Onboarding - What the team needs to know and access

This is a guide to the Tech Department and how it works. It contains contact details, important links to documents we use and software that are useful.

General

Ground Rules

  • Arrive before 9:00 and ensure you are up to date on recruit activities and any announcements you may have for stand-up
  • Don’t be late for workshops - if you commit to doing a workshop ensure it happens and start on time.
  • Deep work days - Staff that need to are allowed to take work from home 1 day per week - Deep work is planned out one week in advance. Tech team members have access to sheet where they can either comment directly to the spreadsheet or they can send a slack on the tech team channel. ALSO on Deep work day, the work completed on the deepwork day should be visable and measurable. While on deepwork you will still be required to come online on Rocketchat and respond to messages occasionally. Find the schedule here
  • Your responsibilities are yours to handle - should you be unable to deal with one of them arrange someone to cover for you and ensure that it gets done.

Disciplinary Procedures and Guidelines

At Umuzi we have rules and regulations to adhere by and there are also disciplinary acts that come with those rules if they not followed accordingly. Read all about them here

What recruits need to know

Firstly, read through DEPARTMENT-PROCESSES: What You Need To Know (as a tech recruit)

Syllabus

Find the tech repo with all (or at least most) curriculum documents, assignments, processes and deadlines here: https://umuzi-org.github.io/tech-department/

Slack

Please check your slack messages first thing in the morning (before stand-up) and regularly throughout the day (at least 3 times per day).

Channels to join:

  • #tech-team - contains communication all management discussions for tech team
  • #deadlines - communications on deadline setting and changes
  • #surprise_and_invisible_work - reporting on and trying to track work that takes up time but is not widely known
  • #tech-assist - helping with tech problems
  • #umuzi_coders - all coders
  • #umuzi_data - all data scientists
  • #meetups-and-events - info about meetups etc that are happening
  • relevant cohort channels (e.g. c14-data, c13_data)

Personnel:

Pay, Leave, Medical Aid, Computers

Hloni Letuka

hloni.letuka@umuzi.org

Social Media and Communication

Sarah Lawson

sarah.lawson@umuzi.org

Leave Request Approval

Sheena OConnell

sheena.oconnell@umuzi.org

Regular meetings:

Daily stand ups with recruits at 9am.

Daily tech meeting / check-in with tech facilitators and managers at 4pm Monday to Thursday and 3pm Friday. Tech team daily meeting format:

  • Mondays: Review the prototyping we are currently implimenting (Findings will be useful for daily runnings and future prototyping).
  • Tuesdays: ad hoc
  • Wednesdays: ad hoc
  • Thursdays: Syllabus and workshop planning for the next two weeks.
  • Fridays: ad hoc

Processes for Umuzi tech managers when new staff join:

  • Get Umuzi email.
  • Add to Slack and WhatsApp
  • Add to Github staff team: https://github.com/orgs/Umuzi-org/teams/ and required repos
  • Add to Trello boards
  • Add to Datacamp (Data hires)
  • Go through recruit project submission, code review, contributing to the tech department repo and specific product contributions (as relevant)

Cohort Leaders:

  • A cohort leader is the junior staff member that is put in charge of a specific cohort, you can find the allocations and responsibilities: here

Mentorship

Here’s what you have to know about the role of a Mentor, what is expected from both you and your Mentees: WORKSHOPS: How To Be A Great Mentor

Code review:

General process here

Code submission form to get the link to recruit submissions

Code review form to complete

More info on what to look for in code review

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