I have enjoyed a lot of ensemble / mob programming, aka teaming, over the years. As a diverse group, including people with different deep skills, backgrounds and experience, we learn faster, work smarter, and vastly reduce our cycle time. So, I was not surprised to have many takeaways from Agile New England’s virtual Software Teaming 2024 conference!
The conference Zoom was a warm, welcoming space. Woody Zuill and Nancy Van Schooenderwoert established a comfortable tone of safety and collaboration. We were all among friends, new and old, sharing experiences.
Training developers to be technical coaches
I took so many notes while watching Emily Bache‘s keynote, I could practically write the whole thing here. Instead, I will share a few highlights. And recommend that you check out her webinars, YouTube channel, book, and more. My favorite part of her message is that writing high quality, well-designed code makes our work lives better. It matters. She pointed out that the DORA Accelerate State of DevOps research shows that organizational success is tied to technical success. And technical success is tied to high quality code and people enjoying doing their best work.
Emily finds test-driven development (TDD) and the red-green-refactor model to be a path to quality coding
success. Despite the many benefits of TDD, it remains rare. (I’ve been on several teams practicing TDD, and can attest to how it enables teams to build quality in). She had a great visual of a groomed ski slope versus one with big moguls – learning TDD is like starting down the mogul run. She’s found that technical coaching is her best answer so far to helping people change the way they write code. Check out the links above to learn more about her Samman Method approach.
“Samman” means “together” in Swedish. It’s no surprise that working together in an ensemble is a great way to learn TDD and produce high-quality code. Emily has gathered metrics from teams she’s coached that back up the positive impact on team morale and skills. More coaches are needed – so she has created several training courses where developers can learn coaching skills so they can help their teams improve.
Ensembling to learn security testing
I had the honor of joining Lisi Hocke’s workshop to help with facilitation (though my help wasn’t really needed, and I would have joined it anyway!) The title was “Capture the Flag Together: Security for Everyone”. Lisi set up a great ensembling/teaming experience. She was our “hands” so that we could play “capture the flag” on Hack the Box and learn something about penetration testing.
We were a perfect-sized group to navigate through the challenges together. As the tasks took us through
using old-school tools like telnet and ftp, we older participants realized that our knowledge from the 80s and 90s is still relevant! One important takeaway was the strict need to learn and practice these hacking skills on a safe, private environment.
As always when I’m part of an ensemble, I felt the energy as we sparked ideas in each other, felt safe to suggest ideas, and celebrate success together. I would only have gotten through a handful of steps on my own (believe me, I have tried other modules on this site solo, and struggled mightily even though I do know the skills they were teaching). I had so much fun!
Lisi inspires me with her continual learning journeys. It’s wonderful how she shares what she learns with excellent workshops like this one. Check out her site page for lots of resources on learning about security testing.
Gratitude
Many thanks to Nancy, Woody and all the organizers and volunteers at Agile New England who organized this global online event! I hope that someday this conference will happen in person again, too. Since I became a freelance consultant, I’ve missed getting to work in an ensemble every day. Events like this re-energize me and keep me going.
