Moving from cowboy coding to agile development

Sunday, November 05, 2006

A New Beginning

The first couple of weeks in my new job have been really nice. The atmosphere is really relaxed, yet ambitious and supportive. Also the people have been nice, so I've settled in very well.

Agile methodologies have also found some fertile ground there, before and after my arrival. To my (pleasant) surprise, my second working day included a presentation about JUnit to everyone who was interested. There was also interest in going to the recent Agile Seminar. It was made clear that attending the 3-hour seminar would count as working hours. This was a really good sign, helping me to feel that the company wants to support its workers' learning. There were four or five of us who eventually attended the seminar.

I also had a talk with the colleague that gave the JUnit presentation and asked him to join the next Coding Dojo. Only one or two days later the next dojo invitation was announced, so the timing was perfect. We went there together and talked a little about giving an internal dojo session at our workplace later. I believe the TDD knowledge level is not sufficient yet for a full-blown randori, so we might start with a lecture-like approach.

I'm actually feeling really busy nowadays at work. Not because of the workload (which is actually really decent) but because I'm eager to participate in everything that helps us get our processes better.

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