My First Remote Team Experience in Chingu Voyage 8
Chingu voyage 8 comes to an end now with most of the teams finishing up their MVPs. Going from project idea to the execution in just 8 weeks is in itself an achievement for all the members of the team. There were some members who dropped out during this phase but none of it could stop the enthusiasm of each and every developer to complete the project. I saw developers who were passionate enough to even continue the project solo.
As I was scrolling on some team’s GitHub repositories, I noticed some teams who started slow but rushed to the end. There were some teams which rushed in the start and cruised towards the end. I also noticed a team where a member was working really hard as a solo to finish their project.
How can one not get motivated looking at different struggles for everyone being in the same field?
I was thrown in one of the teams called Bears-Team-05.
You must be wondering what is the word “bears” doing there. This voyage was divided into 3 tiers:
- Toucans: Front-end beginner level projects
- Geckos: Front-end intermediate level projects
- Bears: Full stack applications
There’s also a tier Chimeras which are a mix of both breeds Geckos and Bears. I don’t understand why these teams are given a separate name on GitHub.
Maybe they are cooler lol… — Christin
We began our journey with 4 bears, introduced ourselves and started chit-chatting about our previous projects, ideas, and tech stacks used. We set up our first meeting and found 1 bear missing. Yeah, seriously! 😃
We came up with 3 project ideas on our first meeting. We discussed the git workflow and set up all the things we required to get started. After 3 days, we had our 2nd meeting with everyone and we finally decided to go with the live whiteboard idea. We divided the work amongst us, set up our weekly goal and hopped into the project immediately.
After a week, we reviewed each other’s weekly goals. We could see some fallbacks but ignored it as we were still getting started.
A week passed and it was time for another meeting and peer review. This time our weekly goals were not met. We discussed the matter and set up a meeting but no one showed up at the scheduled time.
I rescheduled the meeting and only 1 showed up. This is when our real journey started. It was April 5 already and our project didn’t have a single functionality yet.
So 2 bears continued the rest of the journey with a lot of fun, enthusiasm, and learnings on the way. We were finally able to deploy our first version on April 25. Yeah, 20 days after starting with the implementation of the project and working for 14*7 surely made us feel proud after receiving appreciations from the volunteers.
In the end, all I would say is our hard work paid off. We now have a full stack app on my resume with a remote team experience as a Project Manager, lifelong friends I made along the way (Shoutout to Bhasker and Iliyas), appreciations and support I received from the Chingu volunteers and I think I am now ready for my first job as a full stack developer.
I would like to give special thanks to Jim, Chance, and Iliyas for believing in me and supporting me throughout the journey.
All the Best for the future everyone.
Cheers!
