Training | CF7 Skins Team

Last Updated on November 17, 2023 by Neil Murray

Initial Trial
Initial Training
Screen Share Sessions

We are developing a system for training … We want each member of the CF7 Skins Team to ..

We’ve deliberately put a lot of effort into our Dev. Guidelines to try to make working on CF7 Skins easier for others – it’s one of our key focuses.

We add additional information frequently to these guidelines as we become aware of issues that need clarification.

Initial Trial #

To avoid or minimize the extra time, I think we should do something before his work and recording time.

For example:

We need to make sure he is understand at least 80% (in my opinion) of CF7 and CF7 Skins.
Before doing the work, he should make a to-do list with work steps for a BB issue, once approved by us, he can continue the works.
After his work, we can take a closer look based on the list he made, I think this will minimize the extra time.
Once his work is not following the list, we can stop the works.

We have allocated you relatively simple tasks, which should help you learn our existing code, while doing these tasks. But you will need to read & understand our existing code & extensive documentation as you tackle each new task. You need to put in the time & effort to learn by yourself. This is, I think, common in WordPress development.

Initial Training #

We’ve found you are unlikely to learn suitable React/WordPress development skills, from us, unless you consistently work at learning this new skill each & every week.

minimum of 8 hours each week during training (holidays, sickness excepted)
otherwise you just don’t get enough time to learn our code plus React etc.
majority of time done on Mon. – Wed
this gives other team members time to review & respond
we monitor this each week & end training if it is not fixable

Other details:

we make a considerable investment into your training
training 1 – 2 months (max)
review training progress each week (probably during #bb-issues meeting)
if progress suitable training continues
push your branch each day while you are in Training at this stage so we can review your code &follow your progress

One of our team members will generally do a Skype screen share session with you in the first week of your training to help you become familiar with how things are done here on the CF7 Skins Team.

Ask for a screen share session

If you ever feel that something is not clear to you, then you can usually ask for a screen share session, for that topic, with one of the team members.

You should go through the documentation for the topic ( if available ) before having a screen share session.

This way you will have some insights and you should be able to grasp things more easily when the team member explains.

If something is not clear to you … ask

Sometimes the team member explaining the issue will use some technical terms which you aren’t familiar with ( the term may seem obvious to team member ). Make sure you ask the team member to give you a brief explanation.

We encourage you to ask questions – even if they seem basic. If something is not clear and you don’t ask for more explanation, then it can defeat the purpose of the session and result in waste of your and team member’s time.

Steps

For this I think we should create stepping tasks.

Learn Contact Form 7 Skins and addons.
Learn and contribute to Development Guidelines.
How we write code, working with addons, using tools and reference to external sources.
Learn Git and Bitbucket.
We use Bitbucket platform to manage repository.
Read BitBucket issues.
Bitbucket issue can contains ideas, approaches taken to fix, comments, and commits. See each change made for each commit to understand better. We should be responsible for the issue allocated to us.
Join CF7 Skins Slack channels.
Learn and contribute to Gutenberg.
…..

Starting

I’ve allocated a couple of other issues that should help you to learn more about how we work with React within WordPress.
Allocate branch for each issue
Consider committing what you did on feature/line-spacing branch & discuss further with Sastra.
Dev. Guidelines – do something on this each week.
We don’t 100% understand Visual, but we read the code to help remembering how approaches taken.
Then, writing code properly, doc each approaches taken, add docs page, help us understand and remember it.

Review

You are unlikely to learn suitable React/WordPress development skills from us unless you are able to substantially & consistently increase the number of paid hours you work for CF7 Skins each week.

All three of us made a considerable investment into your training.

It was the first time we’ve helped an experienced WP Dev learn React based JS development within WordPress. We are pleased with the result but also keen to learn how do we can do this better next time.

I think it helps if you have few screenshare sessions initially and introduce all the addons in little depth and how all addons works together etc. Relying solely on documentation for a newcomer doesn’t clear things as much.

