The fifth (and final) week of the Building Something from Scratch phase has come to an end, and now it is time to reflect upon the last month. First off, an explanation, as last week was supposed to be the end of this phase. Due to some details we still had to complete and tune, as well as a feature that extended our initial scope, so we were given an additional week to ensure an optimal performance of our initial goals in order to deploy a functional version of the application as soon as possible.

With that in mind, this last week wasn’t filled with any new or big knowledge, but rather with some tinkering, fixing and refactoring of some of the previous functionalities that we had developed over the last weeks. Even so, that didn’t mean that last week was an easy ride or smooth sailing; in order to meet our objective and leave behind a project that all of us could be proud of, we had to double down our efforts for one last push and organize everything we had been building, as well as documenting all of the required information for future reference.

Keeping in mind the challenges presented this week, the main lessons came in the form of testing and documenting a project in a correct manner. Starting with the former, some of my contribution to the last delivery was adding some tests that ensured the components and endpoints we had could be tested in both the unit and integration scope, in order to help the next generation to better check for any issues that might come as a result of modifying the existing code base. In writing the tests I had to get some hands-on experience with React Test Library, Jest and Mocha/Chai/, since a combination of these was the basis of the tests created and analyzed.

On the documentation side, we had to declare everything someone would need in order to pick up the project without any prior knowledge. While this might seem cumbersome at first thought, going back to the start of the project and remembering how much it helped us a month ago when we first started, it is only fair to return the favor to the next generations. I think before this I never truly grasped the importance of correctly and efficiently documenting the work one has done and how much difference it can make, since a good documentation is the difference between jumping right into a project and struggling to just understand it.

Lastly, I’d like to reflect on this last month. I’ve been thinking about the way I felt when this phase started, how scared I was of not being good enough, struggling harder than other, not being able to understand. Now, 5 weeks later, it obviously didn’t disappear in an instant, but instead, gradually I started to realize how at ease, how comfortable and welcomed I felt along my teammates. Contrary to what I feared, my teammates helped me through my struggles, helped me when I got stuck, and taught me what I didn’t know. I think during the last couple of weeks I’ve learned to open myself a bit more, to be a bit more vulnerable than before, to be a better teammate overall.

It has been a pleasant couple of weeks.