PROJECT
Kiosk for Brigham and Women's Hospital
Overview
This project was developed during the Software Engineering course (CS3733) at WPI taught by Professor Wilson Wong, in collaboration with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA. Software Engineering is a rigorous 7-week course, during which development teams of 10 students meet week-to-week application requirements, presenting their progress each week, resulting in a finished hospital kiosk application by term's end. Students take on various roles, such as Product Owner, Project Manager, Scrum Master, and more. The goal of the course is to provide students with as close to real-world development experience as possible. At the end of the term, our final presentations were watched by representatives from BWH, to take ideas in UI/UX design, functionality, and features.
Approach
Each team used the Agile software development approach, with weekly sprints. Upon receiving the application requirements for the week, our team met to convert the requirements into epics, which were then broken down into user stories. We used planning poker to weight each story, breaking them down into sub-tasks if necessary. The team met daily for a scrum meeting, led by our scrum master. The team was loosely broken up into front-end, back-end, and algorithms developers, where over time I became one of the lead engineers for the front-end team. At the end of each sprint, we held a retrospective meeting where we discussed what went well, what went wrong, what we could have done better, and gave shout-outs to team members that went the extra mile.
Key Features
Service Requests
Authenticated hospital staff can send various service requests.
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Pathfinding
Multi-floor map navigation system to help patients and visitors find their way around the hospital.
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Map Editing
Admin users can edit the map nodes and edges of the hospital map through a table interface, or by dragging and dropping on the map.
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Admin Dashboard
Service request management and statistics.
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Key Takeaways
Full Stack Development
Although I focused on front-end, I spent time interacting with the back-end and I got a lot of valuable experience with creating full stack features.
Leadership
I didn't start out a lead developer, but by the end of the term I had taken a leadership role. Team members came to me with questions, and I was able to develop my leadership skills.
Agile/Scrum
This was my first time using the Agile methodology for software development, and the fast paced nature of 1-week sprints was overwhelming at times, but effective.
All in all, this project was an incredible learning experience for me! It was the first time I took on a large full stack application like this, and working in a team this large on a software development project was a first too. I got the chance to take on a leadership role, and I learned a lot about the Agile software development process. I also learned a lot about the importance of communication in a team, and how to work with people who have different skill sets and backgrounds than me. I've known I have a passion for front-end development for a while, and this was a great opportunity to throw myself into a large UI undertaking. Overall, I’m really proud of the work we did!
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