DEV Community: NIYODUSENGA Clement

Key takeaways from the taskforce Bootcamp

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Sun, 02 May 2021 19:12:12 +0000

The Taskforce Bootcamp is an Awesomity Lab program (in partnership with Code of Africa) that has the vision of upskilling talented software engineers in Rwanda.

In a period of two months I spent in this Bootcamp, I acquired a lot of skills that will assist me in my career of software engineering. In this journal, I will highlight a few of the many key takeaways I acquired in soft and hard skills during this period.

Starting from hard skills, I’m going to explain strong skills I acquired in a few bullets below:

TypeScript: a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript and adds optional static typing to the language.
NestJS: a framework for building efficient, scalable Node. js server-side applications, built with and fully supports TypeScript. As a backend engineer during this Bootcamp, I collaborated on different projects built in NestJS and TypeScript.
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development and IT operations. It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.

While I’m talking about the hard skills I can’t forget the Data structure and Algorithm challenges that we used to do to sharpen our skills in JavaScript.

Soft skills are another important skill I can’t skip. In the following bullets, I summarised many keys and knowledge I learned through this Bootcamp.

Teamwork: Due to the team's projects I collaborated on, I acquired the skills of collaboration and professional communication.
Project management: During the Bootcamp through sessions I learned how to manage projects without getting stressed by managing time wisely.
Professional writing: during the Bootcamp every week you write a journal explaining what you learned. This writing taught me to organize and write professionally.

I humbly thank Awesomity Lab and Code of Africa for their invaluable support and assistance they show in this program.

Thank you for reading!

Why brainstorming is important

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 21:28:29 +0000

Recently we were assigned a project in a group composed of the backend, frontend, and mobile app developers. Before diving into the code we had to divide the tasks, identify different ways to solve these tasks and choose the best solution to use.

Our project requires a user to login by using his/her social media account. This could be easily done on the backend (technology that handles the behind-the-scenes functionality of the web applications). However, this method could not work on the mobile development side. This led to the issue of asking ourselves how we can handle this in a way that could work for both mobile and web apps.

This is the time we came up with a good idea to express our ideas in a free flow manner, brainstorming.

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique used to find a solution to a specific problem. Brainstorming is done by gathering and recording the new ideas from team members in a free flow manner.

In help with this technique, we managed to express a lot of ideas in a short time as the technique insisted on its rule of quantity over quality.

The backend developers identified many different ways to handle the issue via the backend, and the frontend guy came up with his ideas and the mobile app developer did the same. As all team members were together solving the same problem and had many different ideas, we got an idea to improve one way of handling authentication on the client-side and send the token to the backend.

In summary, the main advantages of brainstorming are its ability to express members' ideas of creativity via collaboration. It’s the perfect technique for a team to generate new ideas that can take a project or business to the next level.

Thank you for reading!

Big picture thinking

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 16:31:25 +0000

Task-Force Bootcamp is a good place to grow as a developer. This week we created the projects to be demonstrated to the client. There are a lot of ways to develop a project, everyone can come up with his own method and work. Today I want to speak a little bit about how we can develop big picture thinking in our daily activities.

In a team of two, I and my mate were assigned the WordPress project and our main goal was to add the functionality of having different logos on different pages.

For those who don’t know what WordPress is, WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database.

WordPress with the help of its themes, templates, and plugins is Simple and easy to use. By using a plugin we were able to achieve our main goal. However, its performance, maintenance, and ease of use were not good as they could have been if we had built that functionality for our own.

After demonstrating what we built, we received feedback from the client and his IT expert who specialized in WordPress website development. An IT expert focused not only on the working principle but the performance and other technical drawbacks.

From the feedback of that expert, I acquired a lot of technical skills and thinking. I looked back and remembered to use the big picture thinking before starting to develop any project.

You might wonder what big picture thinking is! Big picture thinking is the ability to understand abstract concepts, ideas, and possibilities.

By understanding what we need to achieve we should name many different ways to achieve that and we identify the advantages, disadvantages, or drawbacks of each and decide which to use according to the tangible facts.

