Better Practice, Dec. 2018

32 \ December 2018 \ http://www.phparch.com

Creating a Culture

The Dev Lead Trenches

communicate. Make it a cornerstone of your team and company culture.

Allow and Encourage Specialization

I like to call myself a Jack of All
Trades, and I feel it is a strong suit
for me. All developers should try to
broaden their horizons; that does not
mean you should stop developers from
following their passions. You should
let developers grow and succeed in the
areas they feel, or you determine, are
their strengths.
Having someone as the “go-to” for
different areas of development can
strengthen those areas; if you have
someone interested in secure program-
ming, value and encourage their input
on code reviews. If someone has a
knack for designing APIs, let that be
one of his or her main focuses at work.
A developer who is passionate about
something is someone who wants to
learn and grow in a specific area.

Promote Ideas From Everyone I’m a big fan of moving away from siloing code or areas of development, and one of the best things I think you can do as a lead developer is soliciting ideas for changes from everyone on the team. Anyone should feel comfortable enough to comment or offer suggestions on any issue. While I just extolled the virtues of letting people specialize, there is nothing wrong with offering help or suggestions. There are many times when someone not assigned to an issue has spoken up during the development phase of a feature, either in a meeting or in the issue, and offered a valuable counterpoint or a different viewpoint. There is something to be said about promoting good ideas, and it can be easy for an overzealous junior developer to step instantly. These can be good learning moments for junior developers as they start to see how developers interact and come up with solutions.

It Is Okay to Be Wrong Hopefully, one of the factors that go into composing your team is finding people who complement each other

and have been brought onto the team for their talents in various areas. Every- one should also feel safe in expressing when he or she is wrong and understand that criticisms are ways to grow as a developer. This is another crucial aspect of culture that starts at the top, even above you as a dev lead. When you make a terrible decision, own up to it. When a bug gets introduced, deal with it and do not shy away from it. Point out the mistake that was made, and work with others to come up to a solution. When someone on your team makes a mistake, you can bring it to their attention without making it a punish- ment. Everyone makes mistakes and, most of the time, they can easily be corrected. Unless it is a chronic prob- lem with an employee, offer suggestions for a fix without shaming whomever to blame.

Employee Feedback It’s only fair that if I can criticize someone, they have the ability to criticize me. One of the most critical adult skills one should learn and understand is how to take constructive criticism. If you decide to do this through peer reviews, employee feedback surveys, or some other means allow employees to criticize those above them and afford them a safe way to do so.

There is both good criticism and bad criticism though. Pointing out flaws just for the sake of it, doing it publicly, or just generally being mean is not criticism. Critique and feedback are something that someone can take action on and correct.

Talk With Your Team Take some of the ideas I have given you, and go back to your team. Discuss what values you want to express on your team. Write them down, and start to hold each other accountable. Reward and elevate those following your team values. Show the company you work for what values you want to encourage. Foster the change you want to see by doing it on your team. Just like everything else, culture is a team effort.

Go Forth and Run Your Team Over this last one-plus year, I have written about a lot of different things. If you are a developer lead, I hope I have helped in at least a small way. Take everything I have talked about, and start to think about the culture you want your team to have. Make something great, even if you feel you work in a company where the culture might not be the greatest. Be the lead developer everyone wants to work for.

Chris Tankersley is a husband, father, author, speaker, podcast host, and PHP developer. He works for InQuest, a network security company out of Washington, DC, but lives in Northwest Ohio. Chris has worked with many different frameworks and languages but spends most of his day working in PHP and Python. He is the author of Docker for Developers and works with companies and developers for integrating containers into their workflows. @dragonmantank

Better Practice, Dec. 2018

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