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.

Transcript

1. Rockstars & Consultants Who needs ‘em? Aloha Ruby Conference, Oct 8-9, 2012 Tuesday, 9 October, 12
2. Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Equal time for dogs, and dog lovers.
3. Lori M Olson @wndxlori http://wndx.posterous.com http://ror4real.com http://rails4ios.com Photo Credit: @etrever Tuesday, 9 October, 12
4. So really... Who needs them? Tuesday, 9 October, 12
5. YOU do. Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Because there’s an awful lot of job postings looking for them...
6. Tuesday, 9 October, 12 And there’s even a reality TV show about them.
7. Everyone does Tuesday, 9 October, 12 But the simple fact is, at one time or another, pretty much everyone does
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?
9. What makes a rockstar? Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Let’s start with breaking the question down.
10. They know *everything* Tuesday, 9 October, 12
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.
12. They’ve “done it all before” Tuesday, 9 October, 12
13. Super productive Tuesday, 9 October, 12 They’ll “get ‘er done fast”, and push that critical release out the door
14. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hsinho/345518426/ Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Because we all need a superhero every now and then, right?
15. They have no fear Tuesday, 9 October, 12 The difficult we do immediately, the impossible could take a little longer.
16. What makes a consultant? Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Actually, consultants tend to come in a couple of different flavors
17. *knows* one thing very, very well Tuesday, 9 October, 12
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.
19. know *hard* things Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Tuning that database. Scaling that app to 5 million users
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.
21. Consultancies Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Consultants are frequently part of a group.
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.
23. http://thoughtworker.com/fun-thoughtworks Tuesday, 9 October, 12 This is the kind of work Thoughtworks specializes in
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?
25. Risks Tuesday, 9 October, 12 There are some risks associated with each of these types
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.
27. Photo Credit: I can haz Cheezburger Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Or worse, they don’t run away, and start...
28. Burnout Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Those rockstar ninjas know everything, do everything, work insane hours, burn out...
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/
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.
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.
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.
33. Hit by a bus Tuesday, 9 October, 12 This is often joked about, but
34. Looney Tunes: Fast & Furryous Tuesday, 9 October, 12 It’s only funny when it’s not happening to YOU or YOUR COMPANY.
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.
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.
37. Wildly expensive Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Consultants on the other hand...
38. Buy In Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Consultants will lack knowledge of your business, your operational limits, your long term plans.
39. Bait & switch Tuesday, 9 October, 12 The ole bait & switch.
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
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.
42. Focus Tuesday, 9 October, 12 You may not have your consultant’s complete attention.
43. Photo credit: http://www.ou.edu/ouija/ Tuesday, 9 October, 12 They may be juggling 2 or 3 projects at the same time.
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.
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.
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.
47. Alternatives? Tuesday, 9 October, 12 So what *are* your alternatives
48. Tuesday, 9 October, 12 That’s Cinder, as a puppy. I dare you to not find that cute.
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.
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?
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/
52. KNOW your ecosystem Tuesday, 9 October, 12
53. Identify core technologies Tuesday, 9 October, 12 everything involved in the devops of your application or project development
54. Dev Tuesday, 9 October, 12
55. Basics Tuesday, 9 October, 12
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?
57. Rails or Sinatra or... Tuesday, 9 October, 12 AngularJS or Backbone.js or Ember.js
58. ERB or HAML Tuesday, 9 October, 12
59. CSS or Sass or Less Tuesday, 9 October, 12
60. JavaScript or CoffeeScript Tuesday, 9 October, 12
61. Testing Tuesday, 9 October, 12
62. MiniTest or Test::Unit or RSpec Tuesday, 9 October, 12
63. Mocking framework Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Mocha, Flexmock, Factory Girl
64. Integration or Acceptance testing Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Cucumber, Capybara, Webrat
65. Client side testing Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Jasmine, BrowserMob, BrowserStack, Browserling, Sauce Labs
66. Toolset Tuesday, 9 October, 12 OS, Editor(s), VCS, debuggers, profilers, CI Ok, that was a handful, now...
67. Ops Tuesday, 9 October, 12
68. OS, DB Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Not just from the dev/user side, but the server configuration and customization side of things
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
70. Manage Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Backups, Monitoring, Analytics
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...
72. http://www.flickr.com/photos/divadivadina/2726296562/ Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Because if you don’t, some day your rockstar
73. http://johnnynotsid.buzznet.com/user/journal/1333031/favorite-musician-quotes/ Tuesday, 9 October, 12 is gonna start looking like this.
74. Training Tuesday, 9 October, 12 To go back to the organic/growth/plant analogy... Training your people is like using fertilizer.
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
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.
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
78. Self Learning Tuesday, 9 October, 12
79. web based Tuesday, 9 October, 12
80. screencasts Tuesday, 9 October, 12
81. read books Tuesday, 9 October, 12
82. Formal Tuesday, 9 October, 12
83. courses Tuesday, 9 October, 12 like the Pragmatic Studios
84. certifications Tuesday, 9 October, 12 yuck, I know, but there it is.
85. conferences Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Conferences are great learning experiences.
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
87. lunch & learn Tuesday, 9 October, 12
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.
89. But? Tuesday, 9 October, 12 What if they take all that training and leave?
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.
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.
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?
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
94. The Primary Tuesday, 9 October, 12 The go-to person for that piece of the puzzle.
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?
96. Not enough Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Just declaring primary and secondary point person is not enough. You need more.
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
98. Resources Tuesday, 9 October, 12 There are hundreds/thousands of resources out on the web, USE THEM.
99. mailing lists Tuesday, 9 October, 12
100. blogs Tuesday, 9 October, 12
101. twitter Tuesday, 9 October, 12
102. irc Tuesday, 9 October, 12
103. forums Tuesday, 9 October, 12
104. lurk Tuesday, 9 October, 12
105. ask questions Tuesday, 9 October, 12
106. answer questions Tuesday, 9 October, 12
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
108. Know the Issues Tuesday, 9 October, 12 What are the bugs? Incompatibilities? Stability issues?
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
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.
111. release candidates Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Then when release candidates come out, you will be well positioned to use them.
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!
113. TIME Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Did I mention that this takes time?
114. Sustainable pace Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Factor all this learning, and growing, and developing expertise into your sustainable pace.
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.
116. So, what does “GROW your TEAM” mean? Tuesday, 9 October, 12
117. Training Tuesday, 9 October, 12
118. Participation Tuesday, 9 October, 12
119. Develop Expertise Tuesday, 9 October, 12
120. Training Participation Develop Expertise Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Looks to me like we’ve got one of those virtuous circles here.
121. Continuous Improvement! Tuesday, 9 October, 12 Training, Participation, Developing Expertise... All these things combine into a continuous improvement process for your team.
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.
123. Tuesday, 9 October, 12 And that’s Finnegan, saying, that’s all folks, we’re done.
124. Thanks! Lori M Olson @wndxlori http://wndx.posterous.com http://ror4real.com http://rails4ios.com Tuesday, 9 October, 12