7 Side notes JAX London 2016

11th Oct – 16:45 to 17:35 Euphoria despite the Despair – (Re)discovering the joy of being a software engineer

Holly Cummins, IBM Bluemix Garage Method & Martijn Verburg, JClarity

This was possibly one of the most important sessions of the event.

The key component towards successful projects is not technology stack but rather happy developers.

• How to build a highly effective culture for software development.
  • All details in the BGM paper
• Killing or preventing fun culture:
  • Apply the SMART goals to motivate people. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bounded.
  • Inability to produce good software
  • **Waterfall development method is not fun.
    **

“Water-fall is not working!"

• • Developers have fun when writing new features. “Fun with the WHAT”
  • Testers have fun finding bugs, doing code reviews and working to improve the solution. “Fun with the HOW”
  • Happiness promotes career development, less sick days and more productivity.
    • Watching one video about cats, lego trains, … increases quality and productivity.
  • Important! Fun needs to be for the team, not only for me!
  • Coding is fun!
  • Meetings “sucks”
    • jClarity has metrics of 90% coding time
  • Promoting pair programming and more daily collaboration.
    • STOP DOING CODE REVIEWS! Or at least minimise the waste of time by learning the basics of code review “Devoxx: How to stop wasting your time and start performing useful code reviews by Maria Khalusova”
  • No estimates!
    • Estimation in hours is dead, in story points there is minimum benefits for the team productivity.
  • Let technical people make their own decisions.
    • Make people responsible.

That was all for this session. I hope it helps, please leave a comment if you would like to add something.

Posted by Marc Andreu Fernandez