Achievement

8th Light Apprenticeship - Day 50

It had been a few weeks since I last saw the graduate team working on their project on client site. Today was the end of the project.

The deadline had been met. One feature had been negotiated out for later, but they were able to demo a fully integrated system on production servers. The product owner seemed pleased with what had been achieved, and the graduates seemed proud about what they had achieved.

Things that stood out for me was how some of the graduates attitudes had changed for the better. At the start the person with the most defeatist attitude, was being labelled as ‘best coder’ by the rest of his team. A brilliant turn around.

Another graduate deemed most technical admitted to the group that going forwards he wanted to control his frustration rather than make the team the target of it. Not an easy thing to admit and a great point to work on to improve the team environment.

One of the reasons I felt the graduates enjoyed working together was because they had a lot in common. They were all a similar age, and had almost all arrived together straight out of university. Next week they start on their actual teams. These teams will be more diverse, as such they may find they have less in common with some of their peers. I mentioned that they may have to adapt their style and behaviour accordingly. For me it is important to treat each individual as that, and find a way to relate to them, a way to communicate with them. Although each person is equal, we can not always treat them in exactly the same way. To get the most out of each person we need to find how best to talk to them, joke with them, and above all respect them.