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Rockstars & Consultants, who needs 'em? - Aloha Ruby Conf

Rockstars & Consultants, who needs 'em? - Aloha Ruby Conf

Sound familiar? The Rails ecosystem has grown in leaps and bounds, like the Java ecosystem did in its’ early days. So many languages, frameworks, plugins, engines, libraries and tools. So little time to deliver your new project.

It’s tempting to hire a rock star who knows absolutely everything to get your new project off the ground. You can also hire "consultants" to help fill in the holes in your team when taking your existing product to the next level. Or maybe just hire a whole bunch of people for cheap, and they’ll get the job done... But did you ever consider the untapped wealth of the team you already have?

In this session we’ll explore ways in which the average development team can explore, learn, teach, and grow, until the sum of members of the team is as great as any Consultant or Rockstar.

Lori M Olson

October 09, 2012
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  1. Rockstars &
    Consultants
    Who needs ‘em?
    Aloha Ruby Conference, Oct 8-9, 2012
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  2. Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Equal time for dogs, and dog lovers.

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  3. Lori M Olson
    @wndxlori
    http://wndx.posterous.com
    http://ror4real.com
    http://rails4ios.com
    Photo Credit: @etrever
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  4. So really...
    Who needs them?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  5. YOU do.
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Because there’s an awful lot of job postings looking for them...

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  6. Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    And there’s even a reality TV show about them.

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  7. Everyone does
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    But the simple fact is, at one time or another, pretty much everyone does

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  8. Why?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    The real question is why do we think we need a rockstar or a consultant? And why do we
    continue to need them?

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  9. What makes a
    rockstar?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Let’s start with breaking the question down.

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  10. They know
    *everything*
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  11. Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_brain.gif
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    But not just that. Rockstars are self-motivated learners. They learn new things, because they
    enjoy learning new things.

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  12. They’ve
    “done it all before”
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  13. Super productive
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    They’ll “get ‘er done fast”, and push that critical release out the door

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  14. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hsinho/345518426/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Because we all need a superhero every now and then, right?

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  15. They have no fear
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    The difficult we do immediately, the impossible could take a little longer.

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  16. What makes a
    consultant?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Actually, consultants tend to come in a couple of different flavors

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  17. *knows*
    one thing very, very
    well
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  18. Photo credit: http://www.ftcwebconsulting.com/consultants/consult-a-seo-expert/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    These would be your experts. They have deep knowledge of a critical piece of your
    technology stack.

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  19. know
    *hard* things
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Tuning that database. Scaling that app to 5 million users

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  20. Photo Credit: http://www.motivationalmemo.com/how-to-unveil-your-inner-genius/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Your team thinks a problem is really too hard, then you bring in the expert(s). Things that
    are hard to learn. Things that are difficult to understand.

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  21. Consultancies
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Consultants are frequently part of a group.

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  22. deep knowledge pool
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    And as a group, Consultancies have a vast pool of knowledge to call upon, from their
    colleagues.

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  23. http://thoughtworker.com/fun-thoughtworks
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    This is the kind of work Thoughtworks specializes in

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  24. Why not?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    So, if Rockstars & Consultants are so great, why would you not want to hire them?
    What, exactly, are the downsides?

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  25. Risks
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    There are some risks associated with each of these types

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  26. Boredom
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Self motivated learners... once there is nothing new to learn, they get bored, and they run
    away when the next opportunity to learn presents itself.

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  27. Photo Credit: I can haz Cheezburger
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Or worse, they don’t run away, and start...

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  28. Burnout
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Those rockstar ninjas know everything, do everything, work insane hours, burn out...

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  29. @ezmobius: So don't forget to get up
    from ur desk and get some exercise. 4
    years of 14 hour, red bull fueled days
    sitting in a chair can kill you!
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    I still remember hearing about Ezra (don’t make me say his last name). This was just last
    year/

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  30. the big payoff
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Some of your rockstars are just looking for what I like to call the illusion of the big payoff.

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  31. Fail to deliver promptly? they leave
    http://alltopstartups.com/2011/04/25/twelve-reasons-why-businesses-fail/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    If you don’t produce that, they’ll move on for another try.

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  32. Succeed in delivering? they leave
    http://media.photobucket.com/image/pile%20of%20money/xxandyshredxx/pile-of-money.png?o=6
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    You do? then they “retire”.
    So that’s the problem with the big payoff. It’s a lose-lose proposition for most companies.

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  33. Hit by a bus
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    This is often joked about, but

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  34. Looney Tunes: Fast & Furryous
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    It’s only funny when it’s not happening to YOU or YOUR COMPANY.

