Over the past year, we've had many people drop by the Obtiva software studio for short volunteer stints of codesmithing and geekfesting with us. The visits lasted for a few hours or a few days.
Some of the notable visitors (in no meaningful order): J.B. Rainsberger, Amanda Laucher, Uncle Bob Martin, Corey Haines, Paul Pagel, Jim Suchy, Obie Fernandez, Jeff Patton, and Brian Marick. Thank you, all!
But, we also get a second type of visitor. These are folks who are not necessarily well known. They are apprentices and journeymen who are eager to come pair with passionate fellow craftsmen and share their knowledge with us. And hopefully after a few hours or days, they leave with new tools, techniques, and experiences to power their careers forward.
We've taken to calling this second type of visit a Software Craftsmanship Spike. Just as we do code spikes to gather more information before proceeding with a course of action, visiting craftsmen come here to gather more information about themselves and their careers. Information about technologies, about agile practices, about apprenticeship, about what it is like to work in a craftsmanship environment, or about what they want to do next in their career.
For example, pair programming might sound cool but if you haven't done it full time for days or weeks, how do you really know you want to take that new gig where you'll be pairing full time?
Or, maybe you've been doing TDD for a year or two. But, you have lingering doubts about whether you are really enjoying the full benefits from it and you want to see how it is done by other practitioners.
In fact, we just had a Software Craftsmanship Spike take place last week.
Interested in participating in a Spike? Contact me. Or, leave a comment below and share your ideas on how this concept can be evolved to become more useful to the participants and more widespread in the craftsmanship community.
