I was at an event fairly recently where I did a short presentation on Agile SCM. During the presentation, I surveyed the audience about their awareness of agile development methods and practices and was rather surprised at the result. There were about 50 people, most of whom were very experienced developers who tended to be working on contract and were well up-to-date on Microsoft tools etc.
Remarkably few had even heard of things like XP (eXtreme Programming), FDD (Feature Driven Development), SCRUM and DSDM (for example 3 people said they were doing agile development and another 3 or so said they knew of it). That said, when I went in to some agile practices such as continuous integration another half a dozen put their hands up.
There are a couple of responses to this:
- There is a marketing problem for Agile Methodologies
- Developers are not keeping up to date with the industry
Regarding the first response, I think that this is progressively being addressed through internet articles, books, seminars etc.
The second perhaps shouldn’t have surprised me so much, although it did. It would appear that there are a large number of developers and others involved in software development who just treat it as a job – go to work, do it, go home. They seem to keep their heads down, not read magazines, articles and related things, and basically not stay abreast of developments in their industry. These are bright and clued up people technically! But think of a dentist who didn’t keep up-to-date – how long would he or she keep their patients? My dentist has his certificates of “continuing professional development” up on his wall – it gives me a good feeling when I’m lying in the chair!
I think that professional development is a pre-requisite for anyone in any field. And excellent treatise for software development is Dave Thomas’s “How to Keep Your Job”; and a couple of useful points at Coding Horror: Be Good at your Job. An interesting take is How to Prevent Offshoring Taking Your Job
Perhaps on a related note I can singe the praises of the geographical and specialist groups – the people that I see attending these meetings are the ones who will do well. The BCS provides some excellent professional development support to individuals and to companies.
I’d also like to put a plug in for Toastmasters International – a global organisation for improving your public speaking skills. I have found it very useful myself (and can recommend London Corinthians for those who can get to Victoria!).
