The obvious answer is producing code. The path from code to business value is an easy one to map out. I do see people wondering off that path regularly, but we know it's there and can usually find our way back. That's likely a topic for other posts.
A quick second in my responses...to myself...was 'making more developers' which I further refined to 'making other human beings better software developers'. IMHO, this is how we advance as a profession. And that, I think, is at the core of the matter. I would like to know that in the grand scheme my actions in this decade have contributed to a positive outcome for the generations of developers that follow.
On a soon to be related note, a few years ago I went to work for a great company as a consultant. The owner of my company has since beaten into my head the idea that if we do not raise our game beyond solid engineering we will never be able meet the growing demand for software. To his way of thinking, unleashing the creative and innovative mind of the human beings that write code is the only way forward. And I tend to agree.
At the intersection of these two ideas; developing human beings into happier, more productive software craftsman and providing an environment for creativity, is an interesting place. It leads to several changes in behavior. All of the sudden you have to get to know people on a different level before you hire them. You have to provide a physical environment that evokes more than efficiency. There's a whole lot more touchy, feely humanity involved. And that scares people because many of the usual categories and containers and even tactics we use with humans in business don't apply any more.
A few days ago I warned my management team to be ready for things on the client site to get weird. We are making some fairly massive changes there and I didn't want them to be surprised when the calls came from people who were confused. The same advice applies to all of us who find and serve software developers.
A few days ago I warned my management team to be ready for things on the client site to get weird. We are making some fairly massive changes there and I didn't want them to be surprised when the calls came from people who were confused. The same advice applies to all of us who find and serve software developers.
As coaches and leaders, be ready for things to get weird. Actually, make sure they get a little weird. Know that people can code, but also get know what makes them tick. Maybe you really do need better furniture, or team movie over lunch, or legos at your pairing station. Maybe an outlet like 'lightning talks' once a week covering important things like the superiority of music recorded on vinyl is precisely the thing that will send developers back to their IDEs ready to create code like a boss.
My hope is that if we start looking at the people we work with as a creative force and add that to their career offering we can advance the profession. If it is expected that we grow in our creative outlets as well as our technical tool chest we should unleash some pretty non-standard solutions to the really hard problems coming at us as business becomes more and more dependent on software. Put more simply I guess I wouldn't expect 'out of the box' answers from people I never let out of the box.
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