ICS 414, It's Been a Fun Ride!
19 Dec 2024
Introduction
This semester (FALL 2024) for ICS-414 at UH Manoa, our class collaborated an accounting company, Spire Hawaii, as we had to produce an application that meet the requirements that Spire were requesting for. It started with us observing their data excel worksheets to having meetings everything few weeks where we provided our progress and received feedback from the Spire staff. As we worked through each milestone, I would say that there were definitely many challenges that we had to face along the way. But, not saying that in a bad way! For me, this was a new scenario where I faced problems that I haven’t dealt with before which allowed me to learn a lot through this experience and happy with the results.
Experiences
For this project I worked on the back-end, so my experiences that I’ll be talking about will be in the context of that. First, having to understand the excel worksheets with the all the data was for sure a challenge. Figuring out which values were linked to the graph, what those values were linked too, and which formulas were used for those values. Retracing steps did take a bit but worked out in the end once we started to understand how it all connected. We were also given a guide that helped with describing the purpose of each of the pages. Figuring out how to implement the values and formulas into code for the database was a challenge but learned a lot in the end and gained new experiences for the back-end. I also worked on a bit of the front-end that worked along side with the database. Implementing the input pages for the data was a big learning experience since I had to tie it with the formulas to show the correct output values to the users.
Throughout the semester, we were also meeting up with Creighton Liu and Rodney Lee from the Spire team to receive feedback based on our milestones we presented. This really helped with getting a better understanding what needed to be done, and if there were any questions that we had, they helped clarify any confusions that we had and pointed us in the right direction.
If I had to nitpick one thing about the process, as it was mentioned in the last meeting with everyone, is how the data was given to all the groups in the beginning. Given all the worksheets as a whole and not really knowing which data were inputs, which ones were static values used in formulas, which ones were for what roles throughout the firm, etc. It could of made the beginning part of the project a bit more clear and easier to kickstart. While Creighton and Rodney made comments about how they should’ve approached it in a different way, I’m still happy with the end results as I have learned a lot through this experience. I’ve also gained skills that I will be able to easily take with me to use in future scenarios.
Final Thoughts
Working with Spire throughout the semester was a good experience as it allowed me to learn about how a project may go between a team of programmers and an accounting firm. As mentioned before, it was filled with challenges that I have not faced before, but it allowed me to grow and learn new things that were outside of my comfort zone. I want to thank Rodney and Creighton at Spire for giving us this experience and working with us throughout the semester. They were super helpful with answering any questions or concerns that we had and guided us as we went along.