Soft skills: I was able to step out of my comfort zone and learn how to take initiative and set up meetings with a team in a virtual setting. Additionally, I learned how to communicate with team members through multiple channels including the forum, discord, meetings, and polls.
2. Three Achievement Highlights
Successfully set up the team orientation meeting.
Refreshed knowledge in command line & Git, and practiced Ruby syntax.
Set up check-in meetings, office hours, a Trello board, a resource document, and other ways to communicate with members and leads.
3. Goals for the Upcoming Week
Become more familiar with technical aspects like Ruby and the Discourse codebase, even as the content gets more difficult.
Be more active in checking up with members during scrum meetings and on Discord.
To foster a team environment of collaboration and commitment.
Along with the other leads, start to think more about team direction and the final project.
4. Detailed Statement of Tasks Done
First team meeting: I helped successfully coordinate our first team meeting with the other leads! As the first time being a lead, it felt fulfilling to see everyone join the meeting and participate. Initially, it was hard to contact everyone, but now we’re all more or less on the same page.
Future team communication: I created a structure for streamlined team communication by setting up scrum meetings, office hours, a Trello board, and a comprehensive resource document. At first, it was hard to decide the direction and how to best work with the team, but after attending the training sessions, I made those decisions.
Command line & Git: I was able to refresh my knowledge about the command line, Git, and Github and learn a few new things by following along the two websites linked in the module.
Ruby: After being away from full-stack development for a few months, I was able to pick up a bit of Ruby as well as HTML & CSS. It required a bit of memory jogging, but it was fun following along.
Lead communication: Met with the other leads to introduce ourselves & plan for future meetings. Set up weekly lead meetings and a shared resource folder.
Soft skills: This week, I learned to be more comfortable talking in front of the entire team during meetings. Also, I learned much about time management since I modules to do, project management work to do, and other outside commitments. I’ve also gotten a lot better at collaborating and helping others virtually through Discord.
2. Three Achievement Highlights
Made sure that Discourse could still run on my local machine.
Successfully hosted two more check-in meetings.
The team is settling into a rhythm based on the team framework I helped set.
3. Goals for the Upcoming Week
Become more familiar with the Discourse codebase so that I can help the technical lead more and answer more technical questions the team poses.
Make sure that members continue to be held accountable and that they show up to meetings and complete modules.
Start building stuff on Discourse and experimenting more using the knowledge we have recently learned.
Become more familiar with Ruby, Ember, and SCSS since they are relatively new to me.
4. Detailed Statement of Tasks Done
Two check-in meetings: Two more check-in meetings with the team were held this week to wrap up module 1, introduce module 2, and check for questions. Office hours were also held after these meetings for those who needed it.
Team communication: I was active on the Discord and Trello board, updating tasks to do and answering questions/creating announcements. It was amazing to see that this week, everyone was beginning to get the hang of things.
Discourse: Went through the guides on how to install Discourse and made sure that my local instance was still able to run (I had previously installed it but had not used it for a while). Also, I experimented a bit with my local instance and things I could tweak and familiarized myself with the codebase.
Ember/SCSS: Read the Ember and SCSS guides and became familiar with both. Although I am still not completely confident with both, I now know the basics!
Soft skills: Learned how to be proactive and keep others accountable, especially after the initial phase of excitement is over. Continued to strengthen my skills in leading a team by taking the lead during team meetings and staying after to answer questions during team office hours.
2. Three Achievement Highlights
Read through several guides to theme development.
Hosted two check-in meetings with the team.
Created a theme component for my local Discourse instance.
3. Goals for the Upcoming Week
Continue to experiment with theme components on my local instance of Discourse. Learn to implement new features that I have not tried before and maybe create changes that are more advanced than just styling. Also, experiment more with Theme Creator.
Follow along with the modules to learn advanced theme development, especially since the next module is something I have not done before.
Create a comprehensive list of ideas for the final project. Additionally, try to get a vote about the final projects team members would like to.
Become more familiar with Ember and Handlebars and be able to use it in my own coding projects.
4. Detailed Statement of Tasks Done
Two check-in meetings: Two team check-in meetings were held to wrap up old modules, introduce new modules, and check up on team members.
Theme component: Using the comprehensive guides provided about Discourse themes, I was able to refresh my knowledge on working with Discourse and create a theme for my local instance. I am still working on adding more advanced features but it is nice to see that I am still able to implement themes. I was also able to browse through themes made by other developers and get inspiration.
Inspect element: I became much more familiar with Chrome’s inspect tool. I was even able to use it to locate specific classes in order to help with my theme development. Although the Discourse codebase is huge, the inspect tool makes it simpler to navigate.
Soft skills: Learned to take the initiative for team meetings this week. Also learned to take initiative when I took the lead on creating a final project ideas list and poll. Strengthened my confidence too.
2. Three Achievement Highlights
Led a team meeting all by myself.
Created a list for final project ideas.
Deepened my knowledge about discourse themes.
3. Goals for the Upcoming Week
Be able to learn plugin development well and be diligent with my tasks, especially since these will be very new concepts for me.
Encourage more participation in team meetings since they are usually pretty short and it’s mainly the leads talking. Have more people share updates on how they are doing.
Finalize the capstone project topic or at least have a few top candidates. Do this by sending out a poll for everyone to choose and then picking the most popular and most viable idea.
