Learning Plan

Updated for Bootcamp

What is your long term goal and/or career pathway? What are you hoping to use the skills you gain during this course for? What sort of impact would you like to make once you leave Dev Academy? Do you have a destination in mind?

My response to this question hasn't changed over the course of Foundations, except to add that I recently started a project with Next.js and found it great. So, I'd add Next.js to the list of technologies I'd love to work with in my next job.

What do you think your biggest strengths and limitations will be in Bootcamp?

My biggest strengths will be:

• Being confident in my ability to learn
• Having had some prior web development experience
• High motivation and discipline
• Working well both autonomously and collaboratively with a team

My biggest limitation will be:

• Shyness

Re-evaluate your strengths and limitations from Sprint 2. Has your idea of these changed over the course of Foundations? Have you discovered any new ones during this course?

I think my earlier assessment has proven accurate.

What do you think your biggest non-technical challenge at Bootcamp will be?

The biggest might be public speaking, depending on the scenario.

From what I have been told, there is a huge workload, so I imagine keeping on top of all the material will be challenging too.

What non-technical skills - human skills - would you like to see developed in yourself while at Dev Academy?

The most valuable non-technical skills for me to develop in this learning context are the skills related to working as part of a dev team in an Agile environment, including:

• Leadership skills
• Participating effectively in Agile ceremonies
• Giving and receiving feedback on things like code and design ideas
• Improving team dynamics, practices and/or workflows
• Influencing/making suggestions to the team or a team member when I'm not in charge – without upsetting them (or stepping on the toes of the team lead if there is one)

What are your expectations from the Bootcamp team? What does support look like to you? Keep in mind, this may not be the same as the Bootcamp team's expectations, but it is useful to voice these expectations.

The types of input from the facilitation team that I think would be most useful to me are:

• Code review
• Feedback on how I can:
  • Improve how I work as part of a dev team
  • Participate in Agile ceremonies better
  • Give and receive feedback on code better
  • Improve any other skills that my future employers will likely expect with regard to working as part of an Agile dev team.
• Providing an example to follow e.g. when one of the EDA staff takes the role of lead dev on the cohort project
• Helping or showing our teams how organise ourselves/run our projects in the way that a good professional dev team would
• Letting me know as early as possible if I am not meeting expectations or need to re-do any work

What are your expectations of yourself on Bootcamp?
Based on your knowledge of Bootcamp, how and where will you seek help in a timely way? Write down a commitment to how you will manage your workload in this programme. This should include - an explanation of how you will manage yourself to work productively and safely with other learners, facilitators and industry/community representatives.

During bootcamp, I will do my best to ensure that things don't overwhelm me by increasing my resilience. I will do this by taking especially good care of myself including:

• Getting enough sleep
• Eating well
• Exercising
• Practising some form of Non Sleep Deep Relaxation (NSDR) like yoga nidra or other mindfulness techniques

I will manage myself to work productively with the team by:

• Always being on time and prepared for meetings
• Using time management tools and techniques including a calendar, time-block planning and task lists
• Removing distractions from my environment
• Focussing and staying on track
• Communicating with others kindly and empathetically
• Asking for help if I need it
• Not taking on any other commitments so that nothing else is competing with bootcamp for time and attention
• Taking especially good care of myself (see above) so that I am always in the best possible frame of mind to deal with anything that might come up

If things start to get to me, I'll do one or more of the following:

• Talk with a friend
• Go for a walk
• Use breathing techniques to regain calm
• De-stress by listening to some music
• Do some extra NSDR

If I am getting overwhelmed, I will talk to my facilitator about it.

If there were any extenuating circumstances that prevented me from meeting a team commitment, I would contact my team ASAP to let them know and work out how to proceed.

Original Plan

What is your long term goal and/or career pathway?

I would like to work full-time as a developer, preferably working remotely from my home office. I am flexible around whether my next dev job is full-stack, front-end or back-end. I would prefer to work primarily with JavaScript-based technologies like vanilla JS, TypeScript, React, Angular and Node as they have been my main focus for the last while. But, if a great opportunity in WordPress development came up, I would be interested in that too. (My earlier experience was with WordPress development.)

A description of your own strengths and limitations in relation to learning.

You can find a detailed description in my earlier blog post: Identity, Values and Strengths Exploration.

What skills (non-technical - human skills) would you like to see developed in yourself while at Dev Academy?

The most valuable skills for me to develop in this learning context are the skills related to working as part of a dev team in an Agile environment, including:

• Participating effectively in Agile ceremonies
• Giving and receiving feedback on things like code and design ideas
• Improving team dynamics, practices and/or workflows
• Influencing/making suggestions to the team or a team member when I'm not in charge – without upsetting them (or stepping on the toes of the team lead if there is one)

A commitment to how you will manage your workload in this programme. This should include: An explanation of how you will manage yourself to work productively and safely with other learners, facilitators and industry/community representatives

I will manage myself to work productively with the team by:

• Always being on time and prepared for meetings
• Using time management tools and techniques including a calendar, time-block planning and task lists
• Removing distractions from my environment
• Focussing and staying on track
• Communicating with others kindly and empathetically
• Asking for help if I need it
• Not taking on any other commitments so that nothing else is competing with bootcamp for time and attention
• Taking especially good care of myself (see below) so that I am always in the best possible frame of mind to deal with anything that might come up

What you will do when things are building up and starting to get to you

During bootcamp, I will do my best to ensure that things don't overwhelm me by increasing my resilience. I will do this by taking especially good care of myself including:

• Getting enough sleep
• Eating well
• Exercising
• Practising some form of Non Sleep Deep Relaxation (NSDR) like yoga nidra or other mindfulness techniques

If things start to get to me, I'll do one or more of the following:

• Talk with a friend
• Go for a walk
• Use breathing techniques to regain calm
• De-stress by listening to some music
• Do some extra NSDR

A commitment as to how and where you will seek help in a timely way

If I am getting overwhelmed, I will talk to my facilitator about it. If there were any extenuating circumstances that prevented me from meeting a team commitment, I would contact my team ASAP to let them know and work out how to proceed.

A description of what you expect from the facilitation team

The types of input from the facilitation team that I think would be most useful to me are:

• Code review
• Feedback on how I can:
  • Improve how I work as part of a dev team
  • Participate in Agile ceremonies better
  • Give and receive feedback on code better
  • Improve any other skills that my future employers will likely expect with regard to working as part of an Agile dev team.
• Providing an example to follow e.g. when one of the EDA staff takes the role of lead dev on the cohort project
• Helping or showing our teams how organise ourselves/run our projects in the way that a good professional dev team would
• Letting me know as early as possible if I am not meeting expectations or need to re-do any work