Google Software Product Sprint ExperienceFranklin Sarpong Boampong

Karsh International ScholarshipAbstract

The Google Software Product Sprint (SPS) Experienceprogram is an 11-week virtual experience that brings togetheruniversity students and Googlers (Google full-time Engineers)for community building and working on meaningful projects.The program’s mission is to build a network of support inorder to increase representation in tech. Software ProductSprint students design and build web apps, gain applied DataStructures and Algorithm skills, and receive tailored careerdevelopment resources. Inclusion is centered in each cohort,with opportunities for students and industry professionals toconnect across identities, experiences and interests. SoftwareProduct Sprint is currently an invite-only program. SPS worksalongside local community partners who nominate collegestudents to join the program.

Objectives

The main objectives of the SPS Experience include:• Providing students practical experience with industry-

aligned skills: contributing to open source software using Git and GitHub, conducting code reviews with/for teammates, extending an existing codebase, participating in distributed development, and designing new components and interfaces.

• Connecting students to a robust and enduring social network of diverse peers and Googlers

• Supporting students in navigating their own unique career paths within CS

• Providing exposure and insight into Google’s internship program and technical career opportunities.

Methods

The main methods and steps used in implementing the projects include:• Creating a design document for every new feature• Discussing design patterns and implementations with

project advisor• Implementing feature using implementation specified in

design document and debugging code implementation where necessary

• Testing code using unit tests or making sure implementation works as required

• Committing and pushing code to git • Deploying code to server and ensuring it works as required

Results

Donation Website - FAMA, https://summer20-sps-2.uc.r.appspot.com/details.html?id=5700433016258560Google Software Product Sprint website, Google, https://buildyourfuture.withgoogle.com/programs/softwareproductsprint/Google Cloud Platform, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_PlatformProject Github repository, https://github.com/frankboamps/GoogleSPSFinalProject2020Portfolio website, https://fboampong-sps-summer20.ue.r.appspot.com/Will Abramson, Lessons learned from deploying my first full-stack web application, https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/lessons-learned-from-deploying-my-first-full-stack-web-application-34f94ec0a286/

Conclusion

At the end of the SPS program, I had acquired so much skills and industry experience in the world of web development. I also had the chance to work with some cloud technologies and cloud services I had not experienced before. The following are some of the concluding achievements and milestones I had after the experience:• Created 3 projects leveraging various Cloud Platform

APIs - App Engine, Datastore, Maps, Sentiment Analysis, language translation

• Practiced industry best practices including contributing to open source software using Git and GitHub, conducting regular code reviews for teammates, participating in distributed development, designing new components - database architectural design

• Collaborated with a team of 2 peers under the guidance of a Google Product Manager to design and implement a web application

• used Java, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to enable donations to causes/problems of interest during the Covid-19 pandemic

• Attended several workshops and talk events which Googlers shared their experiences as engineers and discussed the importance of diversity in tech.

• Had the opportunity to practice technical interviewing skills as well as participated in 3 unique technical interview experiences.

References

The main results and deliverables I had after this experience were fully built websites. The first website I built was a portfolio website and this was more into introduction to web development using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The second website worked on was in a team setting where a donation website was built to give people the chance to donate to issues, they are passionate about during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Figure 1: Portfolio Website using basic web development tools

Figure 2: Donation website to aid people get donations during Covid-19 pandemic

Figure 3: Image shows the donation page for an actual cause on the donation website