What does culture have to do with modern applications? Plenty. Developers under stress produce worse applications, and those applications go on to be legacy applications. That’s why principle seven is modern applications must engage in cultural best practices.
Culture matters. Developers in environments that are welcoming and inclusive fare far better than developers who are worked to the bone in spartan environments. Developers who are under stress produce far worse code than developers who can take their time. This isn’t a pronouncement without fact: the reality is that everybody works better when stress is absent from the environment.
Developers also need access to certain tools to do their job. Shops that want to develop good culture should also develop best practices around use of a bug tracker, version control, change management processes, scoping, design, and business analysis. Developers should be involved in the creative aspects of the development process as well as the technical elements. Businesses should track bugs, use version control and offer reasonable practices like Agile to ensure developers can perform at peak efficiency while still having input into the day-to-day.
What do you do if you find your culture is lacking when it comes to developing terrific applications? Start small. Implement a small process change, like a bug tracker, and get everyone on board. Sweeping changes won’t stick when you come down to the wire, so make sure any change you make is small and focused; it has the best chance of sticking around.
Culture matters for modern application development, and goes far beyond free sodas and foosball tables. It focuses on how developers and others work, the environment they work in, and the attitude and behavior of those they work with. A great culture will improve the odds of producing a great application.
Friday, January 1st, 2021 @ 9:00 am | Comments (0) | Categories: Culture