📝 prep

Get set up with your planner and find the Week 0 assignments to prepare for the course to begin

🔖
  1. Read and sign CYF agreements
  2. Childcare expenses
  3. Fork your Planner 📼
  4. Set up Planner
  5. Make your Planning Board 📼
  6. backlog

Getting Started

To get started on the prep work, you will need to sign up to GitHub, get your planner set up and start working through the assignments of week 0. You should do this as soon as you are invited to the course, even if the start date is some time away.

GitHub

GitHub is for developers. It’s how you will work on code with other developers and where you will build a portfolio of work to show employers. You should already have a GitHub account from the application process. If you don’t, make one now.

  • I have made a GitHub account.
  • I have used my real name.
  • I have not put my birth year in my user name.

Use your name

Your GitHub account name should look something like this: https://github.com/SallyMcGrath

Real Name

CYF recognises you may need to keep your birth name private. When we say real name, we mean the name you go by. It does not have to match your birth certificate or any other legal document. It has to be consistent and professional.

When prospective employers are looking at your GitHub portfolio, you need them to know who you are: not your online identity, but the name you put on your job application. Don’t use cute handles on your GitHub, even though some mentors do. They are not applying for entry level developer roles.

Watch What is GitHub

Agreements 🔗

Preparation

N/A

Introduction

Agreements are important because they establish clear expectations and foster trust between parties, ensuring mutual understanding and cooperation.

At CodeYourFuture, feeling you are in a trusted and safe environment is very important, so ensuring that everyone in the community understands what is expected of them and how they can act if needed is very important.

Agreements for Code Your Future

🎯 Goal: Agree on all terms and rules to be part of Code Your Future (35 minutes)

You must read and agree to these rules before attending Code Your Future.

If you have concerns or questions, please contact your cohort team. They will happily talk to you about our rules and what they mean to you.

After reading and agreeing to it, sign the trainee agreement before coming to class.

Childcare support 🔗

Preparation

Read this link with all the information and follow the steps to check if you are eligible for childcare expenses.

Introduction

If you are a parent or carer that needs support with their childcare costs, this coursework is for you. If this is not applicable to you, just close the issue with a comment explaining so.

Complete form for Childcare Expenses

🎯 Goal: To inform your Programme Manager about your Childcare support need (28 minutes)

If you are eligible, follow these steps:

  • Screenshot the last page of the Childcare calculator
  • Fill in the Expenses form pinned on your cohort Slack channel

Extra option (not-CYF related)

If you want you can set up an account on the government portal to access extra childcare support.

Set up Planner 🔗

Welcome to your coursework planner

This is how you will plan and manage your coursework at CYF. You will add all your work as issues to your fork of this repository, and then use a project board to manage your work. This is broadly how all technical projects are managed, so you will need lots of practice. Get started today.

1. How to get set up

  1. Fork this repo to your own GitHub
  2. Turn on issues in the settings

You must fork to your personal Github account. Forks created in the CYF org will be deleted by a bot.

2. Every module, you will add your work as issues

Each module has a module repo. The coursework for each module is added as issues to that repository. All the module repos are listed in the Table of Contents.

  1. Go to the module repo
  2. Click on the Issues tab
  3. Copy each issue from the module repo to your own coursework repo.

We are building a tool to automate this process, but for now you will have to do it manually. We all use the Kamino Clone Button Chrome extension to make this easier, so you could try that.

Copy issues for each week or at most for each module. The coursework content is updated frequently, you will not have the most up to date tasks on your board if you copy all modules at once.

3. Refine your tickets and add them to your project board

  1. Copy the example project board
  2. Link your new project board to your fork of this repo
  3. Add your tickets to the project board, using the labels to help you assign the fields
  4. Make your board public in the settings, so your mentors can see it

There are example project boards attached to each module, showing you ways you can use boards to manage your time, prioritise, scope, and track your work. You should use the same project board all the way through the course, and add to it as you go. Learn as you go, and adapt your board as you learn.

You can, and should, also add your own tickets to the board. Just remember it’s a public board, so don’t add anything you don’t want to share with your mentors.

You can watch this video about how to create your coursework-planner board.

Backlog

Learning Objectives

In software development, we break down complex projects into smaller, manageable parts, which we work on for a week or two. These periods are called “sprints.”

A sprint backlog is like a to-do list. It lists what the team has decided to work on this sprint. It’s chosen from a larger list, usually called the “product backlog,” which holds the entire project to-do list.

For your course, the mandatory work has been scheduled already. You will add any other tickets you want to work on to your backlog and schedule them according to your own goals and capacity. Use your planning board to do this.

You will find your backlog in the Backlog view on every sprint.

Copy the tickets you are working on to your own backlog. Organise your tickets on your board and move them to the right column as you work through them. It’s a flowchart:

flowchart LR
    Backlog --> Ready
    Ready --> in_progress
    in_progress[In Progress] --> in_review
    in_review[In Review] --> Done

Backlog (30 minutes)

  1. Find the sprint backlog
  2. Copy your tickets to your own backlog
  3. Organise your tickets on your board