How to meet other craftsmen
This is not about speed dating but I had the luck to meet a craftsman during these holidays. He is not a software craftsman. He does not work with computers, but with construction and repairs of homes and apartments. He is a master mason.
During my stay in Spain, I had to interview and evaluate the proposals of three local constructions shops to almost rebuild from scratch an old apartment there.
I observed a bunch of similarities with the craftsmanship movement of our software industry. This actually helped me make a decision to pick the right person for the job. If I ever jump into freelancing, I would try to have all the attributes that made me pick this guy.
The first thing before starting a project this big, is to get a proposal. You tell them what you want to do, leave them the keys of the apartment, meet again in a couple of days to review their proposals.
All our proposals were a few pages long. They describe what needs to be done and the price for each of those items. Their language is sometimes technical. They describe the techniques and materials that they plan on using. So I had to learn a lot of new words and the whole process that goes into this “big refactoring” of the apartment.
After getting all the proposals, compared prices, interviewed again with all of them, made revisions to their original proposals, we chose our shop. Here is what helped us made that decision:
Referrals
A couple of friends and family had recent experience working with them. They were very happy with the results. They were even proud to show the work that they did for them and walked us through all the details.
Passion
When interviewing with him, it was obvious that he is passionate about his work. He does not only do it for a living. He enjoys what he does. He took the time to explain the techniques that he would use and why he would apply them.
Professional
He listened to us and provided advice, ideas and alternatives about what could be done. He was honest about what could be done within budget and what could increase the final price.
Portafolio
Even though we did not ask for it, he was the only one that took the time to show his current work. We visited houses that his team is currently building and enhancing. We were also able to see his past work through the referrals.
Price
He was not the cheapest or the more expensive option. He was also upfront that sometimes his team is slower than others. He takes the time to finish his job correctly.
Payments
A very agile method of payment. Him and his team will work for you for a week. At the end of the week, review their work and decide if you want to continue working with them. You can then pay weekly, every 2 weeks, or monthly. You decide how long is the iteration (he did not call it that, of course). There is no contract, only a handshake to continue to the next iteration.
The other 2 companies required a 30% up front followed by fixed payments on certain dates.
He also agreed to send me weekly pictures of the progress through email and I am going to ask him to have regular phone calls to talk about the project. I guess I will secretly call it ‘a standup call’ or something like that ;)
Of course, this made me wonder about ‘agile’. Why does it seems so easy for this 4 people construction shop to behave like the best ‘agile’ company I ever knew? They haven’t heard the term ‘agile’ and probably don’t care for it. They are craftsmen with a business model that makes sense and works for them.
Something I admire and hope to copy someday.
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” - Cavett Robert
My learnings from AgileTour 2009
94 people gathered for the first AgileTour stop in the suburbs of Philadelphia. A good turn out for a mini 4 hours conference! Ravi and I welcomed the attendees and gave a little intro about the conference and the speakers. After that, I spent most of my time in the Open Jam.
Agile assessments
We commented on the recent efforts to assess agility.
Bob Martin, Ron Jeffries, Chet Hendrickson, Brian Marick and Jim Shore are working on a scrum certified developer program.
But wait! Ken Schwaber and Microsoft are working on another scrum certified developer program.
Joshua Kerievsky started a mailing list to study more alternative assessments.
A big surprise for me was learning more about Ken Schwaber’s and Microsoft alliance. Their scrum developer certification is not language agnostic. I am not sure of the value of being a .NET scrum certified developer. It looks like they are matching practices like Continuous Integration or TDD to a specific Microsoft tool. I am not sure how this is valuable for the industry. As a side joke, I look forward to the MS pairing tool. That is, if pairing gets into their “approved list of practices”.
Certifications
We talked about the evilness of the scrum certification scheme and the false sense of thinking that when you are certified, there is no need for you to study more about the topic.
We tend to blame certifications but is it maybe an organization or people problem? If we look at certification as the minimum basic knowledge to perform a job, why assuming that basic is enough? Basic barely makes the cut.
Somebody made the point that Scrum is sold as a “silver bullet”, an all-in-1-box solution. Organizations or teams are not encouraged to look outside of scrum because they are told that scrum will solve all their needs.
I agree with that, but it does not matter what methodology you use if you (and your organization) aren’t continuously learning?
Forget scrum, look at the technical field. How many of us (programmers) learn a new language every year? Let me lower the bar: How many of us are somewhat comfortable in more than 1 programming language?
Since it seems impossible to avoid the birth of a scrum developer certification, I am embracing it. I hope that my company will jump all over it and mandates for all of us to become certified.
If it takes a piece of paper to make my life easier, I am all for it. Not having to argue about the benefits of TDD, pairing, frequent checkins everyday is a welcome change. I don’t expect a big change overnight, but at least, it will be a starting point.
Wrap up
I got a lot of energy out of this conference. It was nice to see old friends and make new ones. I look forward to what we can do next with Agile Philly. We have plenty of new ideas.
Right after the Open Jam session “Is scrum evil?” at Agile 2009, Ben Rady got me into thinking about my next set of stickers.
Simple instructions: fill in the blanks with a marker.
“Hello, my name is Sebastian and I have been scrum free for 2 years 7 months and 3 days”.
“Hello, my name is Sebastian and I have been scrum free for eva”.
Now, this will be cool on a t-shirt.
