Before Christmas break, we celebrated the first anniversary of our coding dojo by throwing a global retrospective on its first year of existence. Moreover, our company reshaped itself for the future in 2013. In such a discomfortable way for developers that nearly 2/3 of us resigned. So it was the last time the entire core team of attendants met. Another good reason to look over our shoulder. Here is the summary of what came out of our Post-It&Pen session (red background means displeased by ) : What about my thoughts on this coding dojo I initiated one year ago ? Here it is, retrospective-style. What did I learn ? The dojo was open to everyone who wished to improve his/her coding skills; it was made clear on Day One (and repeated on multiple occasions) that no matter your level of experience, goal was to give the opportunity to learn something. Regarding the less experienced attendants, it worked far beyond my expectations: as our little meetings gained som
While I practice code Kata for a few years now, for multiple good and bad reasons I never attended a Coding dojo. But as it's an experience I really want to have, I decided a few weeks ago to facilitate one for my colleagues during our lunch time. Today was the day. And as tomorrow might be the end of the world (hmmm...), it's also the day I start blogging so that I can share the outcomes of my first dojo. Building up the Dojo Working for the same company for a few years now, I knew most of my colleagues are far less into XP-Craftsmanship-Agile-yourPreferedFancyNameHere practices than I am. And here comes the first lesson I learned from this dojo : people are changing. I was counting on 4 participants, 6 in the best case scenario, but 12 showed their interest less than one hour after I sent my invite ! Unexpected interest means unexpected work for me : some of them asked me "What is a coding dojo ??" before deciding to attend. I didn't originally plan