Building a development culture

Using social media tools for development collaboration

Why social media tools

Collaboration on software projects improves both quality and productivity

By their nature, software engineers, and QA tend to be less comfortable in collaborative environments

By providing tools to enhance collaboration, companies will help their bottom line

Social media tools assist technical users in overcoming comfort barriers

What makes a good development team?

The DISC model for personality profiles

The Skunkworks model for development team roles

DISC profiles for each role, while not set in stone, tend to be good predictors of performance

What makes a well rounded skunkworks style development team?

What is DISC

D – Decision making or Leader/Follower

I – Inspiration or the “Gift of gab” – social quotient

S – The “worker bee” factor – how much you can tolerate doing the same thing repetitively

C – Calculator mode – are you a detail person or a big picture person

How the scores work

Everyone has the same total score Scores are allocated over DISC with some

scores being positive, others negative There is NOTHING WRONG with a negative

score – everyone has usually 2 positive and 2 negative scores

Scores can be illustrated as a radar chart showing the score in each category, by role

A balanced team profileLee -

manager John - QA Joe - PMSamantha - Back

end DeveloperEloise - Design

engineerHelen - Customer

advocate

D 6 3 5 3 6 2

I 7 2 7 2 1 6

S 1 6 2 3 4 7

C 2 7 3 6 7 4

sum 16 18 17 14 18 19

Inspiration Perfectionist Persuader Objective Thinker Investigator Agent

A well balanced team

D

I

S

C 0

5

10

Lee - managerJohn - QAJoe - PMSamantha - Back end DeveloperEloise - Design engineerHelen - Customer advocate

Unbalanced team profile

Lee - manager

John - QA

Joe - PM

Samantha - Back end Developer

Eloise - Design engineer

Helen - Customer advocate

D 6 3 3 3 3 3

I 7 2 2 2 2 2

S 1 6 6 3 3 3

C 2 7 7 6 6 6

sum 16 18 18 14 14 14Inspiration

Perfectionist

Perfectionist

Objective Thinker

Objective Thinker

Objective Thinker

An unblanced team

D

I

S

C 0

5

10

Lee - managerJohn - QAJoe - PMSamantha - Back end DeveloperEloise - Design engineerHelen - Customer advocate

Good developer tendencies

Developers and QA people tend to be Objective thinkers, investigators and perfectionists –

All these personality types have low I scores – making socialization more difficult

This proves the “geek factor” to some extent – people who are good at software development tend not to be as facile with their social skills.

Programmers hiring programmers dilemma

When we hire programmers, we mostly hire for skills, not for personality profiles.

A well rounded team is frequently not the goal – people tend to hire others like themselves, without a plan in place otherwise

As a result programming teams – without outside intervention – tend to be less collaborative than other types of teams

How can social media tools help

Technology geeks love their toys The very act of creative problem solving

requires taking your mind off the problem from time to time

Interacting with other like-minded team members introduces new perspectives on perplexing problems

Development teams frequently find that interacting electronically is less distracting than face to face conversations

Teambuilding

Companies spend thousands on “organized” team building activities

Trust evolves not from an organized activity but from building personal relationships – if you care about what happens to someone else – you end up trusting them

Being able to rely on a team member to respond to a suggestion or provide an alternative makes for the best teams

Specific tools

Facebook/LinkedIn Use private groups and pages to

communicate among the team Allow team members to participate

without having to “friend” each other – but don’t discourage friending teammates

From an HR perspective have policies in place to control the interaction between superiors and their employees.

Specific tools

Wikis/Microsoft OneNote/Sharepoint/Microsoft Teams Create centralized repositories for notes,

project progress updates, etc. Open editing allows members to contribute

at their own level of comfort Create standards for reporting various types

of things Weekly standup meetings to review

blockages Use Wiki-like tools to track specs and scope

Specific tools

Instant messaging Yes I know that your employees frequently

sit side by side Yes I know it seems silly to provide them

with secure instant messaging OTOH – allows quick and easy exchange of

info, questions, and is semi-interrupt driven (IE you can respond when you have time)

Encourages interaction, overcoming the “cube boundaries”

Specific tools

Cloud or locally based shared document repositories Sharepoint, google docs, office365 – all

provide a way for documents to be shared among a number of users

Document sharing makes information accessible to all

Specific tools

Linked in groups Allow professionals to interact together

to solve problems Many programmers motivated by “geek

one-upmanship” - allowing them to crow about achievements improves morale

International interaction improves the caliber of your employees, and the reputation of your company.

Specific tools

Twitter/G+ - Short message tools allow “crowd-sourcing” answers Providing answers to questions online

improves your companies reputation and used properly can become a source of leads

A programmer is only as powerful as the network they can leverage when they need an answer

Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has invented it.

“old” tools

Search and forums Search makes forums so much more

useful Forums allow “niche” users to discuss

specific issues in an environment filled with only other niche users

Finding the answers to problems and helping debug thorny issues is especially effective if you can target the correct forum

Dangers and pitfalls

Social media time sink – how much is too much?

HR policy violations – when are you mixing work and home too much

Monitoring your reputation online Creating private workspaces and

keeping them private

OS-Cubed can help

Provide personality profile analysis Full 360 degree team assessment Help and advice on setting up

productivity and social tools Gather professionals in HR to assist

in policy Coaching, goal setting, agile

implementations

OS-Cubed contact info

www.os-cubed.com Lee Drake: ldrake@os-cubed.com