Abstract: The ninth principle from the Agile Manifesto states that technical excellence enhances agility, but when the codebase is ugly and the deadlines are tight, most teams don’t choose to refactor mercilessly, adopt TDD, or evaluate automated testing tools—unless they have the proper support. In our experience working with multiple teams in a single codebase, developers can feel victim to a legacy codebase if only a few people are writing clean code or refactoring; guiding them on how to decrease technical debt while delivering their projects helps "unstuck" their other agile practices. We will talk about the challenges we’ve seen with Product Owners, Managers, and Scrum Masters interacting with teams at various stages of agile+technical excellence and how a focus on technical practices sparked a wider interest in craftsmanship. Learn how can you influence the team towards the right practices while fostering their sense of ownership. Getting serious about technical excellence requires support from technical and non-technical roles, and we’ll share how we partnered as coaches to help an organization through a technical turnaround with some tips for others who need to do the same.
Learning Outcomes: - Why technical excellence is important and the impact of having only a small percentage of developers applying good technical practices
- How to influence the team towards the right practices while fostering their sense of ownership
- What craftsmanship means to other roles (e.g., QA, Scrum Master, Product Owner, manager)
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