Capstone Project: Week 1, Ideas

Sep 2, 2021 capstone
Share on:
Capstone Project: Week 1, Ideas

I am at the end of my time at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, a little bit early thanks to routinely taking 18 credits per semester. It went by fast, and it is slightly hard to believe, but it's here nonetheless.

Capstone Project Description

As the "final" requirement to graduate, students need to propose, design, and develop a capstone project. The capstone project is meant to be the application of everything that we have learned as CIS&T students. The goal of this project is to help prepare us for an IT career by demonstrating our ability to stick to a plan we create to effectively develop an all-encompassing project in the field or fields of our choosing.

Projects have ranged from motion detectors and magic mirrors to eCommerce websites and mobile applications. The choice of what we decide to make, so long as it is approved by our Professor, is mostly up to us.

Besides the project, we are also required to write weekly status reports, create and stick to a Gantt chart, fixup/create LinkedIn Profiles and resumes, create a final demonstration video, and finally write a paper writeup about the whole process of researching and developing our project.

What am I going to do?

That's the question! I have been trying my best to come up with an idea, but I have been unsuccessful. It's not because of a lack of interest in doing a project - I want to do a project, but I just don't know what I want to do.

Fullstack Project

I am leaning right now towards creating some sort of a fullstack project, where I develop everything from the frontend to the server to the database. I am most comfortable with JavaScript, so the "stack" I will be using will most likely contain Node and Express. I have some experience with them and I prefer them over Flask. As for which client-side framework I want to use, it will most likely be React or Vue, as those frameworks are what the market wants. Finally as for the database, it really is going to depend on the project I am going to do. If it is going to be relational then probably a MySQL database. If not, then I will be leaning towards MongoDB.

My ideas for the project thus far would be the following:

  • MyBookList, a spinoff of myanimelist.net. I won't include the forums, but I will include a list of books that users could select and add to their List.
  • Inventory System: System that tracks inventory. It would need to handle incoming product and outgoing product, expirations, lot numbers, users and authentication, and more.

Technology

My other idea so far would be something in technology in the realm of Systems Administration and DevOps. On AWS I would create an environment that would support some of the following ideas:

  • Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipelines
  • Run multiple vulnerable apps such as NodeGoat, WebGoat, JuiceShop, etc., and send all of their log data to some sort of SIEM (Security Information Event Management) tool such as Splunk.

Let's get to it!

I have a lot to think about, and a lot of work to do. The next post should hopefully be my project proposal, and I should have my idea researched and ready to go. This capstone project will not halt my other studies, even if it is not fullstack or Security+ related.

Wish me luck!

Fast loading Illustration and Designer Illustration by Delesign Graphics