Building a development culture
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Transcript of Building a development culture
Building a development culture
Using social media tools for development collaboration
Why social media tools
Collaboration on software projects improves both quality and productivity
By their nature, software engineers, and QA tend to be less comfortable in collaborative environments
By providing tools to enhance collaboration, companies will help their bottom line
Social media tools assist technical users in overcoming comfort barriers
What makes a good development team?
The DISC model for personality profiles
The Skunkworks model for development team roles
DISC profiles for each role, while not set in stone, tend to be good predictors of performance
What makes a well rounded skunkworks style development team?
What is DISC
D – Decision making or Leader/Follower
I – Inspiration or the “Gift of gab” – social quotient
S – The “worker bee” factor – how much you can tolerate doing the same thing repetitively
C – Calculator mode – are you a detail person or a big picture person
How the scores work
Everyone has the same total score Scores are allocated over DISC with some
scores being positive, others negative There is NOTHING WRONG with a negative
score – everyone has usually 2 positive and 2 negative scores
Scores can be illustrated as a radar chart showing the score in each category, by role
A balanced team profileLee -
manager John - QA Joe - PMSamantha - Back
end DeveloperEloise - Design
engineerHelen - Customer
advocate
D 6 3 5 3 6 2
I 7 2 7 2 1 6
S 1 6 2 3 4 7
C 2 7 3 6 7 4
sum 16 18 17 14 18 19
Inspiration Perfectionist Persuader Objective Thinker Investigator Agent
A well balanced team
D
I
S
C 0
5
10
Lee - managerJohn - QAJoe - PMSamantha - Back end DeveloperEloise - Design engineerHelen - Customer advocate
Unbalanced team profile
Lee - manager
John - QA
Joe - PM
Samantha - Back end Developer
Eloise - Design engineer
Helen - Customer advocate
D 6 3 3 3 3 3
I 7 2 2 2 2 2
S 1 6 6 3 3 3
C 2 7 7 6 6 6
sum 16 18 18 14 14 14Inspiration
Perfectionist
Perfectionist
Objective Thinker
Objective Thinker
Objective Thinker
An unblanced team
D
I
S
C 0
5
10
Lee - managerJohn - QAJoe - PMSamantha - Back end DeveloperEloise - Design engineerHelen - Customer advocate
Good developer tendencies
Developers and QA people tend to be Objective thinkers, investigators and perfectionists –
All these personality types have low I scores – making socialization more difficult
This proves the “geek factor” to some extent – people who are good at software development tend not to be as facile with their social skills.
Programmers hiring programmers dilemma
When we hire programmers, we mostly hire for skills, not for personality profiles.
A well rounded team is frequently not the goal – people tend to hire others like themselves, without a plan in place otherwise
As a result programming teams – without outside intervention – tend to be less collaborative than other types of teams
How can social media tools help
Technology geeks love their toys The very act of creative problem solving
requires taking your mind off the problem from time to time
Interacting with other like-minded team members introduces new perspectives on perplexing problems
Development teams frequently find that interacting electronically is less distracting than face to face conversations
Teambuilding
Companies spend thousands on “organized” team building activities
Trust evolves not from an organized activity but from building personal relationships – if you care about what happens to someone else – you end up trusting them
Being able to rely on a team member to respond to a suggestion or provide an alternative makes for the best teams
Specific tools
Facebook/LinkedIn Use private groups and pages to
communicate among the team Allow team members to participate
without having to “friend” each other – but don’t discourage friending teammates
From an HR perspective have policies in place to control the interaction between superiors and their employees.
Specific tools
Wikis/Microsoft OneNote/Sharepoint/Microsoft Teams Create centralized repositories for notes,
project progress updates, etc. Open editing allows members to contribute
at their own level of comfort Create standards for reporting various types
of things Weekly standup meetings to review
blockages Use Wiki-like tools to track specs and scope
Specific tools
Instant messaging Yes I know that your employees frequently
sit side by side Yes I know it seems silly to provide them
with secure instant messaging OTOH – allows quick and easy exchange of
info, questions, and is semi-interrupt driven (IE you can respond when you have time)
Encourages interaction, overcoming the “cube boundaries”
Specific tools
Cloud or locally based shared document repositories Sharepoint, google docs, office365 – all
provide a way for documents to be shared among a number of users
Document sharing makes information accessible to all
Specific tools
Linked in groups Allow professionals to interact together
to solve problems Many programmers motivated by “geek
one-upmanship” - allowing them to crow about achievements improves morale
International interaction improves the caliber of your employees, and the reputation of your company.
Specific tools
Twitter/G+ - Short message tools allow “crowd-sourcing” answers Providing answers to questions online
improves your companies reputation and used properly can become a source of leads
A programmer is only as powerful as the network they can leverage when they need an answer
Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has invented it.
“old” tools
Search and forums Search makes forums so much more
useful Forums allow “niche” users to discuss
specific issues in an environment filled with only other niche users
Finding the answers to problems and helping debug thorny issues is especially effective if you can target the correct forum
Dangers and pitfalls
Social media time sink – how much is too much?
HR policy violations – when are you mixing work and home too much
Monitoring your reputation online Creating private workspaces and
keeping them private
OS-Cubed can help
Provide personality profile analysis Full 360 degree team assessment Help and advice on setting up
productivity and social tools Gather professionals in HR to assist
in policy Coaching, goal setting, agile
implementations
OS-Cubed contact info
www.os-cubed.com Lee Drake: [email protected]