The plane tickets have been bought, the jabs have been jabbed. This time next month I shall be in South Africa waiting for a connecting flight to Port Elizabeth, before getting a lift to Grahamstown. What will I be doing in South Africa? Well, I will be at the College of the Transfiguration until after Easter living in with the ordinands there. I am looking forward to the experience, I will have to do some some work, finishing essays I have started in addition to some work based on my time in South Africa. But the main aim for me is to experience life in South Africa for 2 months. This blog will be updated with my musings whilst out there.
The posts are back
Have finally recovered the posts, only taken 2 years… Did it as it was a problem to solve. Now the site is back in action will be posting about the big changes on the horizon this year.
Coming soon…..
Upgraded the blog and removed the older posts, they may come back once I get over kicking myself for not using the export functionality in WordPress
Leaving IT behind
by the end of this month I shall have made up my mind (I have pretty much have done) where I will be going to college to train to becoome a vicar within the Church of England.
This means that I will be leaving the world of IT behind for good, professionally that is. What have I learned from my time in IT.
- Working in small or big firms, it’s the people that matter
- Things are getting faster and more complex and end users want faster, simpler and with more functionality
- The web has become the lifeblood of most businesses
- Agile methods are worthwhile
- Change happens, live with it
- it has been a learning experience
So where to next…. whatever the college, it is three years of learning and formation….
New year, new starts
Why does a new year herald the dawn of new directions, new plans, new resolutions. At a very basic level not a lot has changed physically, the Earth is still moving round the Sun, there are still 24 hours in a day (give or take leap seconds). So the sun in is still rising and setting, but we have this need to start afresh as it is a new year.
To me it is a time to look back on the last year and reflect, and work out what went well, what could have been better and what went really badly, a retrospective as I would call it at work – or the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – as I write them up (I should really see the film)
One thing that I have realised is that I was hit by the curse of busyness, and in conjunction with my natural procrastination, some of the big plans and not so big plans did not happen.
So I am viewing this year as a start to living a more simple life, trying not to fill my time with watching too much TV, to having space for the worthwhile things in life, such as spending time with friends and family, getting out in the garden – stretching myself by reading. Saying no to doing things that I would like to do, but I know that there is someone better at it than me.
Teamwork and dragons
This Sunday I was @ a charity event – dragon boat racing @ Bewl water. Dragon racing is something that I haven’t done before, it is very good fun. It is not one for the loner, you need to be a team player, if you are not in sink (sorry couldn’t resit ) with one and another the most powerful people won’t help.
This is true of a product team if everyone hasn’t got the same goal/aims, or if the product team isn’t being directed – the team will produce something, but it won’t produce it’s best. I wasn’t expecting to learn anything whilst getting wet and sunburnt. But it proves that you can be wrong
Change
I recently got back from a retreat/pilgrimage to Rome. It was good to have a structure and space to focus and reflect on bigger issues than bugs and computers. Also it was good to have some sunshine
Back in wet (very wet) Bracknell I have been doing little bits at work as waiting for my team to finish their current work before embarking on a next three week sprint. So I have been using the space to work out how things could and should change from a development process at work – effectively I am starting out on the brown bag sessions – or the formation of them for work
It may be hard, but I believe that people need (and crave ?) change, otherwise how can we grow, I know I don’t have all the answers but the information is out they, thanks to all those who are giving to the community. Something that we should all aspire to.
Thoughts and best practices, anyone?
Taking responsibility
Since writing my last post, I have been involved in several sprints/projects (at work) and other projects (outside work), read a few booking on change, teams and leading – some are in progress
But one thing has struck me is that the key element for a successful project – is the fact that all team members (and/or project stakeholders) need to all take responsibility for the success of the project. I was explaining to some guys at work after I had conducted a retrospective that producing some new software that is “done” is not really a result if the team dynamics aren’t there.
That being said, I am not advocating good teams producing rubbish – though I doubt that a good team would allow that to happen - I am looking (and trying) to build teams that contain members that are willing and able to take responsibility for themselves and ultimately the whole team.
But I need to take responsibility for myself, over the past few months I have found it very easy to loose perspective and to procrastinate especially with to respect to getting thing organised and learning to say no.
What is a team?
Can it be made?, does it just happen?
At a basic level team is a collection of individuals working towards a common goal, but is that a realistic model for the world (and in my case the world of software development), it seems to be a bit more complicated than that. But isn’t anything when people are involved.
We have the dynamics of the personal interactions, did everyone get enough sleep, is a family member unwell, things that as a man “shouldn’t matter” but these little ripples have a huge impact on the team. We have people with different styles of working, is this healthy in a team, or should there be a team way, or at least the team agrees to a minimum standard of coding.
There are outside commercial pressures that mean your team suddenly has a member removed, what does that do to the team that has been impacted, but how should that message be communicated to the team of teams (the company) . This raises a point can a company be modelled as a team of teams, or is that to simplistic?
When you are a team leader (as I am) how do you learn the management side, and especially the balance between coding, leading and managing?
I believe that team can be made, but it takes time and the members have to want to be part of the team and the rest of the team want them.
Perhaps as I am part of Generation Y we are different in our outlook our management generation as we are motivated more by a good atmosphere, etc, things that are hard to measure, but when you get right, you know it is right.
Thoughts?
An interesting week for the wrong reasons
A colleague faints during a daily stand up, another colleague had a heart attack (he is only young). It puts life into perspective ….
What is life about, to rush around, to earn a crust …. or is there more to it. I better stop before getting too deep.