Two weeks ago I covered the benefits of building a good team and how it pays off once you get over the initial hurdles, which require engendering a level of trust, ownership, and confidence in those around you. This week I want to focus more specifically on how using the right tools can aid and accelerate this process.
Humans are a visual species, we take in most of our knowledge visually, and mastering a skill with our hands means doing it with our eyes closed. When applied to the sudden psychological adaption demanded of interfacing with a computer screen for the majority of the work day instead of a physical object, the abstraction needed to feel satisfaction at creating a virtual product versus a physical product can only be brought from concept into reality through an interface that brings the user into that world.
Bridging this gap, and creating the best tools for everyone to use when working with each other is a goal we have set for ourselves at RhodeCode, and even though that task will never be completed we can objectively measure improvements brought to the world of our users.
Personal Development and Career Development
40% of people rank personal development as very important in the work place, whereas only 9% of people rank career development as very important. Our core product, RhodeCode Enterprise, helps both of these groups, and very often the same benefit answers both
needs.
Collaborative Work Environment
After security, the first and foremost goal at RhodeCode is to create the tools that enable smooth, real-time collaboration across every kind of team, whether large or small. A team can only truly exist within the context of collaboration, otherwise it is merely a collection of individuals each playing their own tune without any harmony.
The answer to this is to bring crystal clear communications into play so that
all messages are positive, and pinpointed for context, productivity, and
learning. The objective is to reduce distractions, concentration breakers, and
noise. RhodeCode Enterprise does this through providing the ability to review
and comment on work with the feedback being specifically attached to a certain
line, or section, within a file.
This coupled with the RhodeCode Enterprise notification system lets teammates
remain inside a single interface with the notification taking you directly to
feedback, thus eliminating noise and distraction. You get to stay in your
zone!
RhodeCode Enterprise’s ability to easily and clearly review code in an awesome and intuitive web interface helps our team reduce errors and improve
code readability.
~Darshan Ahluwalia, Enphase Energy
This kind of precise and directed team communication helps to build a positive
feedback loop of quick, simple, and exact peer review. Just what you need to
get team-mates all pulling in the same direction.
Skills Sharing and Learning
Here again we come to a benefit of teamwork that greatly drives improvements
in both personal and career development. With peer-reviewing in place you get
both feedback on your work, and just like being a teacher, when you review
someone else’s work you have to study beforehand so the student doesn’t outfox
you!
In this scenario there are two sources of motivation being directed towards
how you work. Firstly, you know your work is going to be reviewed by a
colleague who will give it a good grilling, and secondly you know that when
you are asked to review someone else’s work who has already been so helpful to
you, then you want to bring something to the table that helps you both. It’s
the perfect mix of competition and collaboration, it is what it means to be
human!
Team Ownership and Sense of Achievement
Shared skills with bonds forged in the heat of competition, where you are
tested and driven to achieve above and beyond what you thought was possible,
gives everyone part of that organization a sense of shared achievement. This
sense of joint-achievment though is proceeded by a sense of joint-
responsibility, and it is in this phase where you see the very best come out
in people. When their personal and professional improvements come thick and
fast, and it is not until after the fact that you appreciate what you have
done.
When we build our tools, or when our users build their products with the help
of ours, this is what occurs. When a new product is delivered that makes the
world a better place; a better type of cancer treatment, a more secure energy
grid, a faster more efficient kind of race car, then all the stresses and
pains of going through that process are forgotten and only the achievement
remains as a testament to what you brought into this world.
RhodeCode Enterprise is helping to deliver these advancements with less
strains and pains, and in a much more productive and enriching environment.
RhodeCode Enterprise is very much a unique and best of breed solution for source code management. If it can support the diversity of our organization, I
have no doubt that RhodeCode Enterprise would fit anywhere else as well
~ Markus A. Kobold, US Dept of Energy
Cutting Edge Tools
The question is though: why use RhodeCode Enterprise when older ones you
already know are available?
Learning new tools and new skills feeds into the optimism and progression in
life that people want to feel every day. The skills they learn can take them
further, and that increased confidence brings a happier, more secure employee
into work. A man or woman with their head held high and chest out will
accomplish much more than the downtrodden unhappy worker who is questioning
why they sit at their terminal everyday looking a screen and feeling no
interaction with their so-called colleagues.
Conclusion
By bringing a sublime interface into the virtual workplace, enabling true
collaboration, and responsibility sharing among team members you are part of
the evolution that is going on all around us. The movement from the industrial
age to the information age is still young, and the workplace is still adapting
to the technological revolutions that are accompanying that. By remaining with
the tools of the past you are doing your colleagues, and your organisation a
disservice.
Mastering technology gives you first mover advantage, keeps you learning and
engaged with advances in the world around you. It also brings a positivity
into your life to be part of the advancement of mankind and to be right here
in the now using the best there is to offer.
Only in such an environment will your ever achieve those lofty goals you dream
of late at night.