The last weeks/months were really interesting. I criticized two years of work. I analyzed two years of contacts with colleagues and chefs. I tried to make up the advantages and drawbacks of the methods and processes we used. I searched all the little things that made me mad, those daily tasks that I hated, why I hated them, why they were there, how we could have made it different and why we did not… I pretty much tried to sum up two years of work to prepare myself for the next round. And that was interesting… even if my best achievement was probably to convince my superior to start reading “A Game of Thrones”. Last time I checked he was done with the first book and eager to start with the second one.
The third week in my new job is only starting and I can say it already loud and clear: “oh what a fine feeling it is to be back working in the medical field”. I felt it before, also mentioned it once or twice to my relatives, but know I realize it fully: the work was great, some of my colleagues were simply fantastic and darn excellent… but the product itself did not interest me much… automatics was not that fun, definitely not “my thing”…
Two books helped me much with the transition: “Management for Dummies” which helped for the management/psychological side of it and “The Art of Agile Development” for a bit more technical management. I highly recommend the second one, that’s a great book (from O’Reilly of course), even if you’re not familiar with Agile Dev’ ; I found it way more interesting for its Agile Management side than its XP-Programming side actually.
Anyway, I stepped in my new role at a very interesting moment: my superior was away in Slovakia for one week and disappeared in Ireland for a few days right after. My mentor had work up to way above the head and my team had to produce a new design document for next Tuesday. So I had to understand a lot by myself, ask right and left for more explanation and prepare myself to be able to make the most of my mentor’s time whenever he had some for me.
The management did not start yet, it is the main goal for this week… and I’m looking forward to it! For the most curious of you, here is a picture of the machine I now work on.
Man… The name of the machine… Otherwise: Barney? Yep, software engineering, but avoid agile if the team is small (Software Engineering, Practitioners’ approach 7th Edition by R. Pressman)
Yeah they overdid it a little on this one… ^^
The size of the team plays, of course, a big role. Too big or too small and you can forget using Agile. We use a pseudo-agile-Scrum-like method here. 4 weeks increment, functionalities centered on user feedback… that’s the closest from Agile you can get with a team of our size (50 ).
Otherwise… yeah, Barney Stinson is back