Devs in the ‘ditch Jan 2013: Trainees and -ilities
Posted in Agile, Community Events, Devs in the 'ditch, Technical Academy on February 4th, 2013 by Chris O'Dell – Be the first to commentOn Thursday 31st Jan we held our first Devs in the ‘ditch event of 2013.
Paul Shannon convinced us that hiring a trainee is a beneficial action for almost all companies as well as the greater good of our profession. Using stats which highlight the huge imbalance between roles requiring greater than 2 years experience and those requiring less, he asks where these candidates are going to come from? Trainees can also come from diverse backgrounds, not necessarily computer science students but those with a demonstrable aptitude for it, or even from within other departments. This diversity is a valuable asset and also helps retain staff with domain knowledge. Paul then gave us a rundown of how we at 7digital are implementing our Technical Academy.
After a short break, where we took a few minutes to grab another beer and eat one of the tasty vegetable samosas or onion bhajis, Gus Power took to the stage armed only with a pen and a whiteboard. Gus gave us a quick history lesson of Agile and how it changed the focus from fixed time cost and features, with variable quality, to fixed time cost and quality with variable features. He stated that there are many ‘non-functional’ requirements missing from most specs as they are much harder to quantify. Gus has promised to write up his talk for people to read, which I hope he does because I realise that I am failing at effectively summarising it. There is a small discussion about it going on at the Meetup page.
Gus Power armed only with a pen and whiteboard