Tag Archives: Personal

New year, new starts

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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

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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 :-)

Taking responsibility

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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?

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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

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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.

A retrospective of 2007 and goals for 2008

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Well the year has been an interesting one, ups and downs, so in the style of agile development, I thought I would have a retrospective on the goals I set last year. To the goals….

  • Not to commit to so much
    • Yeah, right. I don’t think I managed this one, but hey.
  • Action emails/messages on the day they come in
    • managed to do this :-)
  • Basically become more organised
    • Started, but have a long way to go……

    So, some success. I am going to set some aims for myself this year, namely:

    1. Continue to become more organised.
    2. Practice the guitar
    3. Read more
    4. Spend more time with friends and family.

    So here is to an interesting 2008, and if you are reading this and want to meet up for a drink, drop me a email (I have lost my mobile phone)

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    Update

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    Over the past few months, since the beginning of September to be exact I have been an Agile team of one and a bit (myself and an apps guy when around). I have come to realise that I value working in a team, it seems just a lot easier to work with other people, I miss the opportunities to:

    • Bounce ideas around
    • Having my tests and code reviewed

    But in the past months have been exposed to new experiences namely interviewing and the processes that are around interviewing, it has been an eye opener to the other side. But, I have now got a new team member joining soon and looking forward to having someone to work with and expose to SCRUM, but this does mean that I am going to moving to a new desk with a white board :-)

    One thing that I have learnt in bringing new team members is that documentation or diagrams are great for communicating ideas across, but it is important to schedule time, time is something that I don’t usually have whilst at work, but I am lucky enough to have a week to prepare…….. 

    Sprint Terminated and another started

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    It has been an eventful week, based on a call to the customer (Sales in the US) the goal of the sprint has changed. So after much thought we terminated the current sprint and set up a three week sprint focusing on the immediate needs. The team I have is great, 2 devs, 1 tester, 1 designer and 1 apps, what could possibly go wrong.

    I have decided that the usual tool we use has not got what we need for the project so have fallen back to Excel with a basic task list.

    One of my colleagues has given me a mug promoting TDD, this has started a few conversation. The mug in action:

    I have had some interesting discussions this week and I am getting the impression that in about 6+ months time I am going to have to make decisions about where I what my career to go in terms of management, I never thought I would be going down this route. But fortunately at the moment we are focused at getting the product in a demo state. 

    Onto random stuff, it is amazing how facebook is seeming to be taking over peoples lives. It in my humble opinion is better than myspace as it models social networks much better. It fact I was at a friends house warming and when I next turned on the laptop I had a friend request from one of the guys I met there. Networking in action.

    Going back to the management train of thought, if I go down further down the management, what happens to the relationships I have built up with my colleagues? Can I be one of the gang, or do I become a social outcast? I appreciate that things would change, but then I think back to the byline on Ken Beck book about XP – Embrace Change. It is one of those things that I feel that I can only ask for advice, but I am the only one who can make the decision and the change.

    Updates

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    Is the passion waning, I don’t think so, I certain hope it isn’t, I just haven’t felt like blogging. Well as I alluded to in my last post we have finished the sprint.

    Things of note are that it is hard work when your team members are “pulled off” on to other projects, but as soon as that happened I went to the product owner to say “what is to be dropped”, it shows the beauty of Scrum.

    The next sprint is now underway – sprintf. We are preparing for a demo in the States and I have decided to play with the length of the sprint and increased it to 30days, rather than our usual 20. We now have a designer that I can use so the product may start to look “pretty”, if you know what I mean.

    Random thoughts:

    • My ugly mug is in a book (books website)
    • Facebook, will it last, and yes I’m on it

    And finally my washing machine now is here.