Let me tell you a story about one of the weirder software projects I've been on - and how trying to change the culture went wrong.
Early in my programming career I had a taste of success at a Fortune 500.
But I focused entirely on technology and basically had no soft skills.
So coming into a small company that wanted to grow their technology business seemed like it would be "easy".
Little did I know how simple decisions about the relationships I made (and didn't make) would lead to disaster.
There were also things outside my control, and I run into variations of these on every project to this day.
Whether you want to help a team be "more agile", maybe try and achieve DevOps, or just use the latest Javascript framework -
I hope this short story helps you avoid culture problems if you ever want to change your software development team.
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Top comments (5)
I'm not so good as you or other people here, and I watched your video, but want to share my small opinion about situations when development goes to the mess.
How to make a hell in the code/work/teams/ and fire everyone:
Ouch, sorry that sounds miserable. Maybe you can pick one of those things and see if there’d be a way to make it better?
I think maybe part of the problem is that your boss won't want to let go of any advantage they perceive they have.
The only option becomes leaving the team to go elsewhere, but that takes time, and so things like 8+ hour developer days become a norm and you're not able to do your best work.
Instead of being in the zone, working for 6 hours a day you'll maybe hit 3-4 with 5 hours of meetings and just asking someone X or Y because you're fatigued and cannot do your best work for > 6 hours per-day
I really liked the meta-point: "be agile when introducing agile practices" :)
Might have to tone it down a bit here, enthusiasm currently outstripping my natural stoicism..
Thanks Phil! Even the staunchest stoic should be permitted to cut loose from time to time 🤣. Cheers!