Contractor view: Development process / self organise

How should one organise themselves within a team? I’ve been contracting for a long time, which means embedding in a team quickly, making adjustments and start delivering. The core skill here, is being methodical and seamless. Your skills are yours, but ensuring a non disruptive attitude and smoothing your way in is key. Here are some tips on how go about my way in introducing changes in a non-disruptive manner whilst promoting self organisation

• Acceptance criteria
  • For you – seek clarity – negotiate – baseline
    • In a new team, the purpose of a project owner / product owner is to provide clarity on any aspect of the business rules. You should utilise this excellent resource in understanding exactly what the ask is exactly. Then analyse whether the ask is feasible and whether there is a better solution. Better solution is subjective – usually its about cheap or faster in some way. Then baseline yourself by giving the piece of work a score.
  • For peers to facilitate you
    • Your peers are there to facilitate ordinarily, but in the contracting world you want to hold your own. However, its good to get involved in non-business related dialogue to get more info about how everything connects together and the culture. If we’re successful in creating a bond with the rest of the team, that gets us a long way towards success. Contractor or not, you need this on your side.
  • Testing and Quality Assurance
    • If the team has a dedicated test engineer, utilise for test cases and understanding current test practices. If not, ensure that you pay attention to test cases and create permutations. I would suggest creating them off the AC before the work begins. For code itself I would always utilise at least the diamond coverage strategy to safeguard myself. At the end of the day, the automated tests are there to protect YOU as opposed to the business. Don’t hesitate.
  • For business to communicate change to
    • Your acceptance criteria is excellent at communicating change. If only there was a way to hierarchically demonstrate all the AC put into a software that would be something. Ensure you have a clear outline of it before starting work.
  • For history review
    • When things go wrong, you absolutely want a record of what had been discussed and delivered. Once you have your AC, store it within a ticket (pretty standard these days) and review when another change comes in on top of the existing one to discuss how your looking to transition from the current state to the proposed state.
  • Write yourself if you have to in order to seek clarity
    • If you receive a piece of work with a generic outline, I would suggest writing the AC yourself. This is where the magic happens. As you write, your mind will start exploring avenues previously unknown on its own.
• Tracking your changes on the issue.
  • Your tests are the best way to track changes. Those are the source of truth. They will always tell you exactly what had actually change as opposed to what you may ‘think’ has changed. Keep them up to date, and they will in turn keep you.
• Daily goals/objectives
  • After certain cycles you’ll be quite adept with what you can accomplish in a span of time. Everyday before starting the actual work you should have an idea of what is achievable. Write these bits down even if you’re not sure. This will help keeping on track, avoid running into tangents, set the target for the following day as well.
• Stand up updates
  • The previous daily objectives really help out here. A swift update based on your goals and objectives is all you need.
• Retrospectives
  • When you’re self organised, you’d want to keep the disruptive stuff on the sidelines – until that is, when you hit a retrospective. This is where you should let it loose. I would suggest keeping a track of things you’d like to discuss throughout your work.
• Analysis if uncertain
  • A big part of self organising is to be able to identify whether you’re ready to undertake a piece of work or you need to research more. Undertaking work means giving estimates and understanding what is involved. All this is compromised if you’re unsure, what’s worse the management expects delivery when said so. Make your word count.