Coaches can inadvertently encourage teams to cut corners and avoid investing in the long-term health of the product. By using a better metaphor and understanding of a codebase’s health you can become an advocate for sustainable software development and challenge your team to up their game. Early and frequent delivery of value is fully congruent with attention to technical excellence.
Software projects are people projects. Creating or sustaining mystery around the expertise of any part of a team only serves to harm communication and collaboration on the team. Instead, encourage collegiality and show interest in each team member’s work to break down barriers. Creating space for conversation about the code itself can be tremendous, and you don’t need to be afraid of reading it yourself.
Dane loved being a Scrum Master and Agile Coach but wanted to dive into the experience of working with code on a team. He went undercover and spent two years as a full-time Ruby & Javascript programmer. Since then he’s rotated through coding, managing, and coaching and wants to share what he’s learned.
Learning Outcomes:
- Sympathy for programmers and everyone on the development team
- Language and tools to use with programmers and on their behalf
- How to be an ally for the development team and encourage their attention to technical excellence
