怎么营造一个好的开发氛围

大家都在讨论什么是好的研发氛围，而不管你是一个普通软件工程师，还是你是个领导者。大家都在想找到一个好的工作环境，不只是为了把工作做好，而且让大家每天醒来，高高兴兴去上班。

本文我们将通过一些杰出的工程师的声音来探讨怎么营造一个好的开发氛围。探讨什么是令人兴奋的，什么是令人讨厌的 。我们都在寻求协作，可是并没有像我们想象的那样发生。我们想了解是好的开发氛围因素需要那些元素，或者更多的东西。

什么是开发驱动文化?

Facebook 是一个编程人员向往的地方, the world’s largest and most popular social networking site. This mammoth beast serves over 600 million users (and counting!) worldwide, relying on a versatile team of software engineers and developers to keep the home fires burning. 

Even though Facebook has gotten a lot of flak for constantly changing the user interface and privacy settings with little to no warnings to users, their core values of always-on accessibility and a one-stop-shopping hub for all social interaction continue to flourish. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum:

“Constant evolution always marks a growth-oriented company, and Facebook definitely fits that bill. But beyond great values and innovation, perhaps part of the site’s success may be linked to the developer-driven culture that Facebook employs in creating and maintaining the code that makes the platform run in a more fluid, dynamic experience…..

The Facebook example does show that developer-driven culture can work in some cases when the right variables exist. In some instances, companies may have to use trial and error to see whether the model will work in their situation. Certainly, not every company will be able to incorporate a system that grants so much power to the engineers.” –RegularGeek.com, “Developer Driven Culture”

给员工权利（或开发人员，视情况而定）是一个有趣的前提下，这是什么意思，究竟？有一个非常酷的办公室，充满了博士是谁，星球大战蜉蝣，免费按摩室现场，和大量的免费的垃圾食品是伟大的，但它不会做很多工作来扭转局面的磨损，如果开发人员必须处理的无聊的办公室政治或更糟的是，微观管理。

Facebook似乎得到的是鼓励扩散思维，富有想象力的环境，不扼杀创新。这需要两件事情要真正得到正确的：一个聪明的团队的开发工作，以及与对方，和智能的管理团队，过滤出什么是必要的，哪些不是这样编码器就可以完成他们的工作。这是一个艰巨的任务，但是，当你有一个产品，是像Facebook一样热，你买不起做任何事情。

什么是一个好的研发文化有益元素

At Quora, an online question and answer site, the question was asked “What makes a good engineering culture”? Obviously the answers are from an engineering perspective, but many of them can apply to developers as well. One of the answers to what makes a strong developer culture was fast iteration:

聪明的团队，快速迭代的速度意味着拥有一套强有力的领导者，帮助协调和推动团队的努力。决定的主要利益相关者需要有效的决定，并提交他们的选择。借用领导者比尔·沃尔什著名语录，比尔作为执教49人队的教练，并拥有3个超级杯，强有力的领导者需要“承诺，爆炸，恢复”。这意味着首先要很好的执行攻击计划，然后对预期的结果作出快速反应。残缺与犹豫不决的团队，将导致个人的努力挣扎。

We’ve probably all had the unfortunate experience of being hampered by someone else on a project; it’s just the way life goes sometimes. Fast, meaningful progress for a team is something that can make the work flow more easily towards the ultimate goal of getting it done. Along with quick iteration comes the idea of automating as much as possible, building software that will help keep things simple:

“选择正确的，程序将自然从设计中成形，模块将有小而简单的界面和新功能，将更有可能不适合在广泛的重组。选择错的人，将有一系列的讨厌的惊喜和编程接口将成为巴洛克式的和笨拙的，因为它们被迫以适应意料之外的相互作用，即使是最简单的变化将很难改变。”

The old adage of K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) seems to apply here. The specific tools or processes that developers utilize in order to accomplish a sort of Zen-like simplicity in their work don’t matter so much as what they are ultimately trying to accomplish; which is basically an obstacle-free (or at least less) pathway to the end of a project.

