My journey in software development has gifted me with the opportunity of working with and exchanging knowledge and ideas with different individuals and teams who have given me the appreciation of diversity(in thought and background), an appreciation of hard work and improvement through grit and the occassion coffee-side banter.
PS: I am a big fan of Tailwind CSS
Non-technical Books/Courses that I have found transformative and essential for an appreciation of the craft of software development and it's multi-faceted nature are:
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
- Getting Things Done
- Learning How To Learn
Presentation as a challenge on Teaching Others Learning Hot To learn
A Full stack challenge aimed at survey creators and respondents to enable them to create and publish surveys as well as respond respectively.
Stack:
- Backend: Nest Js & Mongo DB Atlas
- Frontend: Angular, Tailwind CSS
A frontend dynamic survey response web application.
Stack:
- Angular, Typescript
Challenges & design decisions: The challenge required a collapsible tree representation of survey elements and several open source implementations did not meet a speedy delivery timeline due to issues with customization or bugs that seemed to slow down the product delivery process. As such a need for a bespoke code implementation to achieve a fluid user experience as well as repeatable/replicable functionality necessitated the creation of a custom tree implementation. Check out the code: Node Tree Processor. This implementation relied heavily on dynamic API Fed DOM Manipulation as well as event listeners to provide a dynamic and reponsive experience.
Facebook and Andela partnered to challenge developers to up-skill in several countries with a focus on agile remote work culture. Developers were to design and develop a solution targeting a Sustainable Development Goal. For more information checkout Build For SDG. Team 134 decide to develop an IoT driven garbage collection monitoring and notification system for municipal/private garbage collection entities in an effort to contribute to the achievement of SDG 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities.
Team: The team was diverse in terms of experience, skillsets and time availability. Additionally, being fully remote and newly formed(almost random) it had its own unique challenges. Thankfully through the time together, the one goal of upskilling for the team members was reached in different metrics for each individual. Additionally, the lesson that a lot can be done when individuals/makers with diverse backgrounds/skills come together combined with a passion for learning was not lost.
I was voted team lead of team 134 by the team members, 8 in total. This involved several responsibilities as well as ensuring that the newly formed team moved together and fast.
Challenges & adaptations:
- Team formation
While team members had been declared, there was yet to be cohesion and an understanding of each other. This was before I was chosen team lead. Having been through bootcamps with a focus on agile and diversity, there were a couple of introductory elements I had observed, the only issue was how to adapt this to a remote environment. So, after doing introductions myself and proposing that we all do so, the conversation seemed to guide itself in that the important things bubbled up to the surface; combine this with an eagerness for the remote experience we eventually jumped on a call before getting to the nitty gritties of work several hours later.
- Settling on a stack
The challenge centered around learning on the fly while building a project. This posed the challenge of having different preferences as well as individuals who had not had much experience with any programming language. A choice to declare easily learnable languages and stacks as well as their related frameworks and having team members raise questions regarding each choice while those who had the knowledge and experience would share their thoughts as well.
- Aiding self learning
Transparency, an equal voice for everyone and collaboration played a big role. Due to the varied skill sets, some concepts had to be guided from scratch, e.g git and version control. However, this provided an opportunity for knowledge sharing as well as motivation(all of us who knew things once did not) and guidance on approaches enabled self learning with minimal of the usual pitfalls; impostor syndrome, too much too fast, scattered incomplete information that confuses and a lack of a community to champion learning.
- Contributing while managing previous engagements:
Ensuring that a complete/concise of tasks and deliverables of previous engagements were clear as well as making time for new issues. Due to the remote nature of the challenge and my role, I mostly was needed to be available for communication and any delays were not to exceed 3o minutes to ensure smooth sailing. This presented the opportunity of managing knowledge(for when needed in different forms), anticipating requests/blockers, timely monitoring and prioritization of next tasks.
- Finishing strong:
It was an uphill task, however we deployed. What did we learn? The power of grit and collaboration, the choice not to be the weakest link in the team through work and a determination to always level up. What shortcomings did we overcome? Being partly an IoT project, resources were an issue, however individuals came through and made the project a success.