7.30 AM
Today is a Monday and the second week of our sprint (our team works in short time-boxed 2-week sprints to complete our set goals and objectives for the 2 weeks), so that means we don’t have a planning meeting for the day.
On the first Monday of the first week of the sprint we usually have a team meeting in the office and go through a retrospective where we all review the last 2 weeks' sprint and look at what went well, what could be improved and also set and assign tasks for the next 2 weeks.
But as it’s not a planning day I can sleep in a little and work from home.
To start the day on a working from home day, I can gradually get up and make a coffee, pop some TV on and then get ready to move into my office to start the day.
8.30 AM
Turn on my work computer and start going through the daily tasks, reviewing any emails and chats I need to follow up on. Our team has a daily short Standup together where we remotely log in to our MS Teams chat and discuss our tasks for the day, but before that, I need to write up my tasks of what I completed the prior day and what I aim to achieve today to be able to share with the team.
Also, go through and check if there are any alerts or notifications from issues on the website.
We have active monitoring that can track and alert to errors when a user interacts with the site, so make sure there is nothing outstanding causing any issues for our customers and their access to login or browse the sites.
It’s cool to be able to see that people are using and interacting with things that you’ve built and are out in the open – I just want to make sure they stay working as expected.
9.00 AM
We jump on the standup call together and chat about our weekend, one of the team members loves doing their interesting facts of the day, which is pretty funny with some of the facts that come up.
We take turns going around to share with the team what we did the previous work day and what we’re working on today, if someone is stuck on a task and needs some help with something we can raise it here, but for today, I’m all good.
9.30 AM
Start working on today’s main focused task.
For today, this is building a new component for a new section of the website to display specific content based on the product and set values changed by a user, which also updates them when the user changes them.
To get started with this I open up the task assigned to me in Jira (our issue tracking software) and read through the requirements. The task has listed all the expected behaviour and interactions of the component that I need to build with AC (Acceptance Criteria) for each scenario to be able to test.
In the Jira task, also has the designs of what it needs to look like and different examples of how it should change when someone interacts with it, these designs are in software called Figma, which is super handy for UX designers to use for their designs and developers to be able to get the styling from as well.
From the details provided in the Jira task, I’ll start making notes and mapping out how I’m planning to approach the build of the component using confluence, which is a documenting software that links into Jira and can be used for reference if anyone else needs to see it too.
11.00 AM
Have a catch-up with the lead developer to make sure I’m planning the right approach – it’s handy to be able to get someone else’s views.
12.00 PM
Lunchtime!
For the next hour, I have to myself so I close the computer for a bit, grab some food and go for a walk. I live near the beach so it’s always nice to go for a walk down along there and back to get some fresh air and sun.
1.00 PM
Back from lunch, I make sure I have the solution I need to work on, we use git versioning source control, so I make sure I have the latest version of the work and create a side branch to start working on my component in the code so it doesn’t affect anyone else’s work.
For the front-end visual coding, I use Visual studio code to make the initial skeleton outline of the component I’m working on so I can see it coming together and test how it looks in a browser.
2.30 PM
I’m having some issues with some of the designs matching the styling that the system style guide lists (we have a specific set of styling for the branding of GMHBA that we follow to make sure things stay consistent). I jump on a call with the designers to clarify some of the interaction states and sizing of sections. We come to an agreed solution that matches the style guide and the design to make it suit the requirements, and I add that decision on the task so anyone following can see the decision made.
3.30 PM
Stop for a little break, make a tea and send some messages to the team to see how everyone’s going, just for some general chat, maybe throw in a funny giphy image for a bit of a laugh. (Honestly, I send giphys out to the team members throughout the day randomly ).
3.45 PM
Jump back onto Visual studio code and keep working on the styling of the component to try and match the designs and notes from the earlier session as closely as possible with the changes while looking at how the api’s and data are going to be consumed and how the logic will work using the vue.js framework.
4.00 PM
Jump on a call with our team's QA Testing person who, once a task is completed and is ready to be tested, goes and runs the tests to make sure they match the user requirements in the task and don’t break anything.
The call is to go through a feature that I built the other day and they are wanting to double-check a couple of the interaction states that are different so we run through and demo the new feature.
4.45 PM
I push up to the git repository the work I’ve done so far to make sure it’s saved and if anything did happen to my own computer, at least I can access the work that’s already done. After that’s done I touch base with the rest of my team and wrap up for the day.
5.00 PM
Finish up, pack up my computer and then start on the most important task…. Working out what to cook for dinner.
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