I want to tell you about how we introduced one of our more recent practices: Workshops . During one of our retrospectives this spring, it became apparent that some of our colleagues felt that there was room for more learning in our shop. People were sticking a bit too much to their usual tasks and their usual technologies. We're not a consultancy, so it's not really the core of our mission to use the latest and most hyped tools all the time. We still need to stay updated so we make the right architectural choices when considering doing something the old way, or trying out something new. But we're too busy to learn new stuff! For a software developer, the responsibility for your actions is split between what you choose to do, and what you're assigned to do. Of course, you can't run wild and smash all the latest open source tools and languages into the main product line, but at the same time, if you don't take initiative to do a little research on what...
My thoughts on software development.