Thank you for reading!

Project management and stress management techniques

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 21:12:58 +0000

This week we had sessions for project management and stress management. Today, I combined them and found the keys that would help us to deliver products efficiently without getting stressed.

Project management is the use of methodologies, tools, and processes to successfully plan and execute projects. In software development, there are many tools and methodologies to help you in project management but we are going to focus on one of the most used which is "Agile" method.

Agile software development is a set of iterative software development methodologies in which requirements and solutions emerge from collaboration among self-organizing cross-functional teams.

The most popular agile framework is called scrum. It focuses on a delivery measure span called a sprint and meeting structures that include the following:

Planning is a meeting that happens at the beginning of a new sprint designed for the Product Owner and Development Team to meet and review the prioritized Product Backlog.

Daily standup meetings is an opportunity for the team to get together, communicate updates on their development status, and identify any blockers.

Sprint Demo is a time to showcase the completed tasks to the stakeholders.

Sprint Retrospective is a final meeting in the sprint that helps the team to reflect on the work that has been done and recognize areas to improve.

Poor project management might be stressful, as the task is directly responsible for the success or failure of a project.

During the stress management session, I learned a lot of strategies to deal with stress. I’ve highlighted a few of them below

Physical exercise: take a break and plan some physical activities to relieve stress.
Meditation: Meditation and breathing activities have demonstrated to be compelling in controlling stress.

In short, we need to practice resilience as it develops mechanisms for protection against experiences that could be overwhelming or stressful periods.

Thank you for reading!

Effective time management strategies

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 16:37:08 +0000

It’s a while since we joined the Taskforce Bootcamp and every single day we learn. Today, I want to point out a few of the many key areas I have acquired this week.

As usual, Monday we had a team-building session, the session was very wonderful, we played a game of sharing a photo that could describe you, and of course, we had to explain why we chose that photo. It helped me to know more about my teammates and our very own mentor and CEO of Code of Africa, Anja Schlösser.

Apart from team building, we had another session on time management. Today, I will focus a lot on this point as it is very important in our daily life.

Time management is the process of organizing and planning how to divide your time between specific activities. The ability to manage your time effectively leads to improved efficiency and productivity.

Before this session, I used to know that time management is about noting down the task you have to do, but now there is another important key I gained, which is “setting the time limit of a task”.

Here there is a methodology I enjoyed during the session, and I’m willing to follow it, Eisenhower Matrix.

The Eisenhower Matrix, also referred to as Urgent-Important Matrix, helps you decide on and prioritize tasks by urgency and importance, sorting out less urgent and important tasks which you should either delegate or not do at all.

I could write a lot about time management but let me share a single image that describes in short the tips I learned for effective time management.

Conclusion

Good time management enables an individual to work smarter not harder. It also enables us to complete more in a short period of time and lowers stress.

Thank you for reading!

Design thinking and teamwork

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 22:24:30 +0000

This week we were required to think of the project, work on it and deliver the project in only one week. Today, I didn’t forget soft skills instead I would like to take this time and do a retrospective.

Talking about the project, I would like to talk about teamwork and how we started and delivered the project as a team of frontend and backend developers.

Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way. Working in a team for the first time might be challenging if don’t handled seriously. In this project, I liked the collaboration we had and the way we brainstormed to choose the best project to build.

Even though we were working on the project we kept the flow of having the soft skills session as usual. Monday, we had a very fun, and educational session where we first played the game which helps us to know each other deeper.

Talking about team building I can’t forget the design thinking session, let me talk a little about it.

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation anchored in understanding customer’s needs, rapid prototyping, and generating creative ideas.

Challenges

A ton of work stressed me which led to panic instead of managing and prioritizing tasks and forgot to do deep research about design thinking.

Lesson

The best way to look back is to get feedback. Today’s feedback made me look back and see what could cause the stress and how I could mitigate that. I did find out that we should keep everything in control when we take it simple. Here is the method introduced by US NAVY in 1960 called KISS an abbreviation for ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid!’.

Thank you for reading!

