#DefragCon 2013 Notes: Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs
Sustainable Software Engineering Culture (Without The Ninjas) – Mike Gehard, Pivotal Labs
- Everyone wants predictability in an unpredictable world
- Sustainability over time is critical to becoming predictable
- Sustainable culture = (Transparency + Communication) * Discipline
- Transparency = honest and open, not secretive (harder is larger companies due to difficulty of communication)
- Communication = requires common system so that everyone understands
- Pivotal has Cloud Foundry, which is installed into enterprises and often requires agile process/XP consulting
- Standups – all hands and team
- Pair 8 hours a day
- Visible workload (using Pivotal Tracker)
- Nothing trapped in an email box
- Keep customers close
- Sitting next to them if possible, via Skype or other tools also works
- Ensure they are available to answer questions for developers
- Retrospective
- Tough discussions about what is working well, what isn’t working well
- This is a key to making an agile project successful
- “If you are doing retrospectives, you are not afraid to make decisions because you are only wrong until the next week’s retrospective”
- The result – willing to take more risks
- Discipline = orderly conduct as a result of training
- It doesn’t happen overnight – it takes effort and training
- The goal is to prevent running too fast and loose
- When things fall down, fall back to the process
- Pairing prevents wasting time on Twitter when not on a break (it shouldn’t be rigid)
- Hire for fit
- Don’t ask people to change dramatically. Find the people that work in a similar manner
- Keep your developers happy, as they are hard to find, expensive, and make better products resulting in happier customers