Tag team

So you work from home now…

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

With the current pandemic a lot of people are now working from home full-time and we all need to adjust to a new way of balancing work and life. Not only that, we are not having a normal “work-from-home” situation. This is a “work-from-home-while-living-through-a-pandemic-that-can-potentially-wipe-out-the-family” situation.

So there are a few challenges to face, but those of us who have been doing DevRel as remote workers for a while can at least help with some tips for working from home over a prolonged period of time, and some for dealing with all of this mess right now with COVID-19. Here are some things I’ve found work for me, hopefully they work for you!

Continue reading “So you work from home now…” →

Making it Work: Specialists on an Agile Team

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

In some lines of business, such as consulting, the organizational business goals require a certain amount of specialization in order to deliver to clients efficiently and with high quality. These organizations also typically bill by the hour, meaning downtime is a serious cost to the business. This can be difficult in an agile development model as these specialists often create silos of knowledge. Also, these specialists often get pulled in many directions and their availability is not always predictable.

How do you make it work with a typical Scrum-like agile team?

Continue reading “Making it Work: Specialists on an Agile Team” →

5 things agile developers can learn from the hockey greats

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

Teams in organized sports experience scenarios not unlike those that a software development team see on a day-to-day basis: overcoming obstacles, working together as a team, training, strategizing, keeping score, resourcing, among others.  As a highly-unskilled goaltender and defenceman, I have been able to experience both sides of this equation, and have been wondering what I can take from my recreational experiences to enhance my professional ones.  What can the great hockey players of our time teach us about how to do our job?

Continue reading “5 things agile developers can learn from the hockey greats” →