Week 1: Introductions, learn the fieldGO product
Heading into the first week I was not sure what to expect but from the interview in which I spoke to Kayla and Peter (Operations Manager & Functional Analyst), I had a good feeling about it. Going into this opportunity I was aware that I needed to make the most of it and learn what I can from the environment I was being placed in.
The first week largely consisted of pre-recorded training material that was designed to help new employees become familiar with the fieldGo product. It was quite a lot of information to take in at first but thankfully I was working with Patrick (fellow student) so we could discuss things with each other which helped keep the process more engaging. At first, I was noticing many flaws in the current software but I also noticed a lot of opportunity for growth which was nice, I saw problems that I felt capable of fixing if given the chance.
We ran into some speed bumps on the way in getting the software suite setup, solving these problems ourselves allowed us to gain a greater understanding of how the system works. Understanding how things worked at an entry-level allow us to be more effective communicators when it comes to getting our work done.
Week 2: Continued learning, understand development processes
In week two we moved into learning more about fieldGo's current development processes, currently, they are operating with the scrum methodology whilst using Azure DevOps to facilitate the process involved. Sprint cycles are fortnightly which is a comfortable amount of time in which we are able to set out a list of achievable goals, at the end of the sprint everyone demo's their work if possible in order to gain feedback from the other developers, this proved to be quite valuable as there is often something that you missed but someone else will notice. We digested some basic training material on Agile, SCRUM & DevOps whilst finishing off training videos from last week.
This week was in large part similar to the first week although we moved onto learning more information whilst also engaging in more advanced conversation concerning the intricacies of the current systems that fieldGo have in place.
This week was in large part similar to the first week although we moved onto learning more information whilst also engaging in more advanced conversation concerning the intricacies of the current systems that fieldGo have in place.
Week 3: Mini-project
Following our training weeks, we embarked on a mini-project that had us using fieldGo's page builder software, the software that customers of the product used to implement their own business requirements & workflows. The product is quite flexible in this way which allows it to be applied to many situations. Our project had us adapting the software to a hospital environment, specifically the maintenance and management of medical equipment.
With Kayla acting as our 'client' we gathered as much information as we could before executing the project in an agile scrum fashion. This project served two purposes in the end by allowing us to become familiar with the current page builder whilst also working in an agile scrum fashion to complete our goals. This would prepare us for the coming development work.
By the end of this week, I was quite eager to begin coding as the type of problem-solving in a coding environment feels more comfortable to me rather than being in a software environment created by others.
Week 4: Introduction to project, planning and research
Yay, we made it passed the training phase.
We spent our fourth week learning Angular which is the framework we would be using to develop our dashboard page in. Oh, I forgot, I have not explained what our development project is.
We are creating a Dashboard page for the currently in development v7 dispatcher client, the dispatcher client is an administration tool for clients to manage their jobs/crew allocation. Our page will show relevant statistics to users in a concise and digestible manner. The project scope is quite achievable but allows us to build on it by including filtering functionality and further options. To bring us up to speed on Angular we completed roughly 9 hours of tutorials from PluralSight is behind a paywall so it was nice to have access to that for free. Angular proved to be quite interesting and it left me wondering why our education had not had us working in some form of web framework before as it seems pretty integral in today's web development landscape.
Given the 9 hours of tutorial video and all the time in between wherein we paused to code along with the tutorial, our 20 hours for this week was filled up rather comfortably.
Week 4: Becoming familiar with the codebase
At this point, e were given access to the current v7 client and equivalent API code. I spent some time getting my machine set up for developing, along with this I spent a lot of time reviewing where the API code was currently at in order to gain a greater understanding of how I should approach my side of the project. At this point me and Patrick decided to split the project between us with him working on the frontend dashboard page while I develop the backend API, this suited both our preferences so that was convenient.
Once I got my development environment setup I did some research into GitFlow to understand the git workflows used here. Once this was understood I created my own feature brand on the API to begin my implementation. I begun chipping away at my first endpoint at this stage but did not get too into it with the amount of time left for the week.
With the training complete & my development environment setup, I was ready and equipped to tackle the project. :)
With the training complete & my development environment setup, I was ready and equipped to tackle the project. :)
