Building our team - Joyful

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This post is a part of the interview series I am doing where I am interviewing our team after a year of implementing Agile Development. We are using Scrum and Extreme Programing with Simple Design as our part of the Software development methodology.

He has almost 4 years of experience and he mostly works on the front end for 73bit.com. He is not the primary bread earner of the family. He has taken lead in the JavaScript automation tests and is a go-to person when it comes to JavaScript. He is an active person and loves to play cricket on the weekends. He has a keen interest in reading books. He has the potential of being a good leader.

What are the top 5 improvements do you see in the team in recent times?

1. Senior team member dependency has been reduced.
2. Junior team members are confident about their work.
3. Tickets are handled by individuals.
4. Team members do research by them-self before asking for any help.
5. We have an almost streamlined sprint process compared to 6 months or a year back.

What according to you is the vision of our team and what are we trying to achieve by next year?

According to my vision, the team is trying to add new features and improve the existing product for a better experience for clients in the coming year. A better experience would help the product in the market.

Does having 4 day work week took some pressure off and does it help in your wellbeing?

I feel 4 day work week pressure off for sprint development also it helps in planning a complete week where we have dedicated days for every step of the process.

What are 3 qualities you wish your leadership had that would have made your work life easier?

I read a few articles on leadership to develop my own skills, while reading those article I noticed that you and Gautam have already met the expectation which a junior team member expect from seniors.?

1. Sometimes we need more clarity of any task which would help us and also if you both could help us to understand client point of view towards their requirement and how to understand it.
2. Direction on what is the best way to complete any task
3. How do identify the critical situations and how to handle them?

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

What are 5 skills you have added in recent times to work better in a remote team? Can you mention what benefits you got by improving those skills?

1. Learned about Unit tests for both server-side and Frontend(Jasmine) - Bugs get identified before code is released for testing.
2. Work-life and Personal life balance by managing time, but sometimes I struggle to do that and am still trying to improve.
3. Exploring new concepts in JavaScript - helped to perform page load faster.
4. Think and identify multiple solutions for any bug or issue by discussing it with the team
5. Together with learning - Helped to learn new concepts and ideas.?

Share 3 reasons that the team as a whole lacks to contribute new initiatives or new ideas and put forward their thoughts fearlessly? Can also mention why would they feel that and what could have led it?

1. Less confidence - Fear of being judged by team members.
2. Need to RND - Scared of questioning back by team members and they won't be able to answer those questions.
3. Accepting what senior member says and not questioning back or not keeping their point of view.

If we make you a leader of 73bit for a month what 5 changes would you bring?

1. I'll ask the team to do RND along with the task which they are working on.
2. Ask team members to come up with their own ideas to implement any new feature or improve existing functionality
3. Also, try to help the team member to improve their confidence.
4. On Friday, will try to arrange one session where one of the junior team members will come up with anyone concept and a senior team member will help to understand it and then ask the junior team member to try to implement it in the next of his task.
5. Remove C# function calling from XSLT.

Photo by Jianwen Chen on Unsplash

Ask one of your family members, 5 changes that you had after joining 73bit Limited? (This can be personal, behavioural or professional changes | both positive and/or negative)

My mom has answered this question.

1. WFH (Work From Home) gave him more time to spend with his family.
2. Also, he became lazy (disadvantage of WFH)
3. Before joining 73bit he used to be irritated and frustrated.
4. He involves in work so much that sometimes he forgot to have lunch (negative).
5. Flexible working hours helped him to do other activities.

How would you explain our work culture to Sundar Pichai of Google?

I would say that in 73bit,?

1. Mistakes are not considered failure it's a step of learning and improving ourselves and our product.
2. Friendly atmosphere - Everyone is free to keep his/her point of view.
3. The company has 4 working days and the 5th day is for self-learning.
4. For freshers, there are many recorded sessions to help them understand the product and to improve themselves. Recorded session includes Mob session, Pairing session (New requirement or to solve and issue or to teach new skills). Also, there is a wisdom session, in that team members share their weekly learnings whether it is small or big.
5. Since the pandemic, the company is working remotely and things are managed so well that there is no need for physical presence.

You get what you give?

What question should I have asked you and didn't? What would be your answer to it?

Q: What new you have learned which you don't know before joining 73bit.com or are willing to learn in the future?

1. Agile software development.
2. Test-driven development.
3. Jasmine tests.
4. Analyse an issue or task before starting working on it.
5. I would like to take more responsibility for tasks assigned to improve and not ping any of the team members.
6. Pairing with team members for tasks so that?knowledge can be shared both ways.
7. The balance between work life and personal life.
8. Learning along with development.
9. Leadership qualities.
10. Explore new frontend technology (angular, react etc).

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