When I took on this project it was on it's last legs. My job was to turn it around and get it on schedule ASAP!!. This project wasn't behind due to from a lack of effort but rather a lack of front end development experience.
The team were experts in back end development & had dabbled with front end development. From this knowledge it seems straight forward to build out the architecture.
Why is it so hard to build a form? A little bit of styling with some validation what could go wrong?
This was the question raise in a meeting where I raised the concerns below to the senior management team. Who had a meeting with the client at 9am the next morning to make the decision on which way we should move forward. At 5:20pm I was asked write a document to present to the team in a way that would enable them to make an informed decision by 8am.
Coming from a start up culture to me there is no such thing as regular hours. If something needs to get done, it MUST be done. At 8am I presented my insights to the team after finishing on the document at 3:30am.
The below are the aspects I presented that needed to be addressed immediately in order to move forward successfully. The concern was that if we changed these aspects of the code base, we would be pulling apart months of work & rebuilding many features while being constrained to a tight budget.
TypeScript Vs JavaScript
UI Frameworks
Consistent Code Patterns
Validation
After the meeting the decision was made to move forward using the updated Tech Stack & I needed to prove to the team that this was the right decision.
I buckled down working extra hours into the weekend and delivered the first version of the form within one and half weeks. The team were wrapped, we were finally making progress!
Next up I trained up 3 Junior Developers to help complete the project. This was a true test of their commitment & determination to contribute. Over the following weeks they all rapidly improved taking accountability for their individual forms.
Unfortunately my contract ended before all forms were completed.
This project pushed me to become a better developer in both leadership & technical skills.
Thank you to Paul & Adam for this opportunity it was a pleasure working with you.