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July 15, 2005
These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things
I've been reading the (completely) revised edition of Extreme Programming Explained today and came across the following statement under the "Sit Together" section in the chapter on Practices: "Tearing down the cubicle walls before the team is ready is counterproductive". Upon reading this, I immediately thought back to a previous project where, after a little reflection, I ranked tearing down cubicle walls as one of the most productive things I did as a padewan Iteration Manager. And to be perfectly honest, I really didn't give much thought about the team's reaction to my plans: "I'm sick of having to walk 20 paces to talk to the rest of the team a couple of times each hour!" was all the motivation I needed.
But I wanted to talk about the other things I remember proudly from time on that project and how trivial they seem in isolation. In no particular order:
- Tearing down cubicle walls separating the two parts of the team
- Rotating the Iteration Manager role throughout the entire team
- Using a Friday afternoon (after an Iteration Close) to run a RoboCode competition
- Using another Friday afternoon to run a refactor-a-thon on a particularly nasty piece of the codebase
- One particular TDD session with a local developer where he was really grokking TDD for the first time
And top on my list of biggest disappointments (from the same project):
- Even after bitching and complaining 'til the cows came home, never getting a proper on-site customer... until the week after I left :-(
- No managing to convince anyone that having two developers who were only 50% allocated to this project is so much worse than having a single 100% developer
Posted by Andy Marks at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2005
Moving On
Recently, my company has had the misfortune to lose two highly respected and experienced consultants. Both resigned within a month of each other, for largely different and perfectly understandable reasons. Given that (the local office of) our company has had a extremely low attrition rate until this point, these losses have been sorely felt by everyone within the company. And just as having someone close to you die often moves you to question your own mortality, so too does having collegues move on send a wave of uncertainty and introspection throughout the remaining employees... or at least it does with me.
During this time of relative flux in an otherwise highly stable employee base, it seems natural to question the motives of the dearly departed and ask hypothetical "is the grass greener?" type questions. Common during these times are feelings of joy for them, mixed with concern that their departure reflects upon the company itself, or that you might have done something/not done something that impacted their decision to leave.
Certainly the life of a software consultant is not suited to everyone; the inevitable travel, intractable clients and often dreary projects can all culminate to make other options seem infinitely better. Perhaps this facet of the IT world is one best suited to brief periods of exposure, rather than extended immersion? I often wonder at the people who have made their name in this industry for decades and how they've handled the pressures for so long...
So the best of luck to my two fallen former collegues - may your new paths bring you more satisfaction than your previous ones.
Posted by Andy Marks at 09:34 AM | Comments (4)