Respond to Change or else

Change is not magic.

Software development is a weird stew of activities.  It is a creative activity taking the vague guidelines of others and turning it into working code.  It is an engineering activity because it requires a certain mindset only found in engineering.  It requires business acumen because software should do something which supports business.  Finally, a software developer has to adjust to change because technology, business, and the world are moving at the speed of the internet.  It is my firm belief that the best software developers and Scrum Masters need to acknowledge this change and learn to work with it.

I am coming up on twenty years in the software business, and the skills I needed at the beginning of my career do not match the ones I use today.  Some principles do translate like HTML, CSS, and object-oriented programming but in the beginning, there was no such thing as generics, responsive web design, or C#.  I relearned the skills I needed in my career every 18 months.  The reward for this struggle is employment and opportunities to share my experiences with others.  I want to make sure that no one suffers the kind of failure or mishaps I have in my career.

The constant theme in my career has been responding to change.  When VB.net careers began to dry up, I learned to code in C#.  As screens became smaller and mobile computing began to grow; I had to learn Bootstrap CSS and Jquery Mobile.  I was an early adopter of Agile and Scrum, but that has not stopped me from reaching out to find out more frameworks like LESS and SAFe to be successful.  In this business, a person needs to keep learning and growing.

In the agile manifesto, this idea is called, “Responding to change over following a plan.” In our contemporary economy, there are no promises in business so as a working person it is important to make sure your skills are up to date and marketable.  As an employer, it is important to address technical debt and make sure your staff is learning the latest skills to keep your company infrastructure up to date.  Upgrade your servers, use an office suite in the current decade, and shun mediocrity in all its forms.

The only thing sure in the business community is change and to be a successful software developer or scrum master you must learn to embrace change.

Until next time.