In summer 2023 I took part in the Innovations Project at Lodz University of Technology again – with six students. Goal: from web development foundations to a shared project on Vue.js and Firebase with clear roles. I wanted this edition to be closer to real commercial work: structured start, iterative work, web / mobile / manager roles.
First weeks: levelling and a common tech language. Git and GitLab (branches, merge requests, code review, conflicts). VS Code and dev experience (Vue, TypeScript, formatting, linting). JavaScript and TypeScript (constructs, async, types). Vue.js and Firebase (first Vue 3 components, navigation, Firebase Auth and Firestore). I wanted students to understand why the environment was set up the way it was – a lot of time on docs and decisions instead of copying tutorials.
Second part of the semester: one shared system instead of several small apps. Role split: web team (Vue frontend, logic, Firebase), mobile team (responsiveness, UX on small screens), manager role (backlog, tasks, communication, sprints). Students could try different perspectives; the manager dealt with aligning ways of working into one plan. A board with tasks and “definition of done” brought order to communication.
Stack: Vue 3 with Composition API, Pinia (where local state wasn’t enough), Firebase Auth and Firestore, Firebase Hosting and CI/CD. The aim wasn’t to “learn Vue and Firebase by heart” but to see how these tools help ship a product. With the cloud in place we could focus on features, flows and code quality.
Working in a team of six quickly showed typical issues: different learning speeds, agreeing on decisions, combining frontend, mobile UX and organisation. I gradually handed over responsibility – questions instead of ready solutions, docs, explaining things to each other. By the end of the semester they were more often solving things without my direct help.
At the end we had a coherent app: login via Firebase, data in Firestore, navigation and views that worked on phones, deployment to hosting. For the students – first full cycle from commit through code review to deploy. For me – confirmation that an intro phase plus clear roles work well.
