I had the sensation that not everyone in my mob appreciates from experience how special a workplace Hunter is, and today I was proven right!
As I mentioned yesterday, today we had a visitor to our mob in the afternoon - Shreya, a friend of mine from the Women in Tech Network for Arizona Alumni group (WITNAA) that I'm member of, stopped in to see what mob programming at Hunter was like! I don't know Shreya super well yet, but I do know two things about her: one, that she is super sweet and friendly, and two, that she is whip-smart! She jumped right into our mob this afternoon and contributed well!
She asked a lot of great questions about the process in the mob programming department here at Hunter. As I expected, the other members of my mob were extremely patient, clear with their explanations, and easy-going with our visitor. It was extra fun for me to add in additional context that I may have appreciated when I first started!
Near the end of her visit, we were just chatting about the history of mob programming at Hunter as well as the processes (or non-processes) that we use here. We compared and contrasted what mobbing looks like remotely versus how it was in-person. I shared an anecdote I had heard about how noisy mobbing was in person; my team-mate who had mobbed in-person agreed and expanded upon it. Shreya asked how we keep track of work and whether we use an Azure Devops board or otherwise - we pulled up our per-mob Kanban board as well as the high-level Kanban board for the whole team. She asked how we craft out our stories, whether we have a refinement session or not, who determines that; I aggressively pointed to myself while on mute, trying to eagerly express "we do! we get to do the vertical slicing ourselves!" while my teammates explained this further to her. I wasn't sure if they quite realized exactly what she was asking, considering her career background and frankly my own.
For the last couple minutes before Shreya left, I had to ask her a few questions about her experience in our industry - do you run Scrum and have sprints? how long are your team's refinement meetings? do you do a "scaled agile" sort of meta-planning, in addition to planning each sprint? While I believe firmly in the agile dream, I know that that's not the reality for the vast majority of software workers today, even at places with otherwise "modern" practices. I am always fascinated at the ways that corporate software shops do and don't apply agile practices, and do or don't achieve the spirit of agile in spite of/because of these practices. Asking these questions to Shreya gave me insight into how yet another software team operates, warts and all.
While we were chatting, one of my teammates volunteered some super interesting information that I had suspected since I first joined the mob - the majority of his work experience was at Hunter, doing these great practices like #NoEstimates and vertical slicing and TDD and honoring psychological safety. He freely admitted that some of the stuff Shreya and I were speaking about was something he had little understanding of, and no experience with himself!
After we thanked each other for the time and said good-bye, my mob hung around for another few minutes wrapping up discussions and talking about the afternoon. Naturally, I had to ask my mob more about that subject my teammate brought up - what other experiences have you had working in software, whether agile or no? The other two members of my mob agreed with the first, that the majority of their software industry experience has been at Hunter. I took the opportunity to explain some of the pain points of some allegedly agile practices - like running scrum, having up to two hours spent planning a sprint and agreeing on what to work on next. I spoke about practicing SAFe, what a PI Planning exercise can be like, all the overhead involved, and the questionable return-on-investment with that overhead (let alone the negative impact it has on software workers). Having been a begrudging SAFe practitioner for over 2 years has greatly impacted my view on what really works in the software industry, and my journey here started with being disillusioned with SAFe as a framework.
I wonder if we can improve the experience for software workers all over if we talk more about what our own experiences have been, and how those experiences do and don't align with our ideals. Could this be a session of lightning talks, just jabber away for 5 minutes about your process and what you do and don't like about it? Could this be a workshop, where attendees get to be introduced to some of these modern ideals like TDD and psychological safety? Would more folks want to create change in their own organizations if they realize that these ideals are actually attainable, and sustainable?
I may need to chat with Shreya to see if I can do something like this with her WITNAA group.
For now, more training! I'm at Open Agile SoCal tomorrow and the next day, so not much mobbing for the rest of the week. I plan to make one post about the conference, so perhaps no Adventures In Mob Programming until next week.