All your expectations during this apprenticeship are best understood in the context of Software for Good's role as Client Services company. We serve our clients. Period.
Clients
The clients are the people we are developing the app for. We work with clients to make sure the app we’re developing meets their needs and goals. How we work with them varies by client - sometimes they define and prioritize our tasks, and sometimes they are more hands off.
Asana is a project management software. Project management software are tools that can be used by companies to help organize and plan their projects. There are many other types of project management software out there. Besides Asana, these include:
- Trello
- Monday
- smartsheet
We are able to create these things called tasks (also called tickets), which help state what needs to be done. For instance in web development, if the homepage of a website needs some text updated, a task can be created called 'Update text on the homepage'. Then we have further functions to help get this task set up to be completed. These include:
- Assigning it to a specific person
- Assigning a due date
- Filling in a description with more specific details
- Adding subtasks (that also get all these other functions!)
- Attaching files
- A section at the bottom where you can message and communicate with other team members
Every Asana Task has "Acceptance Criteria". Don't mark it as complete until they are met. If you don't know what those criteria are, ask. The button to mark complete is called Mark complete, however, we (typically the product owner/project manager/tech lead) need to communicate with the client to determine if we can push this button.
Besides mentioned above, the importance of tasks are categorized by high, medium, and low priority. High priority tasks should ideally be completed first.
Buckets are how we organize tickets that are in different stages of development. This will be explained later. There isn't a default amount of buckets that every project gets. It can vary depending on the team's needs and wants. Here are some examples:
- Backlog
- In Progress
- Code Review
- Completed
For this example, we are going to be using the buckets that were mentioned above.
Let's say you were assigned a task that was in the Backlog bucket, and you are starting to work on it. Then, you are able to drag that task from the Backlog bucket into the In Progress bucket. This helps indicate to the rest of the team members that you are currently working on that task.