The interesting tools I encountered this week

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 16:51:16 +0000

Today I would like to share with you the interesting tools I encountered this week. This week the team building activity sessions were held online and we used a great tool enabling remote brainstorming, mind mapping, and working on the same whiteboard with teammates MIRO.

Talking about team building activities, I would like to point out how I like team building activities so far. During these sessions, we play games that help us to really know each other even more. I enjoy them so much! I am extremely grateful for being at this Bootcamp, it is a wonderful Bootcamp and beneficial so far. My passion for learning has got even bigger.

Well, now let me talk a little about Wonder.

As it’s written on their website, Wonder is “a space where you can connect to others in a more spontaneous and fluid way. You move around freely between groups. It's fun, creative and energizing.” For the first time using this tool, I found it useful, and fun. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to meet a group of people virtually.

Today I wrote much about MIRO, and Wonder but I can not really leave the technical skills I have gained this week out! I have gained a lot in technical skills and love the way Awesomity Lab guys are upskilling us so far. With code wars, the Awesomity Lab’s awesome guys are training us on programming challenges known as kata.

Challenges

“Everyone has challenges and lessons to learn - we wouldn't be who we are without them,” Combs said.

It’s not a long time using Miro and Wonder, So I have faced little challenges of not finding what I want quickly but while moving forward, I hope to improve because I learn from challenges instead of being afraid of them.

Thank you for reading!

New technology and non-verbal communication around the world

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 18:15:59 +0000

Today I’d like to share with you how I enjoyed this week’s soft skills topics and technical skills that I gained during this week. I’m super excited to write this journal because each day of this week has been really interesting!

Yeah! The week has been interesting because I was introduced to new technologies, NestJS and TypeScript. It was my first time working with these two technologies.

Let me explain a little bit about NestJS and TypeScript

As it’s written on NestJS’s website, NestJS is a Node.js framework for building efficient, reliable, and scalable server-side applications. I enjoyed working with this technology and within a short period of time, I hope to master it.

What is TypeScript?

TypeScript is a programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. If you’re excited like the way I was to read more about this programming language which is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript then kindly click this TypeScript link on Wikipedia.

During this week, I learned a lot of things in technical skills and soft skills. I built a todo app in NestJS as John Dewey's philosophy says that we should learn by doing.

Friday we do a virtual meeting with the Awesomity team to share with them what we learned during the week. For the first time it was not easy, I was nervous but the more we do mass communication the more I get to be confident, I hope it’s a good process to master public speaking.

I can not finish this journal without saying how much I enjoyed the session on “Non-verbal gestures around the world". It was an interactive session and we had a good time sharing what we learned from other cultures, especially gestures! Now I know that there are a lot of gestures that mean different things in different cultures.

Thank you for reading!

My experience in Taskforce Bootcamp so far

NIYODUSENGA Clement — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 10:49:32 +0000

The taskforce is an Awesomity program (in partnership with Code of Africa) to upskill talented software engineers.

It’s more like a movement, an evolution born out of the need to create talent where it was previously thought not to exist. The Task Force is Awesomity’s effort to develop a solid and talented pool of software developers and product designers right here in the heart of Africa.

The taskforce Bootcamp also is an opportunity to create new connections with other people and get to learn from each other in this career of software development.

I have experienced many things not only in software development but also in DevOps and communications skills.

The following are a few of many area keys I've experienced during this Bootcamp so far:

Communication: With CoA, we have the sessions of leveling up our communication skills which help us to know not only to give a message but also to communicate effectively and professionally.
Culture’s Values: I really liked the session we had about our values and matching them with company values, it helped us to prioritize important things in our life
Best practices: Even though we all are developers we have different code styles, at Awesomity they showed us the best practices to follow so that it can be easier for other developers to read and review our code.
DevOps: Before I applied at the Taskforce, I was only focusing on writing code and push codes in the server the old way manually. In this first week, we learned a lot about dockerizing our project as the best modern way to ship our project.

Conclusion

The Taskforce program is more than just coding, it's an opportunity to learn more about communication, and working on a project as a team, and follow up the project from build, test, up to deployment, and maintenance.