My non-profit project with CHINGU

The finished product

When I was learning to code I would find myself constantly starting projects and never completing them. I had a whole graveyard of projects on github that I had yet to wrap up. And during some sleepless nights(these projects would come and haunt me) I would just log into github and delete them. My lack of accountability and motivation was becoming a huge hindrance in my coding journey. However, at work I found that learning with other people produced far better results than just struggling on my own. I would find myself spending hours staring at a problem, then I’d show it to a friend and we would figure it out within seconds.

There’s an error but I don’t know where

One day while going through FCC articles on medium when I came across Chingu. I found that it was just what I was looking for, a collaborative community connecting learners with shared goals to build and learn together. I decided to jump right into it and so I applied.

After I’d applied, the team at Chingu set me up with three fellow applicants to work on a project for that voyage. Chingu hosted talks by previous voyagers and Q&As providing us with all the resources to start building our project.

For my first ever voyage, my team worked on a website for a non-profit organization. And here’s a quick rundown of my entire experience:

1. The search
2. The planning
3. The implementation
4. The feedback
5. The handoff

Part 1

I can’t see anything

I started my first voyage as a project manager for my team. My team decided what to work on and we quickly agreed to develop a website for a non-profit. That was the easy part, then we had to look for a non-profit to work with.

So we set out looking for an organization that needed our help. We wrote to friends and acquaintances. We began posting in discord and slack groups about our team’s mission. And finally a few days later, someone from a slack group that I’d posted in wrote back and had an organization for us to work with. She provided us information about the organization and put us in touch with people from the non-profit.

The initial email to the client contained information about Chingu and our team and our mission. Then the next step was to arrange a time to talk further about the project. Basically, the following were the main points we tried to address during this call.

a) Our team’s plan: What the team wanted to achieve and what we could provide for them

b) Outline of our project: Explained how the team was going to work on the project and the workflow we had set up

c) Getting them involved: Showed them our plan and asked for feedback, getting anything they wanted us to add in or leave out from the project

Parts 2 & 3

My team had several meetings to discuss each team member’s expectations from this project and get a better understanding of one other. We then moved on to outline what our project needed and started to structure our workflow for the next few weeks. We established our MVP features, set clear goals for each week and set up a development workflow to follow.

We’re a pack of scary indestructible alpha dogs

Then we started the implementation with sprints every week which was followed by review meetings twice a week. And we also put in time for a short standup-meeting mid-week and a longer sprint-review meeting at the end of the sprint. The sprint-review meeting was where we discussed the details of the next sprint as well. This agile workflow we had set up with the help of the resources provided by the Chingu team, helped our team maintain a good pace and ensured that everyone on the team was on the right track.

Part 4

When working with a client, make sure you provide regular updates so that they know the rough timeline of the project and what progress has been made. If you have anything to show, that’s really good as well.

In a project like this, when you are receiving constant feedback from your clients, it’s best to have an agile development process in place to ensure that you are always ready to accommodate your client’s feedback or requests but still meet the deadline and deliver the MVP features.

Part 5

Congratulations on your first fully-completed project!

Ah, it’s time for the final pull request and you are almost at the finish line.

My team hit a few snags in the middle of the road but we managed to push through it to deliver the project. And I finally got a complete project to pin to my github profile and add to my portfolio.

At this point I know your team’s work is done but there will still be a little more you can do for your clients. You could help them deploy the site or provide extra help like with SEO. Make sure the hand-off is as easy as possible and provide the clients with as much help along the way as you can. If updating the site requires some form of documentation, provide a manual with easy steps to follow.

All in all, I learned so much from my experience working on this project with my Chingu team. I had a complete project, learned about SWD and project management, made some friends and got back into coding full-time.

So if you are looking for a place to start your coding journey, I would highly recommend joining Chingu and start building something you’d be proud of.