Living in the Tech Avalanche Generation

As a software development manager and now CTO, I spend a fair amount of my time thinking about how to converge two very important ideas and blend them harmoniously. The ideas:

• create a great place for developers to work, one where they maintain a keen and genuine excitement about their profession and look forward to the daily challenges and comradery that great success stories in software delivery can produce.
• Build a vibrant software development consultancy that offers it’s clients great commercial options and results; and help drive great concepts into great business outcomes.

Can these ideas co-exist successfully? Absolutely they can and what’s more they are mutually enabling. Over the years I have held positions as a senior developer, Software Development Manager and CTO, and I always try to take the attitude of developing an environment that I would have liked to work in as a developer myself. Three main things I have found to make for great developer working environments are:

• A commitment to developer career growth through training.
  • This does not have to be via third party training providers. With the right investment of time and good technical leaders and teachers, it is very possible to implement valuable training programs internally.
  • ITR have just recently committed to a training program modelled around the ‘code camp’ style of training becoming so popular today.
• Team Development Projects.
  • Encouraging an environment where even the smallest projects are attended by more than a single developer. This isn’t always possible, however setting it as a goal can help under circumstances where your team is very small.
  • Developers (good ones IMHO) are attracted to the idea of working in teams and not silos.
• Expose your team to best practices, good design principles and tools & exciting new technologies.
  • Developers love to use new tech! Just make sure it doesn’t come to the detriment of your clients / projects.
  • Developers also love to know that they are using tools, methodologies and practices that have value in the community and that their career opportunities are improving with ever developing new found skills. Trying to trap developers into an environment where they become pigeon holed and get no opportunity to grow doesn’t help you retain good people; good environments retains and breeds good people.

All this can lead to happy developer employees who stay and grow with your business and afford you the ability to attract some talented people via recruitment into the bargain.