✍🏽 Register
🎡 Morning orientation
Learning Objectives
Planning during the week
👣 Steps
If you haven’t done so already, choose someone (volunteer or trainee) to be the facilitator for this morning orientation block. Choose another to be the timekeeper.
🎙️ The Facilitator will:
- Assemble the entire group (all volunteers & all trainees) in a circle
- Briefly welcome everyone with an announcement, like this:
💬 “Morning everyone, Welcome to CYF {REGION}, this week we are working on {MODULE} {SPRINT} and we’re currently working on {SUMMARISE THE TOPICS OF THE WEEK}”
- Ask any newcomers to introduce themselves to the group, and welcome them.
- Now check: is it the start of a new module? Is it sprint 1? If so, read out the success criteria for the new module.
- Next go through the morning day plan only (typically on the curriculum website) - and check the following things:
Facilitator Checklist
- Check the number of volunteers you have for the morning
- Check someone is leading each session
- Describe how any new activities works for the group
- Decide how best to allocate trainees and volunteers for a given block - most blocks will make this clear
⏰ The Timekeeper will:
- Announce the start of an activity and how long it will take (check everyone is listening)
- Manage any whole class timers that are used in an activity
- Give people a 10-minute wrap-up warning before the end of an activity
- Announce the end of an activity and what happens next
🔗 Value/Prioritisation/Estimation workshop
Prioritisation & Estimation
Introduction to Prioritisation (20 mins)
Your objective in this section is to understand why prioritisation matters in software development.
1 minute: Individually, think of as many reasons as you can that prioritisation matters in software development.
4 minutes: Go around the group sharing these reasons.
Hint for volunteers
Make sure we’ve covered:
- Teams can’t build everything at once due to time, budget, and resource constraints.
- There are different ways we can prioritise the features, refer to pre-reading required for the class.
- Prioritisation frameworks like Value vs. Effort help focus on high-impact features.
Activity (15 mins): Form groups of about 3 and discuss following:
- 5 mins: Individually review the suggested features in chat app backlog (e.g., message reactions, scheduled messages, formatting, replies). Feel free to add your own suggestions too.
- 10 mins: Write responses for following questions and discuss within your group:
- How would you decide what to build first?
- What would your prioritisation methodology be based on?
- Which features do you think a software development team at WhatsApp prioritised in their first 6 months?
Value vs. Effort Matrix Explained (10 mins)
Hint for volunteers
Make sure we emphasise that the Value vs. Effort framework is one of the most commonly used frameworks for beginner level product development teams and cover below aspects of the Framework.
- Value: Benefits to users or business (e.g. user satisfaction, revenue).
- Effort: Time, complexity, and resources required.
- Quadrants:
| Low Value | High Value | |
|---|---|---|
| Low Effort | Maybes | Quick Wins |
| High Effort | Time Sink | Big Bets |
Example:
- Quick Win: Adding emoji reactions (high value, easy to implement).
- Time Sink: Custom animated avatars (low value, complex).
Group Exercise: Feature Prioritisation (40 mins)
Step 1: Review Features (5 mins)
In your groups of about 3, spend the next 5 mins shortlisting 8–10 features from your initial features list. Find some examples below:
- End-to-end encryption
- Message editing
- Group video calls
- User profile customisation
- Message search
- Chat history backup
- Read receipts
Step 2: Score Features (20 mins)
- 10 mins: Rate each feature’s value (1–5 scale) and effort (1–5 scale).
- 10 mins: Plot them on a matrix (use whiteboards or printed templates or Mural).
Hint for volunteers
Make sure all teams understand the matrix has value on one axis and effort on the other.
Use below guiding questions to rate the features’ value and effort:
- Value: How many users will benefit? Does it solve a core problem?
- Effort: How many developer hours would each feature take? Are there technical risks?
Step 3: Debate & Finalise Priorities (15 mins)
Hint for volunteers
Teams must agree on quadrant placements.
In your groups of about 3, discuss following:
- 4 min: Which 2–3 features would you build first? Why?
- 4 min: What features are overlapping? Why? How may that impact our choices?
- 4 min: Which features depend on other features development?
- 3 min: Which features will we likely never build?
Group Presentations & Discussion (15 mins)
5 mins presentation time per group: Select one person to present your decisions. Share your group’s matrix and top priorities.
