Why I love my job this year ;)

I want to start off by saying it's nice to have managers who are willing to try new things as long as they see the potential benefits.

Beginning this year we decided we would be very serial about our projects rather than try to multi-task on a bunch of different ones. This was because of this post ( http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/10/24/getting-reschooled-in-project-management-how-to-plan-a-project-with-no-multi-tasking/ ) Basically we swarm a project and work on it until it's done.

Because of this serial dev process we are doing a ton of paired programming. In fact we are doing quite a bit of tri-programming (not sure what to really call it). The results have been amazing! Everyone is learning the code bases of all the projects. We are delivering in shorter amounts of time so departments can start experiencing ROI on their project. Our code is just better. It is easier to maintain, easier to grasp, and we are building our own set of standards and templates as we determine what matches our way of doing things.

The one downside for the business is they need to learn to wait in line. This is where our awesome management comes to the rescue. They actually say, "You will have to wait." Our business is very cool about this and I think it's because they see the things we have released and are totally digging those projects. Waiting in line is worth it if you're going to be getting a freaking cool set of tools that will make your job easier.

If anyone has any questions on how we did this I'd be happy to share.

Paired Programming vs. Getting Input from a Co-Worker

So now that we have some experience in Ping Pong Pairing (PPP from now on), albeit limited, I find that while I'm working through some problem solving I'm also wishing I had another programmer to work along side. It's not good enough to get some co-workers opinion on the matter anymore, even though that's better than programming in a silo. When you are working together on the same code-base, you are both invested fully in the solution. You don't get half-thought-out, non-real-world psudo-solutions (man-I'm-using-a-lot-of-dashes). While doing PPP you are forced to understand the domain context and think through the code together. You are forced to think through the code and come up with a concrete solution together and I think this is a huge advantage verses the advantages or sometimes disadvantages to getting a co-workers opinion about your work.