Justin Roche

This spring, I led the development of a visitor parking web application for UW-Whitewater. While the application ultimately didn’t enter production, the experience taught me a lot about project management, leadership, and modern web development.

Our application allows both students and guests to purchase and manage parking passes for themselves or their visitors. The main dashboard provides real-time information about campus parking availability and displays active passes with their remaining time. Users can also access comprehensive information about parking lot regulations and pass options.

When buying a pass, users specify their license plate and pass duration and may opt to receive an email notification when their pass is close to expiration. We also implemented a feature allowing registered users to save their vehicle(s) information for a more streamlined checkout process (see below).

Our front end is built in React.js, and we used Bootstrap and Font Awesome to help with our UI. We used Node/Express.js for our back end and MySQL for our database. Diving into this project was quite a challenge, especially since no one in the seven-person group had used a JS framework before, but we managed! I would consider regular communication and starting early to be our greatest strengths.

As the scrum leader, I tried to bring enthusiasm and make everyone feel involved from day one. I have found that people enjoy contributing to group projects so long as they feel their input is welcomed and valued, and it was rewarding to see members of the group step out of their comfort zone as development progressed. We could not have done it without everyone’s bright ideas and hard work!

Though this project was a challenging and stressful process, it proved to be incredibly educational, both in technical and interpersonal skills. I think the strongest force that holds people back from realizing their potential is fear. These fears are built on misguided beliefs… beliefs which are permeated by limited experiences. Don’t let your irrational fears hold you back! Take the leap of faith and you’ll probably grow a lot.

Thanks for reading.