I applied the half hour rule: the NetRunner Meetup came up again. I knew what to do: I chose the ‘you can’t go to the same group more than once’ rule and looked at the next event: I was going to another technology Meetup.
I couldn’t help but feel that I needed to stop going to events straight after work; I felt that I needed to go to events that were either ridiculously early in the morning, or impossibly late in the evening. I wanted my randomness quest to become even more random but I felt that focussing on different times on the Meetup calendar would be cheating. I wasn’t happy; I was starting to feel anxious. Tech Meetups were pretty interesting, but I wanted to go to groups that were weirder.
Another thought was that maybe I needed to endure all the tech Meetup groups before I could get to the weird stuff, but I didn’t really know how many tech groups there were. The only way to find out was to continue.
I looked down at the pavement and tried to visualise where Moorgate was in relation to Holborn. I knew that Moorgate was close to The Barbican, and was pretty much up the road from Bank, but I had no real memory of what was in between.
I peered into my phone. It told me that it would take me half an hour. I plotted a route using now familiar landmarks: Chancery Lane, Farringdon Road, and Smithfield Market, where the ‘London on Board’ Meetup was held. As I walked, new connections and links revealed themselves to me: I found a Russian Restaurant, a Cross Rail building site, and an underpass that went underneath the Barbican Centre.
By the time I arrived at an office on Finsbury Pavement it had started to rain. I walked into a clinical reception area saw a list of Meetup delegates sitting on a desk. Noticing that someone had already added their name to the end of the list, I followed suit. When I was done, the receptionist told me to head up to the third floor.
I found myself in an area that was called ‘the business lounge’. A large flatscreen TV displayed rolling news. There was nothing around me that told me anything about the nature of the business: there were no trade magazines, posters or pictures. Some visitors who were wearing name stickers arrived.
‘You can come through now’.
We were ushered into a large presentation room. Leather and steel chairs were set out in rows.
‘We’ve got tea and coffee here, and some water, and there’s some rolls and wraps too. For the next one, we’re going to have drink, but for this one it’s only tea’.
I found myself standing next to an incredibly tall man called Goran who worked for the company that was hosting the event. I introduced myself.
‘Your face looks familiar… I think I’ve seen you somewhere…’
‘Do you go to any other Tech meetups?’ I asked. Goran didn’t. ‘It might be that I look like a famous comedian’ I suggested, repeating a joke that I’ve heard too many times.
‘You’re a comedian?’
‘No, I’m not a comedian. I, erm, work at a university. I’m work with computers. Computer education.’ I wasn’t quite ready to tell Goran the complete truth, especially since I had just arrived and was already making good progress at eating all his sandwiches.
‘Hello, I’m Lucy’. A hand was offered. I put my sandwich down and introduced myself. ‘I work in UCAS’ said Lucy. ‘What do you do?’ UCAS was the university admissions organisation. We had something to talk about. We were soon joined by Eugene who was from the Ukraine. He had been in London for two weeks and had been working in Google’s London offices. The business that he worked for did ‘software outsourcing’ and Eugene had just dropped by to see what he could learn from this event (and, like me, eat some free sandwiches).
Fifteen minutes later, the room had filled up and it was time for the opening talk: ‘Evolution of team’s remit: above and beyond’. There were two speakers: Andrew and Goran. Andrew introduced himself as a ‘scrum master, Kanban practitioner and a certified collaboration architect’. He also told us that he liked cars, and showed us a picture of an expensive looking low slung sports car which he said he owned. Goran, on the other hand, showed us a picture of his dented city runabout.
The purpose of the talk soon became clear. Goran and Andrew worked for a company that offered consultancy services to businesses that needed to develop software systems. The business focussed on one particular aspect: agile software development and project management. Since software is intangible, it’s notoriously difficult to manage. The only way to understand what is going on in a software project is to continually talk it, and make aspects of a software development as visible and clear as possible.
‘Agile techniques’ are all about creating a development process where there is continual discussion, short meetings, sharing information and involving customers to ensure that developers don’t go building the wrong thing.
Andrew and Goran’s talk was about a very particular aspect of agile: how to create display boards (or, ‘information radiators’ as they are sometimes called). A board, we were told, represents a two week ‘sprint’, or a concentrated period of software development. Each board was populated with post-in notes, which represented tasks. Tasks move from one side of the board to another as software is written, tested and then deployed to a system. Andrew and Goran were proposing a new set of information boards that were a combination of the Scrum and Kanban agile methods.
‘Who here is an agile coach?’ Goran asked.
A good number of people put up their hands. I had never heard the term before but it was an idea that made sense. An agile coach was a facilitator; someone who guides the developers and the development process.
The talk with packed with brilliantly baffling phrases. I heard the phrase ‘replenishment cadence’. We were asked whether we had ever ‘puppetized’ anything. One question from the floor was, ‘did changing the board change the daily standups?’ We heard about ‘story points’ and ‘minimum marketable releases’ (which was different from ‘minimum viable products’). Tasks were presented in ‘swim lanes’, and there were some gatekeepers who were called the ‘three amigos’ who wore different stakeholder hats. I also learnt that there was a product called Jira, but I was left wondering what ‘the size of an epic’ was. The language that was being used wasn’t so much about software, it was more about people.
After the talk, I chatted to two delegates; one was an agile coach, the other was a project manager. They talked about methods and process, and the challenge of talking about the ‘mind stuff’ of software to senior management.
I had another chat with Goran before I left: I discovered that the Meetup was very new, and that I had been to their second ever event.
It had stopped raining by the time I left the building. I looked around to find my bearings and saw the underground sign in the distance; London’s beacon of travel. I crossed the road and started to walk towards Moorgate station, realising that I had learnt something.
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