One year of coding dojo : a retrospective

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 some fame, we attracted people that weren't, a priori, supposed to be interested in joining us. They wanted to improve their coding skills : so two of our non-java-developer colleagues (a tester and a Siebel configurator) joined us. Both took our motto literally, improve !, it really doesn't matter where you start from : I consider this as one of the major achievement.
On the other hand, (mostly) none of our really experienced colleagues ever attended a session, and this somehow saddened some of us. Not me. I genuinely tried on multiple occasions to interested them, by talking about some of the new techniques we practiced, the opportunity that was given to them to show us stuff in a relaxed context, the fun we had,... To no avail. So doors were kept open for them but I moved on. Some people you really wish they will attend, won't. That's it.

This coding dojo was the most efficient way I ever used to teach coding practices. I tried before to show the benefit of writing test before the business code, to progress baby-step by baby-step, to back your mind with static code analyzer, ... : never did I achieved such a positive and lasting result. Which is kind of weird : a 5 minutes introduction to the subject, another 5 minutes to introduce a kata, and by the power of their fingers on a keyboard conjugated with the playful mood, it takes a little more than an hour to have them aware of the importance of the topic! Right, it will take a lot of replays to gain some kind of mastery. But the seed was planted and will noticeably matured in the following weeks or months.

After six months, that was the summary of our retrospectives

I'm not a rock star programmer, by far. Too old, working since nearly 14 year for the same company, - a bank, could you find something less fancy ?! I don't even write books, nor do I speak at conferences. I'm so Average Joe that I really would like to know how you end up reading this blog post :) Founding and facilitating these dojo teached me that, as long as you care about what you do and how you do it, none of the above qualities is needed to setup a friendly environment, where me and my colleagues would improve our software crafting skills.

What surprised me ?

Coding dojos as a way to build a team was really something I didn't expect.
How does it happen ? First of all, dojos gave opportunities to attending people to talk to each other, whether or not they are working in the same team, on the same product, in the same department. Pairing with someone obviously makes it mandatory to talk to him/her. I guess that if you can keep dojo's mood to fun-for-real-here, each occurrence becomes as much of a socialization event that of a technical meeting.

Some of us discovered that attending (or founding speaking of me) a coding dojo is something that is valuable in a job interview, as it's an indication that you care about your craft. It shows that you want to improve your skills, and that you consider your peers as a source of knowledge and that you are eager to share yours with them : that's team playing, for real ! "Attended/founded coding dojos at Company XYZ" in your resume won't give you the job you are interviewing for, however our experiences proved it helps.

What will I take with me ?

Seen the achievements and the enthusiasm surrounding the dojo, and knowing that I resigned too, there is one obvious thing to do, don't you think ?
So a handful of us decided to renew the experience outside the closed walls of a company. We'll try to grow a small community of passionate and humble developers, who, just like us, want to improve their coding skills while having fun with their peers.

I take with me the commitment to help to make it happen.
More on that soon.
(promised, I won't wait for another year to blog again :) )

Dojo team in action during our one-year-anniversary retrospective.