20% 的时间

You might have heard of Google’s “20 percent time policy”, something that is quite well known in the technology industry. This concept goes all the way back to 1948:

“In 1974, 3M scientist Art Fry came up with a clever invention. He thought if he could apply an adhesive (dreamed up by colleague Spencer Silver several years earlier) to the back of a piece of paper, he could create the perfect bookmark, one that kept place in his church hymnal. He called it the Post-It Note. Fry came up with the now iconic product (he talks to the Smithsonian about it here) during his “15 percent time,” a program at 3M that allows employees to use a portion of their paid time to chase rainbows and hatch their own ideas. It might seem like a squishy employee benefit. But the time has actually produced many of the company’s best-selling products and has set a precedent for some of the top technology companies of the day, like Google and Hewlett-Packard.”Lifehacker.com, “Make Your Job Feel Less Like Work With 20 Percent Time”

Some of Google’s most interesting, well-known products were conceived in this 20Percent, including Gmail, Google News, and Adsense. Obviously it’s working for them, and it’s easy to conclude that encouraging developers in what they are really passionate about as part of their work flow actually is pretty smart:

“For example, many people I worked closely with in software testing were serious hardware geeks, but outside of an official career change, it was very difficult for them to find anywhere to engage these interests, despite there being hundreds of like-minded geeks throughout the company. An officially sanctioned way for these people to explore these interests would have not only been enjoyable for the employees, but would have helped nurture them into people who would be be appropriate to switch into those careers…..

The point is, whatever your developers are interested in, there are ways you can nurture it, even without any significant budgetary investments.” – arc90.com, “Creating a Thriving Developer Culture”

实践建言

A recent presentation by Monika Piotrowicz, a Front End Developer at Jet Cooper, gave some very practical suggestions on how their firm has embraced a more inclusive developer culture, specifically, scheduling designers and developers to work collaboratively on projects rather than staggered.  

The collaboration between their design team and their developer team has reaped great results for this company. During projects, they try to work together rather than handing work back and forth at certain points; they’ve found that this approach enables more research, more prototyping, and they’re better positioned to try out new techniques.

The team also tries to collaborate beyond just the work project environment with a couple of different activities:

• Monthly Demo Days: Allow each team to show off their accomplishments and get support and feedback
• Weekly Developer Talks: All developers meet to share new techniques, talk about issues they’re facing, or anything else on their minds
• Creative Recess: Two days a month the entire company takes a break and works on their own projects, self-directed (this is modeled on Google’s 20 percent time policy as detailed above) 

Piotrowicz’s presentation puts forth the belief that designers and developers should be advocating for more collaboration within companies in order to have a stronger overall team, and it definitely seems to be working for them.

为什么一个好的研发环境是如此重要

A strong developer culture is vital to good work:

“When you put a focus on culture, you’ll have guiding principles. People will know you for this. Employees will live by it. It’ll help get you through difficult times. You’ll base hiring and firing decisions on the principles. It’ll help get all employees working on the same company mission. In some sense, it’s the glue that keeps the company together.” – Kissmetrics.com, “The Four Elements That Make a Great Company Culture”

Anywhere you work – whether that is a comic book store, a bakery, or an office – is going to come with its own culture. This work culture matters. If you dread going in to work each day with more than just a case of the Mondays, then there’s a problem.

Employees that are excited to get stuff done are productive, and productivity tends to spawn more productivity. This makes companies get out in front of other companies, which helps them expand, which makes employees happy since they’re the ones reaping the benefits.

Good culture also makes it easy to find good people. Let’s face it: the office that offers developers great perks, interesting work, and a forward-thinking environment that rewards creativity is going to get more people knocking on the door of HR than the Orwellian cubicle farm that expects your life blood with little in return. Good developer culture attracts good developers, period.

There’s also a sense of camaraderie that comes from knowing that you work in a safe, creative, and encouraging place. Developers who are invested in their company’s culture and know that they are valued are more apt to stick around, work harder, and help each other:

“Culture guides discretionary behavior and it picks up where the employee handbook leaves off. Culture tells us how to respond to an unprecedented service request. It tells us whether to risk telling our bosses about our new ideas, and whether to surface or hide problems. Employees make hundreds of decisions on their own every day, and culture is our guide. Culture tells us what to do when the CEO isn’t in the room, which is of course most of the time.” –Harvard Business Review

你认为什么是营造或破坏好的研发文化的因素呢?

 What have you experienced personally that was good and bad in the workplace? What are some elements that need to part of a healthy developer culture? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Posted onMarch 15, 2013 by Wendy Boswell, Intel®