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  35. Prima Donna
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Official definition: someone who behaves in demanding, often temperamental, fashion
    revealing an inflated view of themselves, their talent, and their importance.
    What if they are hard to work with? They can be mono-focused and not open to new,
    alternative ideas.

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  36. Don’t come cheap
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Last but not least, the Rockstar who knows he/she is a Rockstar, will know their own worth.
    They will never come cheaply.

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  37. Wildly expensive
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Consultants on the other hand...

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  38. Buy In
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Consultants will lack knowledge of your business, your operational limits, your long term
    plans.

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  39. Bait & switch
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    The ole bait & switch.

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  40. http://kaufmanpost.com/2009/11/no-bait-and-switch-permitted-here/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    You hire them for their expertise, and they send in the B-team.
    Quality control becomes an issue

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  41. Culture Clash
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Culture clash. The Impedence Mismatch between your way of perceiving problems and
    solutions, and your consultants way of perceiving problems and solutions may be difficult to
    manage.

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  42. Focus
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    You may not have your consultant’s complete attention.

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  43. Photo credit: http://www.ou.edu/ouija/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    They may be juggling 2 or 3 projects at the same time.

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  44. Audits
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Most taxation agencies will look at you cross-eyed, if all you hire are consultants. They’ll
    watch you closely, to see if you are misclassifying your workers.

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  45. http://pictures.howbits.com/irs-auditor-meets-a-rabbi/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    The IRS or the CRA or whatever your local taxation agency is called... will come and get you.
    Because if your relationship with a consultant can be classified as a “personal services”
    contract, you and your consultant are both gonna have a bad time.

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  46. Knowledge walking
    out the door
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    All that knowledge that they came in with? Most of it walks out the door with them, when the
    contract ends, when the better opportunity arises, when the payoff happens.
    Knowledge walking out the door is an asset lost.

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  47. Alternatives?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    So what *are* your alternatives

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  48. Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    That’s Cinder, as a puppy. I dare you to not find that cute.

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  49. GROW your TEAM
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    How about you spend some time and grow your own team.
    Grow is such an interesting word. It could mean expand, but I prefer to think about it as
    organic growth. We’ll come back to it, and reflect on the many aspects of grow.

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  50. KNOW your team
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    In order to effectively grow your team, first you must know your team.
    single? workaholic? married? kids? pets? aging parents? illness or disability?

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  51. http://www.thetoyzone.com/2009/blocks-for-kids/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    These are never things to be discriminated about, just ... knowing enough about your people
    in order to make the most effective use of your team.
    http://www.thetoyzone.com/2009/blocks-for-kids/

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  52. KNOW your
    ecosystem
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  53. Identify core
    technologies
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    everything involved in the devops of your application or project development

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  54. Dev
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  55. Basics
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  56. Ruby
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    MRI or JRuby or Rubinius? Old projects on still lingering on 1.8 or new ones on 1.9?

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  57. Rails
    or Sinatra or...
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    AngularJS or Backbone.js or Ember.js

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  58. ERB
    or HAML
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  59. CSS
    or Sass
    or Less
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  60. JavaScript
    or CoffeeScript
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  61. Testing
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  62. MiniTest
    or Test::Unit
    or RSpec
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  63. Mocking framework
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Mocha, Flexmock, Factory Girl

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  64. Integration
    or Acceptance testing
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Cucumber, Capybara, Webrat

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  65. Client side testing
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Jasmine, BrowserMob, BrowserStack, Browserling, Sauce Labs

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  66. Toolset
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    OS, Editor(s), VCS, debuggers, profilers, CI
    Ok, that was a handful, now...

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  67. Ops
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  68. OS, DB
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Not just from the dev/user side, but the server configuration and customization side of
    things

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  69. Deploy
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Heroku
    or VPS
    Linux, Hardware, memory, RAID, firewalls, etc
    or Cloud
    EC2, S3
    Capistrano, SSH
    Apache, Nginx, IIS, Passenger, Unicorn, Load Balancer

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  70. Manage
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Backups, Monitoring, Analytics

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  71. HOW?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    How does any one person keep on top of all of that? Poorly, at best. What to do?
    There’s got to be an alternative...

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  72. http://www.flickr.com/photos/divadivadina/2726296562/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Because if you don’t, some day your rockstar

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  73. http://johnnynotsid.buzznet.com/user/journal/1333031/favorite-musician-quotes/
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    is gonna start looking like this.

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  74. Training
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    To go back to the organic/growth/plant analogy... Training your people is like using
    fertilizer.

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  75. TIME
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Hard cash money is one component to that fertilizer, but training is as much about time, as it
    is about money

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  76. Learn, absorb, try
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    If you fail to give your people the time, not only to learn, but to absorb that learning, and try
    it out for size, then your money is wasted.

