Build Stuff

What pictures do we have in our minds when we think about effective software development? Code quality, continuous integration, automated testing or what have you. While I’m a big fan of all of them I would challenge the concept that these are the only, or the most important, areas which software developers or quality engineers should focus on.
Building software is a collective effort of people working in different roles and this should always be a starting point to a discussion about effectiveness. The missing piece may be craftsmanship but it may also be poor communication or handful of dull chores that few would fancy doing. How can we tell? What should we use as guidance? And, at the end of the day, how to build software effectively?
It all starts with learning what makes a team effective as the notion of effectiveness we have is usually flawed. Understanding how the work gets done end-to-end is often a missing piece as well and even an effective team doesn’t stand a chance against dysfunctional process.
The session will discuss the traits of effective teams as well as show how to use elements of Kanban to improve efficiency of software development teams. Surprisingly enough it has pretty little to do with engineering issues.