Silver Stripe Blog

Pradeep has a really nice presentation on interviewing candidates. It focuses on interviewing testers, though many of the principles can extend beyond that.

One of the points that has always baffled me is how the candidate is never asked to actually do anything. Instead they are asked a whole bunch of meaningless questions. I’m constantly reminded of this quote from Peopleware:

Circus Manager: How long have you been juggling?
Candidate: Oh, about six years.

Manager: Can you handle three balls, four balls, and five balls?
Candidate: Yes, yes, and yes.

Manager: Do you work with flaming objects?
Candidate: Sure.

Manager: … knives, axes, open cigar boxes, floppy hats?
Candidate: I can juggle anything.

Manager: Do you have a line of funny patter that goes with your juggling?
Candidate: It’s hilarious.

Manager: Well, that sounds fine. I guess you’re hired.
Candidate: Umm … Don’t you want to see me juggle?

Manager: Gee, I never thought of that.

In my previous company we made candidates actually write some code. We would give them a simple program to write in half an hour and they could use a computer to code it. They had access to online help, so they could check up on syntax. And sitting in front of a computer allowed them to work in a natural environment. This process of selection worked out pretty well for us. I’ve always wondered why more companies didn’t do that. Any ideas?

If you have been even half alive in India over the past month you would definitely have seen the IPL. I think one thing that the IPL proved was the importance of the team and man-management. It’s not the rock stars that matter, but the team that plays best together. Throughout I was thinking about the agile philosophy of valuing the team over individuals. Check out this fantastic interview with Darren Berry, director of coaching at Rajasthan Royals where he talks about their management style:

http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/353445.html

Continue reading ‘The importance of the team and man-management’ »

One of the best posts I have seen in a while. Cory Fox on what matters more, people or process:

It’s a good question. I saw good code at places with crappy practices. And I saw crappy code at places with good practices.

But in almost all of the places, I saw code that was on par with the motivation of the teams in place. In other words, teams that were excited about what they were doing, and kept up with trends, etc, often had code they were proud of. Teams that liked their job, but basically were just there had code that worked and had issues, but they didn’t mind. And teams that were just in a crappy place had code that was crappy.

One of the more important aspects of general management is facilitating meetings. It’s rather surprising how boring most meetings are. Given the frequency of occurrence you would have thought that people would have gotten pretty good at it. But no, most meetings are dull, boring and go on for far too long.

The ability to have good meetings becomes even more important when doing agile software development, because there is a lot more emphasis on social interaction when compared to traditional processes. Indeed, one of the core skills of being a good Scrum Master, Coach or Project Manager in an agile setting is to be a good facilitator. Almost all agile processes have a meeting to plan the iteration (eg. Sprint Planning meeting in Scrum), a daily standup meeting and a closing iteration retrospective or reflection meeting. Key to the success of agile is the ability to keep these meetings short, interesting and productive and thats where the facilitation skill of the Scrum Master or Project Manager comes into the picture.

As a result, I’m always on the lookout for good, interesting articles and books on meeting facilitation. Here are some ideas, click the link name to go to the original article.

Continue reading ‘Meeting Facilitation for Agile Teams’ »

In an organisation you often hear about the “business side” and the “technical side.” The business side includes roles like management and business analysts, while the technical side includes development and testing. The terminology of the “business side” and “technology side” is the worst possible thing that can happen in a company because it deepens the divide between managers and developers and ends up creating an us vs them situation. [More about that here: Managers and developers: Are you two teams or one?]

As someone said in an email discussion, there is no “non-business” side. Everyone working in a company is on the business side in some form or the other. Developers are on the business side by developing products that help the business. Managers are on the business side too. Don’t get fooled into thinking that only a small group of people are on the business side. Everyone is on the business side — and if not everyone should be.

Does your company have a “non-business” side?