Day 5 – Demo and Retrospective

Today's Focus

Deliver your live demo, walk through the architecture with your cohort, and conduct a technical retrospective.

Tasks

  • Prepare your demo environment: run make build && make up one final time from a clean state. Confirm every service is healthy and the application is working end-to-end. Have a backup plan (recorded screen capture) if live infra has issues.
  • Write a 5-minute demo script: (1) show the running Docker Compose stack and explain each service's role, (2) make a live API call and trace it through the logs, (3) show the Kubernetes dashboard or kubectl get all output, (4) trigger the CI pipeline by pushing a commit and watch it run in GitHub Actions, (5) explain one interesting technical decision you made and why.
  • Present to the cohort: deliver the demo, narrate what you are doing in real time, and explain trade-offs. Practice answering "why did you choose X over Y?" for every major component.
  • Run a retrospective: write down (1) three things that worked well in the project, (2) two things you would do differently, (3) one thing you learned that surprised you. Share openly with the cohort.
  • Write a final REFLECTION.md in your project repo: summarise the full 10-week journey, what you built, what you learned, and what you want to learn next. This is for yourself — be honest about gaps.
  • Archive the project: tag v1.0.0 with git tag -a v1.0.0 -m "Capstone final submission", push the tag, and create a GitHub Release with release notes summarising the project's features.

Reading / Reference