Tag Archives: Work

Leaving IT behind

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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….

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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 :-)

Change

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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

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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.

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…….. 

Is change hard?

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I remember a comment one of my friends at university made of me “You cope with change”, when they made that comment I just brushed it aside and dismissed it. It came back into my mind recently when I was reading Managing Transitions by William Bridges. That statement about me may be true, but the important message in the book is that change in its self is not hard, it is the bit in the middle, what is termed in the book as the “Neutral Zone”

As an aside I found out there is a company in the States called “The Dominion”

Well back from Trekkie jokes, the Neutral Zone is the state where management and leaders need to acknowledge and recognize that not everyone is going to be thinking the same as them and need to bring everyone with them. One thing I have found that there are natural moaners who will complain about anything, these should not be ignored, but managed better – answers on a postcard.

At a personal level, I am currently in that Neutral Zone as I am starting down the road to taking on more management responsibilities. I shall blog more when I have more news.

But back to “You cope with change”, one thing I have found useful for coping is taking time out, finding out more information, basically trying to get the bigger picture.

So “Embrace Change”

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Reflections

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As I sit in my garden in the lovely sunshine after a great BBQ last night (yet another step closer to 30, which according to some of my colleagues is the start of the end) I am thinking back over the last month and a bit. A lot has happened, the company I work for has had a management buy out, I have joined a new project and people having been coming and going at work.

The rate of change at work has been quite fast for me personally, whilst preparing for a trade show I was helping on another product to get ready and happened to offer some pointed remarks about the quality of the product. Two weeks later I am doing a code review and then with a colleague re-engineering it and refactoring the layers in two week cycles.

To put it bluntly the code quality is rubbish, so bad that I and others have bust out in laughter when looking at the code. Case in point, lets use a string builder as we have some 50 strings to concatenate but heh lets just concatenate 50 strings, then append the final string to the string builder.

So I am reflecting on how I (and everyone else) can improve quality, or perhaps the real question is how do we (as an industry?) improve our professionalism.

I better stop there before I blow a gasket. 

:-)

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Ship It!

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This is a phase that would induce laughter in some circles at my work, but in fact it is the name of a great book. I would recommend that all tech. leads read it.

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