Discussion points for presenters from each group:
- Did your team disagree on scoring? How did they resolve it?
- What assumptions did you make about users or technical constraints?
- Would you deprioritise a high-value feature if it’s too complex? Why?
Reflection & Takeaways (5 mins)
Popcorn around the class and share your key takeaways from this workshop.
Hint for volunteers
Ensure the below points are emphasised:
- Prioritisation forces trade-offs.
- You can’t build everything.
- Quick wins build momentum; time sinks must be avoided..
🫖 Morning Break
A quick break of fifteen minutes so we can all concentrate on the next piece of work.
🛗 Study Group
Learning Objectives
What are we doing now?
You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.
Use this time wisely
You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:
- work through the coursework
- ask questions and get unblocked
- give and receive code review
- work on your portfolio
- develop your own projects
🎲 Games, rules, logic, and strategy
We have some favourite games you can play if you are stuck.
- Traffic Jam: re-order the cars to unblock yourself
- Telephone: draw the words and write the pictures
- Set: a game of visual perception
- Mastermind: a game of deduction
- Sudoku: a game of logic
- Mancala: a game of strategy
🍽️ Community Lunch
Every Saturday we cook and eat together. We share our food and our stories. We learn about each other and the world. We build community.
This is everyone’s responsibility, so help with what is needed to make this happen, for example, organising the food, setting up the table, washing up, tidying up, etc. You can do something different every week. You don’t need to be constantly responsible for the same task.
🎤 Demo
At CYF we expect you to demo your work to the class. You must have many opportunities to practice how to clearly and simply explain your work to others. This is really important both for interviews and for getting promoted later on.
⏰ Timekeeper
The timekeeper will keep the groups on track.
Split randomly into groups of no more than 5 people. Each person will have 2 minutes to demo their work to the group. After the demo, the group will give feedback for 5 minutes. Then the next person will demo their work.
🧑🏼🎓 Trainees
1. Demo
You will demo your work to the group. You will have 2 minutes to explain what you did and why. It’s ok to show broken code or code that doesn’t work yet. Just make sure your demo is interesting.
2. Feedback
After the demo, the group will give you feedback for up to 5 minutes. It’s smart to suggest what kind of feedback you want by asking some “generative” questions. For example:
- I wasn’t sure if it makes sense to try X. What do you think?
- I liked the way I did X, but I know there are other approaches, what did you do?
- I found X really confusing, did anyone else have the same problem?
- I wasn’t sure if I explained what an X was very clearly, how could I have explained it better?
💡 Tips:
- Practice your demo before class.
- Keep it simple. Don’t try to show everything you did. Just show one interesting thing.
- Keep it short. Two minutes is enough.
- Explain what you did and why.
- Show your code.
- Ask for feedback.
🛗 Study Group
Learning Objectives
What are we doing now?
You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.
Use this time wisely
You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:
- work through the coursework
- ask questions and get unblocked
- give and receive code review
- work on your portfolio
- develop your own projects
🛎️ 0 PRs available. Open some pull requests! 🔗
🫖 Afternoon Break
Please feel comfortable and welcome to pray at this time if this is part of your religion.
If you are breastfeeding and would like a private space, please let us know.
🛗 Study Group
Learning Objectives
What are we doing now?
You’re going to use this time to work through coursework. Your cohort will collectively self-organise to work through the coursework together in your own way. Sort yourselves into groups that work for you.
Use this time wisely
You will have study time in almost every class day. Don’t waste it. Use it to:
- work through the coursework
- ask questions and get unblocked
- give and receive code review
- work on your portfolio
- develop your own projects
🔄 Retro: Start / Stop / Continue
🕹️Retro (20 minutes)
A retro is a chance to reflect. You can do this on RetroTool (create a free anonymous retro and share the link with the class) or on sticky notes on a wall.
- Set a timer for 5 minutes. There’s one on the RetroTool too.
- Write down as many things as you can think of that you’d like to start, stop, and continue doing next sprint.
- Write one point per note and keep it short.
- When the timer goes off, one person should set a timer for 1 minute and group the notes into themes.
- Next, set a timer for 2 minutes and all vote on the most important themes by adding a dot or a +1 to the note.
- Finally, set a timer for 8 minutes and all discuss the top three themes.