4. Detailed Statement of Tasks Done
Final project ideation: Began to think about potential final project ideas along with other leads and team members. Created a comprehensive list of project ideas and started filling that out. Created a survey for project ideas that will later be sent to team members.
Two check-in meetings: Hosted two quick team meetings to update one another about progress and to discuss final project ideas. I was also able to take the lead on both of them, which was new and gave me more confidence. It was a bit discouraging to see attendance numbers lower but it’s great to see those who still continue to work through the modules and participate.
Advanced theme development: This module was definitely harder than the others since there was so much unfamiliar content. However, I was still able to go through the module and read over the content. Although I still have some unfinished parts, I hope to finish it soon!
Soft skills: Learned how to make decisions for the team when we decided to switch our final project to a theme component. Learned to deal with unexpected circumstances among the leads and how to keep going. Also gained more initiative skills with my work deciding the final project.
2. Three Achievement Highlights
Sent out a form and gathered votes for the final project idea.
Lead another team meeting.
Consulted with leads about changing our project direction.
3. Goals for the Upcoming Week
Confirm the final project idea and begin to work with the leads to think about how it will be developed. As of now, we’ve decided to stick with theme components since plugins will be a little too difficult, and I want to be more familiar with how our project will work.
Divide the final project into separate tasks, and then divide the team into subgroups to accomplish these tasks.
Look more into theme component development and be more familiar with various applications and projects.
4. Detailed Statement of Tasks Done
Final project: I made a form filled with final project ideas the team had come up with and sent out the form members. After collecting votes, we were able to narrow down a single idea that was the most popular. We are still in the process of confirming its feasibility but we now have a concrete idea.
Check-in meetings: Continued to host check-in meetings. With one of the leads dealing with unexpected work, I’ve learned to take more initiative during meetings and lead members through, which is something new to me.
Project direction: After talking with other leads and our pathway mentor, we ultimately decided to stick with theme components for our final project since we were all more familiar with it and thought that it would make a better project.
Technical area: This week, I did not do too much with the technical area since I was busy with project management tasks and because we have decided to stick with theme components. I did however look at a few supplemental resources for more ideas on theme components and how to implement these ideas.
Soft skills: Learning to deal with setbacks since the leads in our team are busy with other commitments. Although we still haven’t fully figured out what to do, we are trying to go forward with the final project.
2. Three Achievement Highlights
Lead a team meeting.
Decided on a final project: annotation tool.
Talked with the leads about responsibilities.
3. Goals for the Upcoming Week
Work with Keegan on dividing our project idea into smaller executables. As of now, we still aren’t sure how to implement the project so I hope to consult with him more.
Create and divide the team into subgroups based on their areas of interest. Then we can work together to achieve separate parts of our final project.
Have team members take up lead roles. As of now, the leads aren’t able to commit to the project so I hope to find others who are willing to help out more.
4. Detailed Statement of Tasks Done
Team meeting: We had a team meeting where I announced our final project idea and laid out the plan for the next few weeks.
Lead responsibilities: I discovered that the leads aren’t able to commit to the project, which is challenging to work with. However, I’m still going to try and work with Keegan and have other team members step up so that we can still hopefully create our final project.
Technical area: I didn’t get to work on anything technical with Discourse because I was working to sort out lead and project issues.
Soft skills: Working to merge teams and establishing a new team culture. Learned all about communication, flexibility, and how to persevere despite setbacks.
2. Three Achievement Highlights
Merged teams with group 2
Hosted two meetings with all new members
Changed final project idea to an upvote feature
3. Goals for the Upcoming Week
Sufficiently answer questions and address concerns team members may have over their portions of the project.
Work on finalizing our plugin project.
Begin developing a project presentation and determine members who will help present.
4. Detailed Statement of Tasks Done
Merged teams: After meeting during office hours, we decided to merge team 1 with team 2 to make the final project. My group didn’t have enough leads and team 2 didn’t have enough members, so it worked out nicely. I created a new Discord channel for communication and we set up new weekly team meetings on Zoom. I’m glad it looks like the final project might be coming together because I was initially very worried about how I could carry the team through that. Additionally, communication is much better within the team since we now have a project management, project, and technical lead.
Two meetings: With the new members, I hosted two meetings on Tuesday and Thursday. On Tuesday, we introduced ourselves and we got almost everyone to turn on their camera! We also talked about the new project idea and shared the task list for everyone to look at.
Final project idea: After merging with team 2, we decided to change our project idea to the upvote feature since the annotation tool was already being done by team 3. Additionally, we changed our final project from a theme component to a plugin. I’m very excited to see where the final project goes from here!
Task list: A task list was created that broke down portions of the final project. We had team members sign up for various assignments and everyone is currently working on their part!
Soft skills: Dividing tasks among teammates and then working to put them together, time management
2. Three Achievement Highlights
Split up final project tasks between members
Hosted two check-in meetings
Finished most of the back-end work
3. Goals for the Upcoming Week
Finish developing the front-end portion of the final project.
Facilitate the putting together of all individual portions of the project.
Create time to work on a final project presentation even after school starts.
4. Detailed Statement of Tasks Done
Two meetings: Held two check-in meetings where tasks were split up between team members and they gave updates/asked for help.
Communication: Talked with team members who were having schedule conflicts and worked out solutions with them.
Code review: Helped look over code that team members are committing to our Github repository. The backend portion of our project is now mostly complete.