On 8/10/2012 4:57 PM, Katherine Marsden wrote:
I am forwarding a request for training resources/documentation "in a
couple of
areas, including better communication amongst a distributed team,
breaking up
code to small individual commits, and not over-engineering.
The first two in particular are standard stuff at Apache projects.
Are there resources that could help? For example, written-up material
about the
above topics, or written-up materials about how to teach them "
Although quite old and I found the evangelical tone a bit irritating, my
first introduction to agile development was "Extreme Programming
Explained" by Kent Beck. It has the advantage of being quite short and
just understanding and adhering to the practices is important. The
table of contents might make a good teaching checklist for the mentor or
good habit checklist for the learner. Although the book recommends the
antithesis of distributed team: sitting together and pair programming,
I think that striving for that level of communication and transparency
is beneficial in a distributed team. It allows geographically
distributed teams to actually take advantage of the 24 hour workday
because they have enough information to continue work while others
sleep. When I first started working at Apache, I wondered, what does
this mean for pair programming? Someone suggested, "Now the community
is your pair" which I thought was a good way of thinking of it. I have
to say, it's been many years since I have read this book. I seem to
remember something about notecards that I never stuck with and probably
other things ...
I also think the Cathedral & the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond is worth
reading for folks coming into open source, but more of a sit down and
read then teach from kind of book. Also with regard to open source there
is the Teaching Open Source group
http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Main_Page that might have some
resources or you can ask on their list.
Probably newer/younger folks have some newer/better books and resources
to suggest #:)
Best
Kathey
