How to Work with Developers

A (completely unbiased) perspective on how to work effectively with developers - as told by me, a developer.

The goal of this talk is to demystify the weird, wild ways of your developer co-workers, covering topics like:
- Why do we spend all day hiding behind a wall of monitors and headphones?
- Why do we love Github so much?
- What the heck is an API, anyway?

We'll cover a useful set of tools and strategies for understanding programming lingo, translating "developer-speak", and dismantling common stereotypes/misconceptions.

Additional resources:

1.​ ​Krzysztof Rakowski - How To Communicate Effectively In IT Projects (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/06/communicating-effectively-in-projects/)

2. Julie Zhuo - How to Work with Engineers (https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/how-to-work-with-engineers-a3163ff1eced)

3. Nicholas Zakas - The care and feeding of software engineers (https://www.nczonline.net/blog/2012/06/12/the-care-and-feeding-of-software-engineers-or-why-engineers-are-grumpy/)

4. Cliff Gilley - How to Work Effectively With Engineers (https://community.uservoice.com/blog/work-effectively-engineers/)

5. June Cohen - How to Work with Engineers on a Web Development Project (http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=99803)

6. Stella Garber - 5 Best Practices for Working with Developers (https://www.forbes.com/sites/stellafayman/2013/03/14/5-best-practices-for-working-with-developers/#5274f3153ef1)

​7. ​Ron Lichty - How to Get Your Development Team to Love You (http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2016/04/product-owners-how-to-get-your-development-team-to-love-you/)

​8​. Laura Klein - Building Happy Product Teams like Heist Teams (http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2016/07/building-happy-product-teams-like-heist-teams-laura-klein/)

​9​. Ryan Hughes - Bridging the Gap between Designers and Developers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mweTM1hsn84)

​10​. Salesforce Case Study - How Admins And Developers Can Collaborate (https://www.salesforce.com/video/296975/)

Transcript

1. How to Work with Developers A developer’s perspective Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com
2. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com
3. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Developers: They’re Just Like Us
4. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Developers: They’re Just Like Us or are they?
5. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com
6. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com
7. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Much success So joy Such business Very smiles Wow Super yes
8. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Bridging the Divide
9. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Vocabulary
10. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Developer Programmer Engineer
11. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Developer Programmer Engineer PEOPLE WHO WRITE CODE
12. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Feature Development
13. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Stories / Tickets
14. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com The “Stack”
15. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com The “Stack” Much simple So nbd Such easy Very no problem Wow
16. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Backend vs. Frontend vs. Full Stack HTML CSS Javascript Ruby Python PHP C# Java Javascript (!!)
17. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com API
18. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com :shipit:
19. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com :ship: :it:
20. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Misconceptions
21. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com "Engineers... do not like speaking with people. Coding all day is good fun, talking with people is torture." [1]
22. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Choose the appropriate channel - Emergency? Tap on shoulder. - Urgent? Synchronous channel (ex. DM) - General? Asynchronous channel (ex. email) Chain of command - Feature request? Product manager. - Technical issue? CTO / Dir. of Engineering
23. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com When you ask for something from an engineer, don't get too detailed. They're the experts, so let them decide how to do it.
24. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Be as clear and precise as possible - Don’t make assumptions - Eliminate guesswork - Put all your cards on the table Detail requirements, not implementation - Define the desired outcome(s), not the means - Set priorities
25. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Engineers love details and hate meetings, so don’t bring them into a project until you’ve mapped everything out completely in advance.
26. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Bring developers in early - Better context leads to better results - More accurate estimates - Better buy-in / investment in project Seriously, bring developers in early. - Avoid all the headaches
27. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Exercises
28. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Project Manager: How’s the password reset feature going? Developer: I started looking into the Postmark API and installed their client library, but I started running into some issues in my development environment because of an outdated library we’re using for image handling. ??? < />
29. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Marketing manager to developer: Can you please build us something to address the sign-up conversion rate by the end of the day? ??? < />
30. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com CEO: Ok, but what about the landing page update? Developer: I just used a really cool algorithm to guess similar words using something called “Levenshtein distance”. The data consistency problem should be fixed by EOD. ??? < />
31. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com ??? < /> Developer to product manager: I’m working on the search feature and noticed that some of these filtering options don’t make sense together. What if we did it like this instead?
32. Takeways: Things You Can Do Right Away for Great Good Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com
33. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com 1. Take an engineer out for coffee :)
34. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com 1. Take an engineer out for coffee :) 2. Attend open engineering events (demos, retros, code talks)
35. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com 1. Take an engineer out for coffee :) 2. Attend open engineering events (demos, retros, code talks) 3. Get into the product
36. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Thank you!
37. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Questions?
38. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Resources: Articles 1. Krzysztof Rakowski - How To Communicate Effectively In IT Projects 2. Julie Zhuo - How to Work with Engineers 3. Nicholas Zakas - The care and feeding of software engineers 4. Cliff Gilley - How to Work Effectively With Engineers 5. June Cohen - How to Work with Engineers on a Web Development Project 6. Stella Garber - 5 Best Practices for Working with Developers
39. Kate Travers | kate@flatironschool.com Resources: Videos 1. Ron Lichty - How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 2. Laura Klein - Building Happy Product Teams like Heist Teams 3. Ryan Hughes - Bridging the Gap between Designers and Developers 4. Salesforce Case Study - How Admins And Developers Can Collaborate