Private Projects & Project Boards

[00:00:00]
>> What strategies can you employ that address the challenge of showcasing your expertise? If what you've done is completed in private work and repos and that kind of thing.
>> All right, so that's a very good question, especially if you're in a FinTech company that they're not sharing a lot of that work.

[00:00:16]
So, do portfolio, that is where the strength is, and doing your portfolio In a manner to how you do it professionally. One thing that I've been telling people to do that have that is to now implement GitHub projects as a part of their portfolio repo, and from using GitHub projects as a part of your portfolio repo, and writing tickets out of the steps you're going to do with your with your portfolio.

[00:00:44]
And then converting those to issues, then doing that work, closing that issue. What that does is shows breadcrumbs of the work that you're doing in a professional manner, that helps you, the user look and showcase, this is how you work, okay, cuz so this is how you would work in a job and you're showcasing that work on your own.

[00:01:09]
So, there you go, right? Cuz that's what you really wanna showcase. You don't wanna just showcase the work that you've done. You wanna showcase that, how you do the work, right? I wrote a ticket, I moved the ticket from todo to doing, I converted that ticket to an issue, I completed that ticket.

[00:01:31]
I asked a friend to review it for me. Somebody reviewed, and I had Alsike collaborator review it for me. They said it was good, I merged it back in, and now I move that ticket to done, yes.
>> You leveraged a little more about what projects actually are.

[00:01:51]
>> It's perfect, yeah. So, I'm right here, what I want to do, I'll make a new one. So repos, new, choose an owner, me, new, New-jerome-portfolio, right? I'll make it public, add a read me, Create a repo, I'm done, right? So, first thing I'm gonna do right here.

[00:02:48]
Now, I have my portfolio is not start coding. I'm gonna start planning. Where do I start planning? I don't know. I go here. What's this project tap is? Projects? Do I link a project? I don't have a project to link. I'm gonna go, new project. Press new project.

[00:03:09]
Do I want a table? Do I want a board? Do I want a roadmap? I like Kanban, I'm gonna go use a board. There you go. Board, I'm gonna rename it, New portfolio, I can give a description later, that's not important. I can manage the access, because I want the users to see it.

[00:03:42]
I'm gonna make it public, right? So, because I wanna use this as a tool, right? Not just as, this is just a thing I'm doing. I wanna use this as a tool that helps me get jobs. So now, I made it public, so people can go to it and view it.

[00:04:04]
I can even add it as a link in my repo. They click on it, they see it. So now, let's say first thing I need to do is, I need a small ticket, create, I want to Create folders for projects, for project. As you know, I have folders of project, I might just start a plain project, right?

[00:04:38]
So, click here. I have the edit button right here. I'm edit as a ticket. I'm gonna create a developer ticket off of it, where I'm gonna be like is a blank, I want blank, right? So, as a developer, I need to add the folder structure where I'm going to put my my HTML, CSS, my JavaScript and my assets, right?

[00:05:46]
There you go. Now that I have edited it, I can assign to myself. And I am done. So now, I have this todo right here. I can fill this up with all the todos I need to create debates of my website. I could do like 10, 10 a week, could do that.

[00:06:10]
And then every week, I take it over here to in progress, go to these three ellipses, convert to issue, add the repo I want the issue to be converted to, and now I'm done, right? Now, that converted it to an issue. Once I get done with that work.

[00:06:34]
I can go to done but, I can now go to the issue, here is the issue, right? Now, I can sit here, I have the status of it is done, a sign right there, labels nothing yet. It was a good first issue, I guess, for me. Completed, and then I'm gonna close with the comment, now closes issue, right?

[00:07:07]
And that's gonna be a part of my workflow, using my portfolio. I'm a project in my new portfolio that I'll be able to also put in my repo and showcase it away. What does this look like? Well, if you wanna see more of my statuses on my portfolio, click this link here and have like, okay, that's cool.

[00:07:27]
And they're like, wow, this person's knocked out like 40 tickets on their portfolio, and they've been continuously doing that work, and that's how you build trust, right? Especially when you have projects that you work in a silo, like type of environment where you can't showcase all your work, but cuz you have to have a portfolio.

[00:07:49]
Boss can't say you have to have portfolio, and this is a great way when you want to play with new technologies and stuff like that, you build these tickets out on this project board, and then from the project board you start moving in over, creating the issues, doing the work, moving it over, closing the issues, and you kind of like say you create this paper trail of your work

[00:08:12]
>> As a person online who has a project that he's done a lot of work on, on the client and he's proud of it, but it's not live. There's instructions for spinning it up locally, but it's not live out there yet, so
>> I think his next step after this course should be to make it live, you want that tangibility of this is live, right?

[00:08:39]
That's what you want. If you're trying to get a job, having a live projects is the best way to do it, right? Projects, products, things that people can use is the best, my friend Ken Wheeler, he comes from a non-technical background, right? He created slick slider, which was a JQuery slider that helped pick carousel stuff.

[00:09:08]
That was his first project. To him, it was a simple project, but it changed the tech world. Everybody was having the same problem. He made something that solved that problem. And that was his big claim to fame in tech, was like, I created slick carousel. And I was like, yo, that's super cool.

[00:09:31]
I met him because of that, that's what you wanna do, things that people can use, they are tangible. That is good especially if you're coming from a non-traditional path, a non-computer science path, that is the stuff that's going to make people take the chance, take the risk on you.

[00:09:50]
>> Yeah I echo that sentiment, actually finishing a project and deploying it. People think they're further along a lot of times, and it's always the last 10% of a project that's 90% of the work. So, if you think it's far along, it's probably less far along than you actually think it is.

[00:10:06]
To ship something is much much more difficult than you would think, and a lot of times when I'm interviewing, I want to know that this person has not just worked on a project. They've not just put their hands on it, but they've actually shipped something, because that is what turns,

[00:10:23]
>> That's very funny, cuz I have a rule. I tell people, my troops, I'm like it's okay, you're not even a real programmer until you've shipped something, then broken it, [LAUGH] and then brought it back to life, that's when you're a real programmer.
>> So, what if it's like a command line interface tool?

[00:10:46]
>> CLI?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, first, you can make it as a node package. So, things like fig io, I do.
>> I made something for a friend who was running a game, and
>> Yeah, or do you have demo video of it.
>> No.
>> Minimum get that, and I would make it into a package.

[00:11:09]
So that way, there's somewhere live where they can pull it. It isn't on a repo, right? You'd be amazed how small projects like that turn impactful for you.