Rethink to grow
There was a lot learned during the two days, but the key phrase that most developers agreed on as the main outcome of the summit was release management. With rapidly expanding teams, it becomes more and more important to organize the workflow in the smoothest possible way going forward.
With each team increasing in numbers, it was important to position the department in a way where each developer can work most productively, with the blockers to output being removed by the team leads and management.
Kamran Butt, one of the older members of the Dev Team adds, “We already know we have challenges. We mainly discussed release management at this summit. So that should help (improve workflow). There were ideas we got for both the local environment and beyond and we are excited to try them moving forward.”
Progress observed
The last Dev Summit took place in June, and the developers were happy to see how far they had come in only two months. Florian Vetu, one of the team members stated, “It has been only two and half months since the last (summit). And it was two and a half months of summer by the way. So, I think we can even be proud of our progress in this period. If you had asked me about where we would be two months ago, I would not have thought we would have come this far in terms of achieving our goals.”
Some fun and games
But beyond the work and intense decision-making, time was also set aside for fun activities that inculcate real lessons to allow the team the opportunity to bond over non-work-related themes, while engaging in crucial concepts at the same time. For Kamran, winning at a paper-plane-making activity, designed to learn about different perspectives in the Agile development process and increase cooperation, was the most rewarding. “My favorite moment was when we made airplanes. We competed in teams and mine won. I won a set of lego as a prize; I gave it to my kids, so it was very fun.”
Other people found the dinners that came after most enjoyable. According to Rafi, “Moments spent in restaurants eating with friends and colleagues and making jokes (was most fun).”
Javeed agreed jokingly, “I will say the same because my team did not win at the airplanes. It was nice to just get out of work with the colleagues and not talk about work for a bit. We come from so many different backgrounds and there is so much to learn about other perspectives and people. It was really nice.”
