Lab 18 · Capstone Lab: Plan, Build and Present a Complete Small Tech Project

🎯 Objective

Prove end-to-end delivery: not just code, but planning, testing, documentation and communication — the skills employers and clients actually pay for.

🧩 Skills You Will Practice

• Project planning and scope control
• Building to a deadline
• Testing and documentation
• Technical presentation

🧰 What You Need

• One project idea that reuses your earlier labs (website, Python system, security audit of your own setup, or AI assistant design)
• A repo or project folder
• A presentation tool (slides or a doc)

📋 Step-by-Step Tasks

1. Write a one-page proposal: problem, user, solution, scope (what is IN and what is OUT), tools, and a day-by-day plan with a fixed finish date. Scope control is the skill being graded.
2. Set up the project properly on day one: folder or repo structure, README with the proposal summary, and a task list you will tick off publicly as you build.
3. Build the core first — the smallest version that fully works — before any extra feature. Commit or back up at every working stage so no day can be lost.
4. Test against your own proposal criteria: write 8 test cases (inputs/actions and expected results), run them, log failures, fix, and re-run until the core passes all 8.
5. Write the documentation a stranger needs: what it is, how to run/use it, what you built it with, known limitations, and what you would build next.
6. Prepare and deliver a 5-minute presentation (to a friend, classmate, or recorded on your phone): problem, demo, one hard bug and its fix, results, lessons. Save the recording or feedback notes.
7. Write the retrospective: what went to plan, what slipped, the one process change you will make on your next project. File everything — proposal, tests, docs, slides, retro — as one portfolio package.

✅ Expected Result / Deliverable

A complete portfolio package: proposal, working project, 8-case test log, user documentation, 5-minute presentation evidence and a retrospective — the strongest single item a student can show.

⚠️ Common Mistakes

• Choosing a project so big the core never works
• Building for a week with no backup or commits
• A presentation that shows only success and hides the hard bug (interviewers ask for the bug)