Coding Dojos

This post is part of 101 ideas for agile teams.

Context

The team needs to exercise engineering practices or working together as a team.

Action

In a coding dojo, the whole team sits together in a conference room. Two developers do pair programming at a single computer connected to a projector so that all others can see what they do. The pair is rotated every 10 minutes. In this setup, the team solves exercises to train their engineering skills (unit testing, design code, write code, use tools, …).

What you gain

Know-how transfer among all team members on all topics related to software creation.

Team consensus about how to develop software.

Build up trust between team members.

A save place for learning that allows space for experimentation.

How to strengthen

Reserve time for the coding dojo regularly and organize a moderator (can be a team member).

Risks

Coding Dojos need a lot of time. Make sure they are focused, but give the team enough freedom to experiment to create insights.

More ideas at 101 ideas for agile teams

Many thanks to bbv Software Services for making this blog post possible.