Joshua Arnold

After the successful kickoff of a project, it’s often helpful to get a feel for how your team works together – rather than simply talking about it. While there are plenty of exercises you can use that focus on team building, I’ve often found it beneficial to use techniques that are specifically geared towards software development. I have several that I like to use but in this article, I’ll walk you through one of my favorites.

Before conducting any of these exercises, I strongly recommend having a kick off meeting and ensuring that the members of your team understand the roles that they will be playing.

Event-Domain-Model

This problem was specifically designed to utilize the paradigm of Test-Driven-Development. It’s a simple problem that is centered on security settings for Calendar Events. To read the problem in full detail, you can download it here.

I encourage you to change the problem and the process as needed to adequately fit your team but here are some steps that can help you get off on the right foot:

Step 0: Setting Up

You can rely on simply emailing files back and forth if you don’t have time to set up for this exercise. However, I would recommend setting up a simple source control repository to further expose your team to how they will be working with one another.

If your team does not consist of testing engineers, then identify one to two for the sake of the exercise.

Step 1: Start as a team

Begin by analyzing the problem as a team. Walk through the problem and assign one person to begin creating skeleton classes as they are identified.

Step 2: Make use of roles

Change the team’s seating arrangements to group certain members based on their roles. I find that teams of five are quite common so the team-lead (sometimes yourself) will oversee the exercise. The most common combination for the other members are:

• Paired testing engineers
• Paired developer and architect

The testing engineers then write tests against the code that was stubbed out in step one by reading through the requirements and clarifying with the team lead. Be careful to keep a consistent understanding of the requirements throughout the team during this exercise. It’s very easy to misunderstand the requirements as they have been designed to be ambiguous.

The developer and the architect then write the logic by filling in the methods stubbed out in step one. I find this pair to be particularly useful as the architect translates the requirements to code and guides the developer in creating the code that he/she has envisioned. This gives both the developer and the architect a good understanding of what they can expect from one another.

Make sure that everyone has committed their code.

Step 3: Regroup

This is the moment of truth. The goal here isn’t necessarily to have every single test pass the first time through, although there is something to be said about your team if they do! Instead, this is a great way to observe any inconsistencies in your understanding of the requirements, the planning that was involved, and the execution of that plan.

Emphasize to your team that failing tests does not mean that they have failed the exercise. In fact, having tests fail is a great opportunity for the team to work together to fix the problem. This helps illuminate the inconsistencies and potentially helps prevent them from happening in the future.

This is also a great time to do a quick code review and introduce any coding standards that the project requires. It’s one thing to throw a document containing these standards at your team and expect them to be followed, but it’s much more beneficial to walk through something that they’ve written and compare that to your expectations.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all had memorable group experiences. Some of them have undoubtedly been great while others were nothing short of ugly and unpleasant. Some of you have experienced the ever so popular “group think” or social loafing in some form, and others have been privileged enough to experience a well established community.

The transformation of a group of individuals to a community of learners is something I think everyone should experience. There comes a point within that transformation that the mindset of each individual shifts from “what can I take from this” to “what can I give”. It’s the most important part of the transformation and it’s the foundation of every learning community.

Why do I bring this up? In any project (unless of course you’re a one man team), you’re working with other individuals and you rely on each other to succeed. More often than not, you’re working with talented individuals that are constantly moving forward and climbing ranks. This motivation and passion can be harnessed to create some of the greatest teams you’ll ever be a part of.

The key to harnessing this power is to focus on team building from the very beginning and paying close attention to the dynamics of the group. More importantly, each member of the team should have a clear understanding of each other’s roles and strengths. These strengths can be combined with other strengths to complete tasks more efficiently. They can also be paired with weaknesses of others to grow the team.

This brings me to my main point: the important of a kickoff meeting. There are several things you can do to help create an environment that encourages collaboration and team learning. Here are the main ones:

Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your team

Depending on your work environment, you may have specific roles laid out for each member and/or roles that are required by policy. Whether you have these dictated to you, or you have your team help you create them, it’s important that each member understands the important of each role. More importantly, the members of your team should understand how each other’s strengths play an important part of their qualifications for that role.

