Reflections on Week 2 of CodeCollab

Charly B — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 04:25:02 +0000

We ended week 2 with a team sprint meeting. Here are my reflections on the week.

The Technical

In the first week, we spent time planning out what our MVP could look like and created issues/PRs to create our database. In the first week, we mostly worked either on local environment setup or in the same area of the stack.

In the second, we’re seeing a bit more divergence with the issues we’re working on. Some are implementing our core database structure to unblock the issues created in week 1. Others continued with their environment set up. I worked on setting up a wireframe for our MVP.

I will share a separate post about wireframing for developers later on.

Inter- / Intra-personal

As our tasks begin to diverge, I find that it is easier to lose track of what everyone else is working on. I worried that if I lost track of progress, I would not be able to help peers with their issues or to catch up with progress on other parts of the stack when I’m finished with my issues.

But Ms. Arit reminds us to practice being less judgemental of ourselves with this work. There is no need to feel ashamed of not knowing! She encourages us to ask for demos and help as needed. We can lean on each other for support.

I find that I am building more trust with myself, my abilities, and my teammates.

When technical issues came up this week, a peer was available to jump on a quick call to help me out or Ms. Arit would create a demo video for easy reference. When I was deliberating while reviewing someone else’s Pull Request, I referenced the threads and GH issues about the issue. When a peer had questions about some comments, we jumped on a call to discuss them.

Because discussions are tracked on GH and Slack and plans are explicitly written out, I find it easy to quickly get up to speed. It is also practice in trusting that I can get up to speed as needed.

After this week, I can see the value of leaning towards over-communication. It is one thing to collaborate with someone during pair programming sessions, but another to actively communicate across time zones spanning from PST and EST in the United States to GMT in Europe.

There were delightful moments of communication this week, but also moments where it seemed like I or someone else was posting into a void. To avoid the voids, I want to practice proactively communicating in the written form and vocalizing my process in our project slack channel in the upcoming weeks.

I am a CodeCollab fellow with Our Time for Tech

Charly B — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 20:35:27 +0000

I’m a bootcamp graduate and CodeCollab fellow with Our Time for Tech, a coding initiative that empowers women transitioning into tech after former careers.

Over the next 3 months, I will collaborate with a team of 5 early-career devs and 2 senior engineers on one of the biggest projects I’ve worked on yet! We plan to share our MVP with a community demo in late May. Until then, follow along on my journey with this blog.

Why I joined as a bootcamp graduate

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." – Helen Keller

My time with Rithm School taught me to appreciate the art of collaboration. While learning by oneself is an essential skill, discussing code with peers catalyzed my learning in ways I didn’t expect.

The learning intensified when we started working on a community partner’s live codebase! There are so many aspects to developing code, like learning to communicate effectively about architectural choices and learning how to (re-)prioritize with moving targets, that are introduced with a team.

Real-world projects are built as a team.

Teamwork is a skill set that offers endless avenues for refinement and learning.

As I prepare for my first role in tech, I looked for ways to keep refining my skill sets. I’m so glad to come across Our Time for Tech and the CodeCollab track.

What I look forward to with CodeCollab

Our Time for Tech was founded by Arit Amana, a software engineer with a non-tech former career. She has designed this program for career changers who understands the importance of sustained mentorship and real world projects for breaking into the tech space.

Some of Code Collab’s goals for new developers:

Improve collaboration skills while building software with a team
Learning how to interpret client needs, manage requirements, and implement projects to meet those needs
Encouragement to stretch and grow beyond current tech stacks and skill sets
Structured mentorship for junior devs as they take ownership of a product

The first week

During the first week of CodeCollab we are given a client request. Our goal is to design, plan, and implement an app to meet those needs.

To paraphrase Carla, a fellow dev, we begin by building a structure for the rest of the project.

Building a structure with a team is still so new to me. I have experience working on team projects given priorities based on business KPIs or following the structure set by senior developers. But in this first week, the senior devs have challenged us to set these priorities as a team.

So far, this has involved:

Identifying our minimum viable product (MVP)
Identifying issues to build this MVP: This involved recognizing the smallest pieces or lowest hanging fruit, like building a database first
Getting consensus on priorities: Practicing giving convincing rationale for architectural choices, Listening and discerning impact for each option, Handling conflicts and talking it out, Contributing to a generative space for the team to think out loud, make mistakes, and bring each other back to the goal if we need to
Identifying and managing scope creep. It’s OK to recognize what we cannot build within a certain amount of time. Advocating for scope boundaries can help us further define our product. Managing our scope will help us focus and deliver quality software in the time we promised.

I’m excited to see where we go from here.

Follow along with DEV posts from my cohort: https://dev.to/ourtimefortech
Check out Our Time For Tech: https://ourtimefortech.org/