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  77. Types of training
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Lets not forget, there are many types of learning. Remember how we were going to KNOW
    our TEAM? If you don’t know your team, you won’t know which is the most effective type of
    training to apply

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  78. Self Learning
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  79. web based
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  80. screencasts
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  81. read books
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  82. Formal
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  83. courses
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    like the Pragmatic Studios

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  84. certifications
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    yuck, I know, but there it is.

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  85. conferences
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Conferences are great learning experiences.

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  86. Sharing
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    If you spend money, as well as time, on all this training, make certain it’s shared. This
    multiplies the effect of all that training, across your team. Make sure that anyone taking
    training has the opportunity to pass that learning on to the team

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  87. lunch & learn
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  88. bar camp
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Back to “know your team”. If they are all married with kids, Bar Camp = bad idea. Lunch &
    Learn = good idea. Bunch of single workaholics? Bar Camp all the way.

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  89. But?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    What if they take all that training and leave?

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  90. Replacement costs
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Replacing an unhappy developer who walks away is almost always going to cost you more
    than doing what’s necessary to keep them. Not just in terms of finders fees, but time. Lots
    and lots of wasteful time.

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  91. Valued people, stay.
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    If you prove to people that they are valued, they will be more likely to stay, than those who
    think that they are just another warm body, down in the trenches, a replaceable cog in the
    machine.

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  92. Engage
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    So beyond Training, we have Engagement.
    Make certain that every single person on the team is engaged, and feels ownership of
    SOMETHING.
    So how do we do that?

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  93. Split Responsibilities
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Collective code ownership is great, but as I think I have amply demonstrated, not everyone
    can be an expert in every single piece of the puzzle.
    For each of your core technologies, you need to identify a primary and secondary point
    person

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  94. The Primary
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    The go-to person for that piece of the puzzle.

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  95. The Secondary
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Remember when we talked about that “hit by a bus” thing? How about vacations? Sick Leave,
    Mat leave?

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  96. Not enough
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Just declaring primary and secondary point person is not enough. You need more.

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  97. Par-ti-ci-pa-tion
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    I guess given that so many developers are introverts, it shouldn’t be surprising, but... you
    can’t just sit back, you need to step up and participate.
    If you want to step up, and BE the expert, then you’ll need to participate

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  98. Resources
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    There are hundreds/thousands of resources out on the web, USE THEM.

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  99. mailing lists
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  100. blogs
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  101. twitter
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  102. irc
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  103. forums
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  104. lurk
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  105. ask questions
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  106. answer questions
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  107. Stay on Top
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Everyone has to start somewhere. The point is to make the effort to stay on top of at least
    one thing

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  108. Know the Issues
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    What are the bugs? Incompatibilities? Stability issues?

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  109. Plan for Upgrades
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Unless your tool is stagnant and never changes (code smell! run away!), you’ll need to
    manage your updates

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  110. beta tests
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Participate. Don’t have to inflict on your team, but try it out, get an idea of what the impact
    will be. If you need a second opinion, that’s why you’ve got a secondary.

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  111. release candidates
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Then when release candidates come out, you will be well positioned to use them.

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  112. contribute
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    As Wes mentioned yesterday, and as my Public Service Announcement of the presentation, if
    it’s open source, then for gawd’s sake contribute back!

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  113. TIME
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Did I mention that this takes time?

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  114. Sustainable pace
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Factor all this learning, and growing, and developing expertise into your sustainable pace.

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  115. Stagnation
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Don’t let people sit back on their laurels, either. Some elements and projects will be more
    interesting than others. Make certain you rotate people around, and let them develop
    expertise in new areas. When you have primary and secondary experts, it’s a lot easier to do
    this, and you’ll keep people from getting stale, bored, and frustrated.

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  116. So, what does “GROW
    your TEAM” mean?
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  117. Training
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  118. Participation
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  119. Develop Expertise
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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  120. Training
    Participation
    Develop
    Expertise
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Looks to me like we’ve got one of those virtuous circles here.

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  121. Continuous
    Improvement!
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    Training, Participation, Developing Expertise... All these things combine into a continuous
    improvement process for your team.

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  122. GROW your TEAM
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    And that is what will GROW your TEAM into something better than all the Rockstars &
    Consultants out there.

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  123. Tuesday, 9 October, 12
    And that’s Finnegan, saying, that’s all folks, we’re done.

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  124. Thanks!
    Lori M Olson
    @wndxlori
    http://wndx.posterous.com
    http://ror4real.com
    http://rails4ios.com
    Tuesday, 9 October, 12

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