Sharing lessons learned
There are always many projects happening at Bendyworks, and while we’re a curious and talkative bunch, often our developers and designers don’t have the full picture of what’s happening in other projects. Our main way of sharing project knowledge has been transferring people between projects, until recently.
To deepen the team’s knowledge of each of our projects, we started a client talk series during our weekly tech talk lunches. Bendyworkers present on the client work they’ve been doing (to the extent that our contract allows) and the lessons learned that we can apply to other projects.
Most recently, for example, we heard from Jon about work we’re doing for a client to revitalize an old web application. It’s a project that I worked on for a few months before transferring to my current project, so I was especially interested in hearing his take on the code.
Jon is a master of beautiful code and presented a number of places where the project’s code, while functional, needed polishing. Seeing things from Jon’s perspective made us remember how much simpler we could have made the code once it was working.
No matter what type of creative work, whether it’s painting, writing, or programming, fresh perspectives are valuable for rooting out weaknesses and providing new solutions. Whether it’s switching up pairs or talking through projects with the group, we gain so much through taking time to hear what others think of the work we’ve done. So often we get so immersed in the details we forget to take a moment to look at the big picture, and a new set of eyes becomes invaluable.
How do you share knowledge on your team? We’d love to learn from you, too.