed myself more time to build a more complete product. I was still able to create a simple proof of concept, but the firm deadline with the end of the course approaching did not leave enough time to finish as many features as I originally wanted.

Another surprise was the continued necessity of manual testing in the blood donation industry. My understanding of the problem was that it should be substantially reduced with some logic and interaction checks, but later discoveries have determined that interaction with a lab technician will still be required in many cases. Optimizations can be made, and a fitting utility would benefit the process, but I do not believe we are yet to a point where software tools can truly remove the majority of manual testing as I originally expected.

Identified Strengths

Perhaps the most notable strength that I have identified from my work in the Information Technology program is the ability to dynamically scale a solution to the appropriate size and complexity depending on the available time and resources. This was especially prevalent with the capstone project. My original vision was large and complex enough to occupy an entire development team for multiple months; unfortunately, I only had ten weeks and myself. With these constraints, I was able to distill down the most critical components of my original vision and prioritize those in a way that could generate the most stakeholder value for nearly any duration. Within the ten weeks available, I created a functional proof of concept, but I had features organized in a way that could gradually build a fully imagined solution with enough time. In the field, projects are often subject to demanding time frames and potentially flexible resource availability. Therefore, it is critical to understand constraints and appropriately scale the project for the best probability of success. This ability has already benefited me professionally and will continue to pay dividends toward my career.

Opportunity for Positive Social Change

The genesis of this project started as an idea long before the beginning of the capstone class. Problems that my project serves as a solution for are very real and very prevalent in the medical field. If I am able to truly construct a product that will slot into the workflow of lab technicians and reduce their required effort and improve their confidence, it could serve to revolutionize the industry. A successful deployment could minimize time to administer a blood transfusion and reduce symptoms and complications from negative interactions. This benefits all participants in the process, from the donors and patients to the employees and administrators at blood banks. Even if my project does not solely bring about change at an industry-wide level, it can serve as the catalyst. Competition is better for the industry, and similar applications could take my ideas and execute better. What I applied to blood donations might have a similar analog in areas such as pharmacy and surgery. When different groups of people think about a problem in different ways, the resulting solutions can be remarkable and improve the entire process. If we can leverage technology in a way that makes the healthcare industry more efficient and effective, the results should increase lifespan and probability of successful procedures, which in turn yield a more healthy and happy population.

Value of the Project in the Industry and for Education

One gaping weakness in my professional portfolio is the absence of personal coding projects. I have extensive published writings in the tech industry, and that has demonstrated motivation outside the workplace, but many organizations want some proof of software development ability before hiring for a software engineering position. Several of my peers have varied personal projects and collaborations with GitHub commit histories more comprehensive than my own work for my employer. This sort of self-driven project experience is something that I lack, but something that my capstone project could help me build out. Should I continue working on the project and add additional features, it demonstrates my ability to take an original idea and turn it into a fully realized product. Furthermore, it allows me the opportunity to show proficiency across the entire process from database to front end user interface. While I do gravitate toward back end services like APIs, this project showcases my full stack development capabilities. Furthermore, I can use the project as a sandbox in which I can explore and test new platforms and architectures that I want to learn more about.