Obviously you must take caution in discussing such information and depending on your work environment this may or may not be allowed. Nevertheless, it’s important that each member understands the importance of each role and how that role affects them.

Some people are very uncomfortable with explaining their weaknesses with other people. This is understandable but it’s important that as the leader, you’re well aware of them. You can use this information to pair them up with stronger team members on specific tasks.

Identify the hidden strengths of each member

I rarely encounter anyone that doesn’t have hidden talents that they can bring to the table. Some of these talents aren’t really applicable to the project at hand, but others can be invaluable. More importantly, since they don’t have the chance to apply these hidden skills on a daily basis their passion for doing so is even more invaluable.

It’s beneficial to the team to discuss these hidden talents or passions. You should make it your number one priority to find ways for your team to apply these whenever possible. Having the freedom to do more than their everyday tasks is an important piece in building a learning community.

Identify the goals of each member

Most likely the members of your team are a part of your project and their role on the project is described by their role in your company. In other words, they’re there because it’s their job to be and you’re going to have a hard time convincing them to go above and beyond without any form of incentives. It’s an understandable viewpoint but there is flexibility here that most leaders miss: the incentives don’t always have to be financial (not directly at least).

Work with your team to create goals that work within the confines of your budget and other external constraints. As the leader of any team, it’s your responsibility to keep the team’s best interest in mind – while following the instructions of anyone giving you orders of course. Try some of the following suggestions:

• Identify an area of weakness that a member of your team would like to strengthen
• Find areas of the project requirements that are flexible and may have room for innovation

Create opportunities for growth

Personal growth is a goal of every member of a learning community. By creating opportunities for the members of your team to grow their skills, acquire new ones, and refine others you create an environment that encourages this growth. Be mindful of your strategy for tolerating failure when assigning tasks that leverage a newly acquired skill.

Team building exercises are an excellent way to conclude any kickoff meeting. If you’re working in the software development industry, try some code-based exercises to establish the boundaries of roles within your team. It’s a great opportunity for your team to learn how to work with one another in a controlled environment and will give you an excellent start.

I’ve gone a while without truly sitting down to reflect. I’m a large supporter of the value found in introspection and I’ll be the first to advocate its importance – yet, somehow I still let myself go for long periods of time without doing it. I’m up nice and early on a Saturday and now I don’t really have an excuse not to take the time.

A lot has changed for me in the past couple of months or so. Two months ago I sat down and drafted a few goals that I promised myself I would make happen:

• Begin to truly define my career path
• Get into shape
• Strengthen my faith
• Strengthen my leadership skills

The past two months have been a journey of doing exactly that.

Defining my Career Path

I’m an avid supporter of Neumont (the university from which I graduated) and I began advocating to strengthen the relationship between my company and the school when I first started here. That’s not the only thing I’m constantly advocating for. Let me digress a little bit…

It’s funny. A lot of people know that I work with computers but not too many people actually know what it is that I do, ha ha. I specialize in software architecture, requirements gathering and analysis, information modeling, and software project management; just in case you were wondering .

Anyway, starting in August I began using the methodologies that I’ve seen work in all of my previous projects. I began shaping my career path and getting a good feel for where I stood within the company. I’ll tell you this much, I’ve been loving every minute of it since then.

It’s stressful at times, I won’t lie about that. One of my greatest weaknesses is that I have the tendency to make my projects my life. When you’re that adamant about the success of something, you’re bound to be ripping your hair out at some point. I began realizing that I really need something else to do with myself besides going home and working…

Getting into Shape

A little over a month ago, my roommate and I decided that we were going to get into shape. This wasn’t one of those “let’s go to the gym every once in a while” type of decisions. We showed up at a gym the next day and purchased monthly memberships and training sessions with a personal trainer. He promised us great results and assured us that we could expect to lose 8-10 lbs and 3-4% body fat every month for the next 3-4 months. I thought he was full of crap but decided that anything was better than nothing at this point.

