The great convergence
Today I attended the QCon conference in San Francisco. Kent Beck , the "father" of XP, opened the conference with his keynote speech on Trends in Agile development. It was pretty interesting to hear what Kent had to say about the all the hype in XP community.
According to Kent, we are seeing a great convergence of Business Trends and Developing Trends in the IT world. 10 years ago developers didn't really care much about "what the customers want" but rather developed programs they thought useful. It was socially acceptable for a developer to be socially dead and only interact with the computer. But that's changing and changing fast. The business world demands the developers to behave and function in a certain way. Kent thinks that XP (or Agile technologies) addresses these trends extensively and that drives the popularity of XP.
So what are these business trends Kent is talking about and how do they affect developers?
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So this approach demands a different breed of developers. Developers who are "geeky" yet demonstrate reasonable social skills in life… social skills like listening, team building and team work, appreciative attitude, emotional intelligence and integrity. So one might ask… "Don't technical skills matter anymore for a developer?". The answer is actually no. Anyone with a healthy brain can learn any programming language and write good code with some guidance and practice. But it is not easy to train someone to behave a certain way or teach some values like being positive or working as a team.
Putting all this in Ephox's context, I think Ephox has gotten most of this right! We have dynamic development team who possess fantastic social skills and very good at what they do.
Popularity: 38% [?]
Dylan
November 8th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
I agreed with the post 100% up until when technical skills were dismissed.
The client-focussed practices should guide everything we do, however what we do is unavoidably a technical job. As problem-solvers, our job is to bridge the gap between the customer’s problem and the technical solutions we can provide.
Doing this well involves a customer focus to understand their needs, but it also involves very strong technical skills. It is the entire spectrum we must master, not one extreme or the other.
e.g., a developer can totally understand the customer’s needs, but produce a rubbish product. This will not satisfy the customer.
In fact, the Accountability and Responsibility aspects listed directly relate to technical skills. e.g., under responsibility you note “developers need to be confident that they write high quality code with fewer bugs”. This is easier done with strong technical skills.
I disagree strongly that anyone can learn a programming language and be a competent developer. There is art of developing quality software - a strong degree of craftsmanship involved, which separates code-monkeys from true engineers.
In our team, yes, we are dynamic, have good attitudes, social skills and a great customer-focus - all of which are imperative. However, we are all very strong technically, and would not succeed if it were not also for this.
Suneth Mendis
November 9th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I’m not saying that you go ahead hire someone with NO technical knowledge. But technical skills of a programmer should not be the main requirement while hiring. For example, prior joining Ephox, I was a .NET developer. I did not write any Java code commercially. But that didn’t mean that I can’t do a better job in a Java environment.
All I’m saying is, you don’t need prior driving experience to learn how to drive a car. (provided you know the road rules) If you understand the dynamics of accelerating, breaking, stopping, turning and etc etc you can go ahead and learn and be a good driver!
In my view, any art form can be mastered, be it programming or rock climbing, with a bit of guidance and lots of practicing.
Hamstaa! » Technical Skills matter
November 12th, 2007 at 12:19 am
[…] attended QCon last week and in his post "The Great Convergence" he summarises Kent Becks comments on "the great convergence of Business Trends and […]
Rob Dawson
November 12th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
>In my view, any art form can be mastered, be it programming or rock climbing, with a bit of guidance and lots of practicing.
Of course being tall and agile helps with both
Suneth Mendis
November 12th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I think I stirred up a honest’s nest here. The main point I wanted to make was that the one’s technical skills should not be the most important reason to hire someone.
In fact during the talk someone asked Kent, “How does a company know if they are hiring a “geek” with good social skills?”. And Kent said, “Do what NBA does… Draft someone tall and hope he can play basketball!”.