Tuesday, July 17, 2007

What does Decade have in common with Amazon.com?

amazon_box What does Decade Software Company have in common with Amazon.com, Google.com, and many Microsoft development teams? If you said, "They all practice Scrum", you're exactly right.

In his blog, Inside the Mind of a Nerd, Elton—an Amazon intern—describes life on the Amazon development team...

"Our scrum meetings in the morning are for everyone to answer what they did yesterday, what they're doing today, and if they're blocked on something. They explain what is blocking them, so the scrum master can help with that, and that's really cool, I think.

There's always a sense of how we're doing in the sprint, and it gives everyone on the team accountability. At my last job, I really didn't have that. People weren't motivated to get things done.

At Amazon, people are extremely smart and very self-motivated. It's incredible. It's like the difference between high school and college: people genuinely want to be there."

That's the feeling we want staff to have on our team, but—in the spirit of being open and honest—we've had two members of our team leave this month. Unfortunately, creating a happier, more productive work environment is easy, compared to competing with the Fresno heat in July.



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