Here at Clearcode, we not only build state-of-the-art software for our clients, we also take great pride in building our team.
That means growing the number of talented individuals that work with us as well as growing their knowledge on a whole range of subjects.
The program for our 6th quarterly Beer and Bacon meetup was especially diverse – with two lightning talks, a presentation and, for the first time – a workshop – covering subjects such as project management, technical language and back-end development.
Here’s what it looked like….
How to eliminate waste
Workshop by Anna Nowakowska
In project management, cost is one of the most important factors considered. So is time. And very often the two of them go hand in hand. Which is why faster and cheaper almost always seems to be the way to go.
But what about waste? There can be a lot of it – and often of the unecessary kind.
Anna’s workshop set out to demonstrate this as well as focus the participants attention on how to eliminate it.
[img 9417 caption=”Making pizza – a fun way to explore the process of waste elimination in project management.” title=”pizza” align=”center” size=”full” alt=”beer and bacon agile waste management”]
She organized the group into teams – each of which was given the same task: to “bake” as much pizza as possible in the course of three minutes! After the first round, it became clear that most teams wasted a lot of materials.
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The second round of “production” brought out some interesting conclusions:
Polish-English-Ponglish: The rise of Ponglish in IT
Lightning talk by Michael Sweeney
Whether it’s communicating with clients, learning new technology or chatting with colleagues from overseas, English is the lingua-franca of the IT world. But not everyone finds it so easy to learn and even harder to use.
Mike gave a rundown of some of the hardest aspects of English for Polish native speakers including:
[img 9422 caption=”Words – and how to use them, explained by Mike.” title=”Mike BB” align=”center” size=”full” alt=”Words – and how to use them, explained by Mike.”]
After highlighting some of the more difficult points of Polish (declensions and pronunciation in particular), Mike outlined some of the ways Polish and English have merged, especially when it comes to vocabulary connected to IT.
The crowd favorites were – “hejt” and “fokusować się”.
Valuable and fun retrospective
Presentation by Grzegorz Łukaszewicz
Another element of successful project management is feedback and retrospection. At the same time, it is one of the more difficult aspects, especially when it comes to self-evaluation.
Grzegorz’s presentation focused on the benefits of retrospection, its role in team building and its value as a part of the agile development process.
Drawing on his own experience as team leader, he outlined a whole range of methods for implementing feedback and retrospection – including the famous “colored-post-it-note method.”
And despite the attitude of some who might feel that drawings, post-it notes and other “hands-on” methods are too childish for serious software projects, Grzegorz attempted to show these approaches actually serve not only to reflect on the work that was done on a project, but also build team spirit, communication and openness which can eventually lead to more effective work.
In conclusion, Grzegorz included several useful links with ideas for fun retrospective activities:
Multiple vs Single Repository per Project
Lightning talk by Arek Zając
When it comes to building complex applications, one fundamental aspect is the information architecture. And this includes repositories.
Arek rounded off the 6th edition of the Clearcode Beer & Bacon meetup with lightning talk about repository setup for large projects.
He covered – among other things – project setup, workflows, bug hunting and group work.
All in all, our time both informative and fun – a big success, as always!
[img 9459 caption=”Mike, Grzegorz, Anna & Arek after the Beer & Bacon meetup.” title=”BBgroup” align=”center” size=”full” alt=”Mike, Grzegorz, Anna & Arek after the Beer & Bacon meetup.”]
