What’s Required of our “Code Monkeys”
Posted on January 4th, 2010 by Paul McArdle – 2 CommentsThis post is a 2nd draft, and is still an incomplete work-in-progress. In particular, please note that this has been posted (as a draft) in order to facilitate input from a variety of different people:
1) As a team we will be discussing these Roles and Responsibilities at Beer O’clock on Friday 23rd January.
2) We are also seeking input from both Shirlaws and Sound Reasoning with respect to these drafts (as they both bring a different perspective on our business).
Following from the role descriptions for our Chief Software Engineer and our Product Managers, the following could be viewed as the role descriptor for our Code Monkeys:
Developer and Deliverer of what the Customer Wants
Again, all focus on what the customer wants is important.
1) Summary
To be added
2) Responsibilities
Your responsibilities would be as follows:
(A) Architecture
(B) Coding
(C) Ancillary Responsibilities
We’re a small company, and will remain this way (relative to our expanding client base). As such, it is required that everyone will accept personal responsibility for making a positive contribution to the business in ways such as the following:
i. Personal Learning Plan
As with all our other people, you will accept personal responsibility for preparation, and implementation, of your personal learning plan – such that it is aligned with our Core Value of “Life-Long-Learning”.
ii. Working ON the business
As with all our other people, you will accept personal responsibility for applying yourself to work ON, and not just IN, the business.
iii. Time spent as our Rostered Support Guru
Everyone in our Product Development Team is expected to take their rostered turn to work as our Rostered Support Guru for a month.
During this month, your singular focus of will be delighting clients who contact us for support, no matter what the product or issue.
iv. Be a Little Bit Remarkable
Yes, you will have the opportunity to create your own weird and wacky job title, as well – just a bit of fun in the interests of becoming remarkable.
This will provide a positive impact on our business – so long as we are actually delighting our clients.
3) Your Core Competencies
For ease of reference, I have separated these into “hard” skills (to do with your technical knowledge) and “soft” skills (to do with the way in which you work):
(A) Hard Skills
To be added
(B) Soft Skills
i. You will value, and be able to work in, self-managed teams.
This means you will not just wait for work to be handed to you, but be proactive in seeking out the highest value activity to which to devote your energies.
ii. You will focus delivering results:
a) You will understand that the customer is the ultimate arbiter of value.
b) You will focus more on results, moreso on the process (but not to the extent of being Machiavellian “ends justify the means”)iii. You will need to “live” an agile mindset:
a) Agile (big “A”) in software development,
b) Nimble (or agile – small “a”), as the needs of the business change as we grow.
(C) Relationships
To be added…
[...] 1 = Code Monkeys (a title they coined [...]
[...] the role descriptions currently in place for our: 1) Product Managers 2)