Developers come in all forms and sizes but putting them together doesn't automatically transform them into a team. One of the keys to creating a successful team of developers in my opinion is a great developer culture. In this talk I will try to explain why developer culture is so important and share how we grew a developer culture for one of the biggest airports in Europe.

1. PHP Yorkshire 10-04-2017
How to effectively grow
a development team
Jeroen van der Gulik

2. About me
❖ LeadDev / Co-Founder Isset
(https://isset.nl)
❖ Señor Developer / Consultant
❖ Builder of Artificial Stupidity
❖ Organizer DDD.NL
❖ @n0x13
❖ Likes Cats … a lot

10. – Cal Evans
“Companies that invest in their developer
culture don’t need recruiters.”

11. (baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more)
What is Culture?

13. – Wikipedia
“a way of thinking, behaving, or working
that exists in a place or organization”

14. What is Developer Culture ?

15. Developer Culture
❖ A set of shared values about development
❖ A way of thinking, behaving, or working in
a place of work or business

16. What is Good Developer Culture ?

17. Good Developer Culture
❖ A set of shared values that stimulate positive
behaviour
❖ A way of positive thinking, behaving, or
working in a place of work or business
❖ Open Communication

18. What are these mythical values ?

22. Our Values
❖ Good Atmosphere over Negativity
❖ Learning over Knowing
❖ Working Together over Silos
❖ Trust over Checking

27. Culture takes time to grow

28. Buy Import Culture

30. Team Hiring vs Person Hiring

32. Create an environment

34. Facilitator

36. (Developer)
Happiness

37. Happy developers are
over 9000% more
productive

38. – Daniel Graziotin, Xiaofeng Wang, Pekka
Abrahamsson (2014)
“It has been shown that happiest software
developers are significantly better
analytical problem solvers. ”

39. What do developers want?

42. What do developers need?

49. – Robert Martin a.k.a. Uncle Bob
“The number of programmers doubles
every 5 years. That means, at any time,
half the world's programmers have less
than 5 yrs experience”

56. Kill All Meetings.

57. Minimise the number of Meetings.

58. My rules for Meetings
❖ Meeting should have a clear goal
❖ Meeting should have a clear timebox
❖ Anyone should be able to leave a meeting
❖ Anyone not participating is not allowed in the next
meeting

63. Agile Methodologies

64. Domain Driven Design

65. Event Storming

66. Communication

67. Building a Team?

68. Building Growing a Team

73. Self Organising

74. Support from the organisation

75. Team dynamic

76. Teaming Model
❖ Forming
❖ Storming
❖ Norming
❖ Performing

78. StoryPoints
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Sprint 5 Sprint 6 Sprint 7 Sprint 8 Sprint 9 Sprint 10 Sprint 11
43
343434
43
16
42
40
29
47
55
48
24
Story Points verwacht te halen
Story Points behaald
Velocity
Realisatieteam ‘Fokker’
Herijking
SP

79. Accountability

80. StoryPoints
0
12,5
25
37,5
50
# dagen / begin van dag
0
ma
1
di
2
wo
3
do
4
ma
5
di
6
wo
7
do
8
ma
40 40
39 39
41
36 36
7
0
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Natuurlijk verloop
Echt verloop
Burn down chart Sprint 10
Realisatieteam ‘Fokker’

82. Involvement

83. Feedback

84. Managing by walking around

85. The Little Things

86. Become an advocate

87. Not always about work

88. What did we gain?
❖ Happy Developers
❖ More and Higher Quality
Output
❖ Teams based on mutual trust
and respect
❖ Pride (off hours fixes)
❖ Hiring (almost) solved

90. https://joind.in/talk/9b0ac

92. References
❖ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
❖ https://medium.com/swlh/the-one-method-to-eliminate-bad-tech-
hires-630d539b2e1d#.6x8ahxtuz
❖ https://peerj.com/articles/289/
❖ https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/how-to-grow-
effective-teams
❖ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-programmers-bill-of-rights/
❖ http://www.agilemanifesto.org/
❖ https://leanpub.com/cultureofrespect