Notes from the February Meeting

8 views

Skip to first unread message

David Croley

unread,

Feb 21, 2016, 9:01:45 PM2/21/16

to Agile Austin Developer SIG

In case you missed it, the Dev SIG on 2/8 was titled “How to be a Successful Agile Developer”. We had a great discussion. Here are some notes I captured from the meeting.

We started with “Conflict Resolution”, which talked about how to handle this within a new development team. We mentioned several tips, including not trying to resolve the issue in the wider group, and talking with HR.

We next talked about Tools. This included Agile tools, such as Jira, Trello, Rally, etc. I mentioned this (http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/02/agile-management-tools) survey. We also talked about working agreements for teams, which level-set expectations. It was mentioned that you need to be sure that you understand your desired process before adopting a tool. We also discussed that Jira can be like a mirror, because it is so configurable, it can reflect good and bad process. “Tool Accumulation” was also mentioned as a concept (too many tools is a “bad smell”).

We next discussed “Barriers to Success”, with some discussion about what is meant by “success”. We talked about various learning resources such as Hackathons, Code Retreat. Getting out of the office to meet ups, etc. was mentioned. The problem of deciding where to focus or start was mentioned. The book Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler (https://pragprog.com/book/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer) was mentioned as being a great resource.

The final topic discussed was “Know more than development”. This includes soft skills and communication skills. It was stated that a successful developer should also know the business of his company and why it is developing the software it is.