Hello folks,

my name is Marc and this is my first blog post. I’m keen of every feedback, don’t hesitate!

Like my friend and colleague Felix I visited the Clean Code Days in Munich. To get as much information and education we possibly could, we decided to split for some talks. So, here is my summary about Claudia Simsek-Grafs talk.

First things first, let’s start at the very beginning and one of the most important facts of this talk.  Change!

We as the agile, state of the art, open for everything new kind of developer love change. Because we think that change is good. Makes us better and let us grow. But we’re not the biggest part of the IT community. There are a lot of developers and programmers out there who are terrified by change.

Picture that: You are working ages for a software company and BOOM out of the sudden  there is this mysterious meeting nobody really knows about. You get to know your new work philosophy. Clean Code! Oh no, what’s that gonna mean. Will they take my favorite IDE from me? – It took years to configure it perfectly for me. Do I have to use this fancy architecture stuff and funny patterns with strange names? Why don’t they just leave me alone and do my work?

This is surly the worst case reaction of a developer after his company decided to do some change. But, you’re taking really something away from them. There safety. They are used to their IDEs, own development patterns, workflows etc. Not everybody welcomes this and appreciate your effort to improve your code. We have to accept and find a way to deal with insecure and judgemental developers.

Changing your philosophy to Clean Code means a big change. The developers often see themselves as caretaker and owner of their code and have the stuck opinion, that only they will be blamed for every fail – and not the guy that came along with this crazy idea. We have to teach them, that everybody in the team is in charge and the code belongs to everybody, as well as the responsibility.

A good way to create a “we” feeling in the team is to set up a simple kind of codex. A few written words that display the teams spirit every time the individual questions his role in this strange new world. Here are the usual suspects: Respect, Encouragement, Trust, Curiosity, …. and so on.

In addition, a very good way to get to know your team and to understand its needs  is to take them all to a workshop which shows them their personal behavior patterns and their teammates patterns. They will learn to understand themselves and the others better and workout fears and tenses. Second idea for such a workshop is a motivation triggered workshop. Find out what suits you and your team best.

If we try to show and live a few important values, such as:

  • The code base possessed by everybody
  • Software quality before quantity
  • Use of static and dynamic code analysis
  • No Blame philosophy – use every fail as a change to improve
  • Support Curiosity – create tech talks and time for the developers to try new things

most certainly our team will finally see and experience the benefits of Clean Code and the new team philosophy you want to establish.

This is it, I hope this is no tldr; post. 😉 Let me know what you think or your way through a big change was.

So long, Marc.