We started with the diet. This has NOT been an easy feat, by any means. It was not your average cut in food consumption. It’s been brutal! We try our best to stick to it. We may deviate every once in a while, but we’ve been pretty good about it so far. Then there’s the workout…We’re at the gym an average of an hour and a half each day…six days a week. I went from going to the gym about twice a week for about 30 minutes each visit to THIS.

Four weeks later and our trainer was right. We’ve dropped a very significant amount of weight, we’re looking and feeling healthy, and well on our way to hit our goals by the holiday season.

Strengthening my Faith

My original goal was to strengthen my leadership skills. While I was still set on doing that, I realized that this was something I couldn’t do without first strengthening my faith. You see, my faith plays a key role in every single thing that I do – even though I may forget this fact every once in a while.

I began doing a lot of reading, the result of which can be found in one of my previous entries. I’ve read the book Blue Like Jazz at least twice now and I just cannot get enough of it. As I promised in that previous entry, I will be continuing a series of entries that explains everything more in detail.

Strengthening my faith isn’t something that comes easily for me (for anyone, really). This book addressed so many of my problems, complaints, and questions but I have to truly internalize it all before I can expect to move forward. I have changed a great deal in the past two months but I know I could be a lot farther along.

Strengthening my Leadership Skills

Like all of my other goals, this is one that I will be perpetually seeking to perfect. I’ve spent countless hours buried in reading. From re-reading Leadership and Self-Deception to re-assimilating every project-management book that I can my hands on, this is something that’s been a big priority for me.

I’ve always been pretty confident in my ability to manage a group of people and get a job done. In fact, I’ve rarely ever doubted that I could do so. Lately, however, I’ve been focusing on the process more than I have the end result. I’ve been focusing more on ensuring that I’m “out of the box,” if you will.

I’ve been busy, there’s certainly no denying that, and I’d like to think that I’ve changed a lot in the past few months. I’ve grown both intellectually and spirituality and I think I’ve matured a lot as well. I hope all is well with each of you.

Love to All,
Josh

Technorati Tags: 2008 adventures, career, growth, reflections, resolutions, self-learning

I recall a time when I had ambitions to be the person that had the final say in everything. I think we all have this dream at some point in our lives. “If only I were calling the shots, we wouldn’t be in this position.” I’m sure the majority of you can relate to this statement in some way.

Perhaps you’re the exception to the rule. You tend to make the right decisions without consulting anybody. Well, kudos to you. You’re among some ridiculously small percentage of people that are able to do so. If you’re like the rest of us, you’ve made some pretty bad decisions because you failed to consult the people that they would impact. You didn’t do it just once, either. Chances are it’s taken you several tries to get this right.

Decisions are often made by individuals that are disconnected from low-level operations. In a well orchestrated organization, the information required to make educated decisions is readily available. However, more often than not these decisions end up being made without any foresight into how they impact others in your organization. It’s almost like they’re made in some sort of black box.

As I progressed through my career and began creating my own black boxes, I quickly re-discovered the importance of a team mentality. Teams and hierarchies ultimately boil down to pay scale and organization charts but that doesn’t mean that you can’t operate with each other’s best interest in mind. At the end of the day, you are a team and you depend on each other, right?

Maybe it’s insecurity of their qualifications or just pure paranoia, but too many managers have this irrational fear that prevents them from giving team members any significant responsibilities. On more than one occasion, I’ve found it invaluable to train a member of my team that I trust as a representative and can consult with when making important decisions that impact the team. On other occasions, I consult the team as a whole. Don’t make the mistake of forgetting that people can be innovative and tend to have ideas for solving their day-to-day problems. If someone spends five hours a day doing the same repetitive task, chances are they have some ideas on how to be more efficient…without you dictating it to them.

My point is that titles may indicate where the decision is ultimately made, but they shouldn’t indicate the only people involved in making the decision.