Although the life of a developer is mostly defined by the technical skills they use on a daily basis, these alone are not enough to ensure success in the working world. In this course, we will explore the soft skills needed to thrive in a professional environment. We will also look at how to work effectively in a team and how to communicate with clients and colleagues.
Course Overview
This course is structured differently to other courses in the program. Instead of working through one module at a time towards a course assignment, most of your time will be spent working on a group project. The course is divided into 3 phases:
- Discovery Week: Discovery is the process of exploring options, researching projects and forming teams with you classmates. This is a good time to get up to speed with existing code within a project, discuss, ask questions and get to know your teammates.
- Planning Week: During this time, you will work within your team structure to plan the project. This includes creating a project plan, setting goals, milestones, priorities, and contingencies.
- Sprint Weeks: The remaining time is used to carry out planned tasks within a sprint cycle. Each sprint cycle starts with a planning session and is followed by a sprint review and retrospective.
Course Objectives
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Use professional project management tools to define a project plan.
- Carry out meaningful contributions to an open-source project.
- Use version control software to manage team contributions.