iOS & Android Development

GitLab These are the expected behaviours of Engineers at GitLab. Most engineers at GitLab are Intermediate or Senior, so the priority is to address these levels first. Moving between levels, you should see that as engineers advance in their careers, their duties should encompass a higher degree of complexity, the scope of their influence should expand, and their contributions should become more impactful. These behaviors should not be considered as a checklist for promotion. Excellent Engineers may struggle with one or two aspects of their job and their strengths in certain areas should make up for deficits in others. However, it is important to show a significant number of strengths to be considered for promotion. Each of these behaviors should be achievable inside of normal working hours. If you feel that you need to work additional hours to be successful in your role you should talk to your manager. Junior engineers are still included on this framework even though we are not activel...

Virtual Communication In online meetings our cognition is massively limited in comparison to a meeting in person. Communication in this context is challenging.  A big part of the context and non-verbal communication is just not possible in the virtual environment; especially when we rely on audio only. Turning the camera on not only gives the team members more context, it also enforces more focus on the meeting by avoiding side-works. Be aware that the position of the camera on top of your screen will lead to the strange effect hat people are not looking in each others eyes. At least while talking, think about looking directly in the camera to gain a better focus and understanding of your listeners. Agenda, Timeline and Roles Like in any good meeting make sure to send an agenda and time planning upfront and invite only people that need to contribute to the meeting. You should consider splitting group size depending on main purpose of the meeting: Big Group: Infor...

Employee Development by using Skill Cards The goal is to build a hand of cards that make up that person’s most relevant personal growth areas. To do this, both the people leader and team member start with a deck of the same skill cards each. In private, each goes through this deck and sorts these cards into three stacks: not relevant, good enough, and to improve. By discussing why each card was placed where, with particular focus on those that do not match, a real, structured, and to-the-point conversation occurs. By focusing on reasoning—what led you to place this card here?—both can develop a shared understanding of the other's views. The main event, however, comes in focusing on those cards in “to improve”. To create focus and drive actual impact, these cards are discussed and prioritized. With a clear priority and a shared understanding of the individual aspects of each, tangible actions are crafted that can be taken to grow one’s career. LinkedIn Rob Sawyer mobi...

The scientific evidence indicates quite clearly that individuals’ personalities play a significant role in determining team performance. In particular, personality affects: What role you have within the team How you interact with the rest of the team Whether your values (core beliefs) align with the team’s In our own work we found that psychological team roles are largely a product of people’s personalities. For example, consider team members who are: Results-oriented. Team members who naturally organize work and take charge tend to be socially self-confident, competitive, and energetic. Relationship-focused. Team members who naturally focus on relationships, are attuned to others' feelings, and are good at building cohesion tend to be warm, diplomatic, and approachable. Process and rule followers. Team members who pay attention to details, processes, and rules tend to be reliable, organized, and conscientious. Innovative and disruptive thinkers. Team members who n...

Within this broad space, one sub-topic that frequently captures my attention is the relationship between organisational dysfunctions and their influence on software architecture. One pattern I’ve observed in large and smaller organisations is The Accountability Protection Buffer. This pattern arises when a team needs to shield themselves from problems inherited through services they depend on owned by other teams. Nick Tune @ Medium.com

Lately we were hiring a lot of developers and had to integrate them in our team. So we decided to do an infotainment team event, targeting both: getting to know each other on a personal level and learning about the business and technical state, challenges and visions. Usually a meeting like this starts with everybody telling a few words about themselves... one... after... each... other... and after third speaker latest everybody gets bored. So we came up with the "Meme-Your-Colleague" game: Build teams of two persons Give them half an hour to get to know each other Both have to assemble a five minute presentation of five slides of each other Each slide consists of exactly one meme telling a (fun) fact of that person You may want to use a meme generator  and a presentation tool like Keynote or PowerPoint. It ended up with the whole team having a lot of fun: a perfect ice breaker! Give it a shot!