Supervision

more responsibility to check and help other assigned task.
full focus to the issue.
force to complete issue asap
Importantly he have 1-2 hour each day to have synchronous chat/talk

8 hours each week

The only possible issue I think is the ability to do a minimum of 8 hours each week (holidays, sickness excepted).

I’ve noticed during training that we don’t get value at less than 8 hrs per week. I think we need to insist next time on a minimum of 8 hrs per week during training. I also think we need to monitor this from week 1 & end training if it is not fixable.

I’d also like to limit the training period to 2-3 months max – should work with 8 hrs per week commitment.

NOTES

Ultimately where looking for people doing 20+ hours per week & spending 10% of their time contributing to Gutenberg.

2023-09-23 – Neil

@Stanly I see that you contacted @Sastra privately to ask for detailed instructions on how to tackle a task allocated to you. You need to not do that ever again – if you do you will be immediately terminated.

We are never going to give you the detailed instructions you are looking for in this case. We need a competent developer who can take our basic instructions & turn them into completed code for review by Sastra.

It does not make sense for Sastra & I to give you step by step instructions on how to do each task. We both have very limited time & the time taken to explain the task to you would be likely longer than the time needed for us to do the task

2023-09-23 – Neil

Neil Murray, 22/09/2023
Task Review : #314: Show Pro Templates & Styles ghosted in free version – Stanly (COMPLETE)
Date : 2023-09-23

Neil
Screenshots:

Show that at some point Stanly stopped making any progress on this task
I did not watch closely enough to see this
If I had noticed I would have stopped work on this task much earlier

Commits:

Also show that Stanly stopped making any progress on this task
Stanly asked questions which were answered
But real situation was Stanly was lost & had no idea how to tackle this relatively simple task
Sastra could have completed this task in less than 4 hours
Stanly spent 15 hours
Not viable for Sastra to spend 1 – 2 hours showing Stanly how to tackle this task
Sastra would have done this task in relatively simple way modifying existing code as necessary

General:

I’m concerned by the amount of time Sastra will loose in teaching Stanly to do his allocated tasks
Sastra only works 12 hours per week, even 1 hour is a significant loss of production
Need to see how Stanly goes on next tasks allocated to him
Tasks allocated should help Stanly learn our existing code

Screenshots: Sync\Team\Team Members\WordPress Plugin Developer\Hired\Mfou’ou Medjo Stanly\Hubstaff\

Sastra
Screenshots:

Struggled with HTML table instead of trying to make a grid/flex as shown in BB issue image.
Items shown in BB issue is displayed as grid that stretched to fit the container width, and go below if no longer fit, this hard to do with HTML table.

Commits:

Understands how to add new page and content section but this is not necessary
we only need to create a ribbon (main BB issue image) or an overlay with “Buy Pro” Ajith image.
I believe it only takes a bit PHP changes, and some CSS works.
Progress stopped when working with main content
Should spend more time for the main content instead of doing any outer CSS or HTML layout. It can be done later after the content.

General:

Need more understanding how WordPress HTML structure.
Need more understanding how CF7 works and what CF7 Skins does.
It is fair enough to spend 1-2 hour without recording while learning, to make sure we are working in the correct path during recording and making progress.
CF7 Skins Settings page and the Templates/Styles metabox should be a good example to start.

@Stanly please see if this detailed review helps you understand what we think went wrong & what we expect. We would like you to read this carefully ( we put a lot of time & effort into doing this) & make any comments you think appropriate.

2023-09-24 – Neil

Neil:

I think we both did not look closely enough at @Stanly daily screenshots & commits in this case.

If we had I think we would have seen the lack of progress, inappropriate use of HTML table, plus misunderstanding of & wrong approach to tackling task.

All of the above is now obvious. But we missed it due to our time restraints.

Of course when a capable developer joins our team we don’t need to spend this extra time.

In this case that extra time was necessary & if we had done that early we would have prevented a lot of wasted time. .

2023-09-27 – Sastra

Sastra:

I am agree we both didn’t have much time to look at new developer works with a detail view.

I also agree we don’t need to spent time for a capable new developer.