Nalla Labs Academy

Academy / Week 26

Phase 10 · Capstone and system design

Week 26: Capstone: operate and defend

Friday deliverable: Capstone and postmortem

Day 1Dashboards, alerts, load testOutline only
Day 2Game day: instructor-run outageOutline only
Day 3Blameless postmortemOutline only
Day 4Final fixes; export code and a database dump; AWS teardown and credit reviewOutline only
Day 5Demo day and defence, including the AI usage log: what AI did and what the learner checkedOutline only

Threads this phase

Security. Threat model and security review as part of the design doc

AI. Use AI to learn an unfamiliar codebase, then verify by running and tracing it; keep an AI usage log and defend it at demo day

System trace. The learner draws the full trace for their own system

Capstone

Learner-chosen system

A new system built from a real stakeholder's requirements

Runs on: AWS, justified in the design doc

Phase 10 exit criteria

understand: An unfamiliar codebase's structure
explain: Every design decision in their capstone
build: A production system from requirements
debug: An unannounced outage in a game day
test: A test strategy stated in the design doc
secure: A security review of the capstone
deploy: The capstone in production
operate: On-call for their own system; a blameless postmortem

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