MenisMas' Blog

Recently I met the people and movement behind LinkyBrains and I have to say I feel very identified with what they say. After first weeks with LinkyBrains in my head some crazy or "LinkyBrainy" things have come to my mind and I would like to write down the first one (I hope not the last one).

I am a lover and a very active promoter of knowledge sharing both professionally and personally, I believe people sharing the knowledge contribute to continuous improve the world we live, it is a simple way to get more than one brain building solutions.

As part of my job I constantly think and apply exercises to get my team and myself sharing the knowledge, and we are getting good results in some the exercises we apply and not so good in others. If we would like to move the knowledge sharing to the next level, a possible a potential way would be sharing the knowledge between companies.

There are several ways this can be done, meetups run by different individuals working in different companies help to share the technologies used and how to apply them, but that's not really enough. If we could find a way where developers can work in a different office and see how others apply a technology to develop a solution. And it is not just technologies, it is about how to be organized, how other teams communicate, and so on.

Of course, there are some security and risks companies in the same sector sharing sensible information but it could be run by companies working in different sectors. I think it is time to remove all the barriers have been there such lot of years where software development companies don't talk and don't want to know about others.

​It was several years ago first time I read about cross training concept, I was back to practice running after few years stopped and no sport practicing in my life. I understood in that moment, some professional dedicated to sports practice other sport or sports as part of their training to improve their metrics.

I've been practicing in the people working with me and myself the concept in Software Development, and it is a fact Developers Cross Training improves developers skills. As the most basic example, if a developer understands how internally web server (IIS, JBoss, Tomcat, Apache or any other web server solution) will identify faster any bug or problem in their code as well as make better decisions to develop a feature in the current software.

Another good example I've seen in he last few years is closer to communications, a developer could be working for a period more closer to the customer, like being part of es features being presented to a customer, it will help developers to deliver a software closer to customer expectations.
I know this has been told in many places and it is part of popular methodologies, but until you don't practice for a period of time you don't see how good is the idea and how good result could be.

Here is where team rotations is a good tool to apply developers cross training concept, a developer could rotate to be a product owner assistant for a period of time or a product owner could rotate to a customer service role. It is not just the benefit to improve people skills as Cross Training improves in people what day by day work don't, and also, it helps developers and others to know and discover what they really watt for their professional careers.

Cada día que pasa palabras como Ágil, Scrum, Lean, Iteration, Sprints, .., se pronuncian más en entornos de desarrollo software, cada vez son palabras más familiares, cada vez hay más empresas que están acomodando o adaptando metodologías ágiles dentro de sus equipos al cargo de las soluciones software.

Tuve la oportunidad de conocer estos conceptos al comienzo de mi carrera profesional, desde el punto de vista del programador, y ya desde entonces me pareció un cambio drástico en lo aprendido previamente, pero tras lecturas sobre su teoría y su posterior puesta en práctica se iba consumando en mi interior una creencia hacia un cambio inmejorable y que sería claramente el futuro en la industria del software.

Desde hace unos meses tengo la oportunidad de poner en práctica el uso de metodologías ágiles en un pequeño equipo de desarrollo, pero desde el punto de vista de gestión. Es pronto para tomar conclusiones grandes, pero estos meses me han servido para ver que cada equipo es muy diferente,y cada equipo necesita sus propias herramientas para poner en práctica una metodología de desarrollo. Al principio, es muy importante una revisión constante para poder tunear herramientas, equipo y procesos para adaptarlos al entorno propio de trabajo, ningún equipo es igual y es muy importante tener la mente abierta para la adaptación constante.

En pocas palabras, hay que llevar el empirismo a su totalidad, trazar un proceso básico a seguir para el desarrollo, medir resultados para saber qué es necesario cambiar y proceder con los cambios de afinamiento. Con el paso del tiempo es preciso añadir al proceso básico nuevos pasos para la mejora del proceso de desarrollo y del propio equipo. Si un cambio provoca malos resultados es necesario deshacer el cambio o readaptarlo.

Pon en práctica tu proceso y adáptalo a aprtir de los resultados de forma continúa.