The three things that make us great: culture, culture and culture

My last post was in response to George Dinwiddie's "What would you like your software developers to learn" question. Here is a follow-up exchange that I wanted to share.

George wrote back to me asking:

Are your developers learning more how to take a long-term view? What steps are you currently taking to help them learn? What steps do you think you should take, but aren't yet, for some reason?

The rest of this post is my answer.

I think that one of the key roles that manager/architect types need to play is that of strategist. As one of my senior developers put it recently: "I know about tactics, what I need is strategy." An ability to predict the outcome of various actions is, in my experience, an indispensable quality in those who are responsible for guiding the overall direction of a development effort.

Some developers care about learning how to do this and some don't. Not everybody on the team needs to be a superstar, and there is usually no shortage of trash to be taken out by those who want to do that (or who lack the chops to do much else). On the other hand, those developers that do want to grow should be encouraged and given the appropriate tools.

On my team, I have a pretty heterogenous group where about 30% of them are interested in learning this stuff. They come from a variety of backgrounds and so some are starting from further back than others. I find that a good strategy for winnowing the grain from the chaff is to offer some of the basic tenets to everybody and see who picks up on it.

We have a 1.5 hour workshop once a week where we go over various parts of our codebase, learn about new techniques, have different developers do presentations on code they have written or had to maintain, etc. Generally I follow up on those workshops with additional attention to those whose eyes do not glaze over when we start talking about certain things.

We also have a very strong team culture that encourages developers to watch each others' backs and make sure that the "social contract" we have all agreed to is upheld. Most of the questions that I listed in my initial answer are things that my guys and gals check each other on all the time. It's a bit of a game: who can find the mistake in the other person's work. This, of course, is all done in a spirit of cooperation and mutual acceptance of constructive criticism (critical components in any team).

I am fortunate to have the leeway to do pretty much whatever I want to improve the current performance of my team. In that respect, I rarely find that there are things I want to do but cannot. This is not the same in every environment, of course, but I select the companies I work for specifically keeping in mind the fact that the most successful companies are the ones that pick the right people, put them in the right place, and get out of the way while they do their job.

At the end of the day I would say that the single most important factor in turning competent developers into excellent ones is culture. I try to lead by example and I expect my seniors to do the same. Every senior on my team had the role and responsibilities long before they had the title. Every junior on my team is capable of training up new juniors (and even some more intermediate-level developers) to be effective within two iterations (four weeks). The culture on our team is one of constant improvement and the juniors frequently teach the seniors lessons (which the seniors take in stride). With the right culture, everything else just seems logical. Without it, you are constantly swimming against the current.