Just Enough Structure

© Ben Thouret - @bthouret, 2016 (updated Aug 2018)

View Slide

Just enough structure
How can a small team with diverse backgrounds and skills
deliver non trivial software solutions?1
1 A short talk title with a lengthy and pompous tagline :)

View Slide

Software Is Eating The World
— MARC ANDREESSEN in 2011

View Slide

What does this mean for us?
• Us? small to medium software development teams
• Creating more and more value in "non-startup" businesses
• Managing reasonable profit and IT budgets
• Not necessarily startups with venture capital

View Slide

How can we still impact the
world?
• by Learning/Discovering new things
• by Improving our knowledge
• by Working with smart and relatable people
• by Building great products

View Slide

How do we achieve
this?

View Slide

Hi, I'm Ben
• Software Architect and Team Lead
• 17+ years professional IT experience
• 12+ years experience in Ruby/Rails
• Working for Intello based in Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu
• Team of 8 Development/Operations engineers
• 12-15 bilingual Call Centre agents (2 levels)
• Remote and locally based

View Slide

Intello
• 35 people overall (sales, customer support, installers,
management, ...)
• 880+ Properties in North America running our hardware and
software solutions
• 30,000+ wireless devices managed
• 1,000,000+ user sessions per month
• 10+ Rails and NodeJS Web Applications and APIs

View Slide

Developers are
knowledge workers

View Slide

What does it really mean?
• We have to be thinking on the Job
• Programmers, like Artists, take pride in the quality of their work
• We are not interchangeable, expandable, glorified typists
• Our complex work is done best while being in “the zone”
• Our manager’s function is not to make us work, but to make it
possible for us to work

View Slide

Attract great knowledge
workers
Let's face it, most of our companies are not Github or Shopify...
And the job market is very favorable to employees.
How can we still find the right
people...

View Slide

What kind of company are you?
Before thinking about hiring new recruits for the long term, especially
junior developers.
As a company recruiting, ask yourself:
1. Do we have experienced developers who are able to train
newcomers?
2. and/or, Can we give good amount of time to ramp up, but won't be
able to provide much mentoring?

View Slide

Onboarding recruits
for success
• Welcome pack
• Project Documentation, Code Styling
• Checklists
• Communication channels hierarchy
• Hierarchy
• Stress out that you will invest time, hard
work and curiosity will do the rest

View Slide

The first 3 months
Very important period for both parties:
• Shaping people for success while maintaining specificity and
integrity
• Making sure it's the right fit (both ways)
• When is finished, finished ?
• "Away From Keyboard"... Design first (Hammock Driven
Development), Document plan of action
• Ingrain the "Boy Scout Rule"

View Slide

An ongoing and never ending
adventure...
• Creativity under constraints
• Testing is NOT something you do at the end of the project a week
before it ships
• Programming doesn’t always go right

View Slide

Understanding Management
Managers have feelings too :) And we are supposed to "herd cats"
• We love reliable people - no surprises
• We have a budget to manage
• We attempt to review performance based on facts not "gut
feelings" (when most metrics can be gamed)
• We try to adapt to new generations

View Slide

Awesome list on how to be trusted/
respected by your management
• Look at your todo list every morning and every evening
• Be responsive
• No Surprises
• Know what you don't know
• Seek feedback all the time
• Stuck and don't know what question to ask... STOP everything and
raise the flag!

View Slide

Making sure we deliver
results
• Roadmap
• (no)Estimate
• Protect the flow
• Tight deadlines make us work faster not better. Quality is the first
thing that gets cut.

View Slide

Keeping everyone "happy"
You can make some people happy some times, not all people happy all
the time.
But cover the basics...
• Do we have the equipment and material to do the work right?
• Do I know what is expected of me at work?
• Do we encourage people's development?
• At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

View Slide

Tools we2 use and How
• Select a few, for what is important, but abuse them!
• Are we working in Information Technology or what!?
• Sometimes you need to scratch your own itch!
2 Software Development Team at Intello

View Slide

Hipchat
• Main tool for team and 1:1
communication
• General chatrooms (What's up today,
What shipped today, Food for thoughts)
• Project specific chatrooms
• Use mentions with intent: @here, @all,
@someone
• Presence status: available, away, do not
disturb with message

View Slide

Gitlab
• Obligatory tool for project
communication
• Currently managing 20 internal projects
(starred), monitoring another 10
• We use Issues for EVERYTHING!
• An Issue being worked on, always has a
Merge Request attached to it
• Every project has at least an Icebox
milestone
• And most project have time defined
milestones

View Slide

Shipit-CLI
• Private Ruby Gem installed on
everyone's workstation
• Takes care of the mundane git and gitlab
recurring tasks (branch, push, initial
commit, merge request...)
• $ shipit work {issue_id}
• When ready for code review: $ git
rebase -i {base_branch}

View Slide

Heartbeats
• Short questionnaire sent every evening
at 4PM EST
• Another short questionnaire sent every
morning before standup
• You can ask for help
• Virtual and compulsory standup every
working day at 9:30AM EST

View Slide

Weekly 1:1
• Scheduled 30mn 1:1 hangout with each
team member
• Go back previous week successes,
frustrations...
• Give recognition or praise for good work
• Give some actionable feedback for
improvement

View Slide

Playbook
• Helps maintaining a culture of change,
based on the Rule of Three

View Slide

Homework for developers
• Rate your manager gist: https:/
/gist.github.com/benichu/
b99a33b2eabf5aecf5c2
• Are you giving everything you have?
• Passion is overrated
• Good things can be painful to achieve

View Slide

Homework for managers
• Do you spend planned 1:1 time with your team every week?
• "Cargo Cult" management? Stop and pick and mix what's best for
you.
• Do you still code at least 20% of your time?
• In the last seven days, did you give recognition or praise for good
work?

View Slide

Some Resources
• Peopleware by Tom DeMarco
• Where do These People Get Their (Unoriginal) Ideas? by Joel Spolsky
• Valve’s New Employee Handbook
• Hammock Driven Development by Rich Hickey
• Goals are for Losers. Passion is Overrated. by Scott Adams
• Why Team Happiness can be the Worst Thing to Aim For by
Katherine Kirk

View Slide

Thank You!

View Slide

Just Enough Structure

Just Enough Structure

Benjamin Thouret

Other Decks in Technology

Featured

Transcript