Excolat in Pace

There’s a common idea which has been doing the rounds, ever since development (coding) first became a thing. We might sum it up as:

“Developers just want to develop in peace.”

As someone who spent more than a decade in the development trenches (and still does development today, occasionally), I can instantly relate to this issue. Indeed, focus is the key question. Any kind of interruption or distraction whilst reading or writing code can suddenly evaporate the evolving mental model of the inner workings of that code, a model built up painstakingly, with deep concentration, over twenty minutes or more. So three for four interruptions or distractions, however trivial, can wipe out an hour of otherwise productive effort. And that’s before we get to the question of frustration, the impact of frustration-induced stress on the individual, and the stress-related impairment of cognitive function more generally.

On the other hand, having developers separated from the folks that matter introduces other productivity-sapping dysfunctions, such as misunderstanding folks’ needs, building the wrong things, and reducing the joy of getting to see how the developers’ efforts make a difference to others.

Conundrum

So, how to ensure developers have the peace they need to focus intently on their coding efforts, whilst also ensuring they have sufficient interactions with the folks that matter – sufficient to ensure that needs are understood and the right solutions get built?

In the past, specialist intermediaries a.k.a. Business Analysts and Project Managers have served to address this conundrum. And solutions (including the role of specialists, and the workplace environment) have been imposed on developers without much consultation. Rarely have developers, or the folks that matter, been involved in finding a way forward together.

Personally, and in the context of self-managing teams in particular, I’m all for the teams and their customers (both internal and external) getting together and thrashing out a way forward. And then having regular check-ins to improve those ways of working together.

As an example, BDD (Behaviour-deriven development) is a current set of practices that offers one such way forward. Customers and suppliers sitting down regularly (as often as several times a day, for maybe twenty minutes at a time) and working through a User Story, Scenario, or Use Case, together.

And let’s not forget that the other folks involved, aside from the developers, also have their day jobs – jobs which require them to focus and spend time on things other than working with the developers.

How do you, your teams, and their folks that matter, propose to tackle this conundrum? How are you handling it at the
moment?

– Bob

Postscript

Another option that comes to mind is mob programming a.k.a. mobbing, particularly with the involvement of folks having in-depth domain knowledge (i.e. customers and users).