Capstone Project

The Iron Yard

This README.md provides the guidance and an overview of requirements for the final project.

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Requirements

You must:

• have 5 project ideas for your instructor by the Monday morning that demo stay starts. As well as a small pitch for each one, and a list of any apis that you plan to use.
• run [SCRUM] (https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum) processes and have user stories
• your stories must be visible to the instructor ([Trello] (https://trello.com/b/Y1NpgpZQ/the-iron-yard-final-project) board?)
• first set of user stories should be ready by Tuesday morning on the first week!!
• daily standup (10am weekdays)
• make regular commits each day
• have tests written for your project
• handle Errors properly (let the user know what happened)
• use templates with data driving them
• have user authentication (log ins and log outs)
• use at least 1 external service API
• be able to store data persistently via an API.
• have created your own back-end API using Backand. Have some kind of relational data.
• have a UI that is responsive and works on both desktop and mobile
• support IE 9+, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari
• either include polyfills for older browsers, or gracefully show error messages for browsers that don't support something http://caniuse.com can tell you what is supported
• Look at Modernizr for a tool that can tell if the current browser supports what you're trying to do

Pitching The Projects

Start thinking about final projects a week ahead of time, and meet with your instructor if you're devoid of ideas.

Make your projects centered around things you truly care about: bee-keeping, beer, dancing, hiking, basketball, etc. This makes a huge difference and can make the project a lot of fun.

Ask your peers for feedback!

Community feedback is invaluable in keeping scope-creep out and making sure the projects are the right mix of ambition, talent, feasibility, and hubris (a careful mixture of all four is required, IMHO).

Peer code reviews are also extremely helpful later on.

Start Small, Grow with Agility

Learn more about balanced design.

Final Project Q & A

• Where do we have to be during final projects? In the lab? Home?

  Monday through Friday you are expected to be at The Iron Yard's office for the daily standup (10am). We will be holding some small lectures here and there, and I will be helping to answer questions. After the standup, you are expected to work in or around the office. In other words, you can work at a coffee shop for a couple hours if you need/want to, but you need to be in the office most of the time.

• How often will lectures happen, and will they be optional?

  They will happen probably 1 to three times each week at various times (which you will know ahead of time). Some lectures will be optional, some will not. I will let you know well ahead of time (usually at the beginning of the week).

• How long will lectures be?

  1-2 hours at most.

• What content will be covered?

  All sorts! Want to learn about something? Let me know!

• How often do we checkin with the instructor? What about the campus director?

  You must checkin with your instructor each morning with a standup. Once or twice each week, you should also be checking in with the campus director to discuss career support.

• How much job-related stuff should I be doing?

  This is a case-by-case basis, but The Iron Yard staff will be sharing job-related resources to help kickstart the job search process. Best rule of thumb:

During final projects, do only two 1-hr job searches each week. That means, pick two evenings (Tues, Thurs), schedule them on your calendar (to get alerts so you don't forget), and don't do anything more. After final projects, you will want to apply to a few jobs a day, on average.

• What happens if I don't finish my project?

  You don't present at Demo Day and you'll have to complete it after class ends.

• If I don't finish, will I receive career support?

  Not until you finish the project (you get to do that after class) and show you worked hard. The real hustle begins after class, when you start the job hunt.

Tech Used

• Angular
• HTML
• CSS / SASS
• JavaScript
• JQuery
• Materialize
• NodeJS
• MongoDB / Mongoose
• Gulp