The Freelancers' Show

Panel

Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jim Gay (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up)

Discussion
01:39 - Addressing Team Issues

Implementing Change

Stand-Up Meetings

04:44 - Stand-Up Meeting Issues

07:37 - Organization Politics

Expetise Experience

11:21 - Idea Resistence

People Problems Control

18:16 - Problematic Coworkers

20:26 - Team Communication

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

Skype

Hubot

Campfire

GoToMeeting
Adobe Connect
Google+ Hangouts

tmux

28:10 - Assigning Tickets & Stories

36:22 - Finding Solutions to Problems You Don’t Understand

38:04 - When Change Doesn’t Happen

Satisfaction Level

40:01 - Management Issues/Changes

42:43 - Team Planning

Planning Poker Estimations

48:17 - Ideas for Integration

Leveraging Experience

Picks

Poor man’s guide to managing Ruby versions (Jim) Extreme Programming Pocket Guide (Eric) Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby by Sandi Metz (Chuck)

Transcript
ERIC: Helloooooooo!

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CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 43 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis.

ERIC: Hello!

CHUCK: We also have Jim Gay.

JIM: I'm back!

CHUCK: You are back! We missed you!

JIM: Thank you.

CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and I've been working hard on railsrampup.com. So if you wanna learn Ruby on Rails, go check it out!

Alright, this week we're going to be talking about -- I don't know what the title of the show would be yet, but we're going to be talking about like improving team, processes, communication, etcetera, etcetera. When you're a freelancer on the team and -- we may go into like what you can do when you're new, what you can do when you've been around and earn some street cred, but let's just jump in and talk about some of the stuff. Just to kick it off, I generally like to just come up with something that's relevant from my experience. I'm working on a team right now, and the things that actually been reasonably good over there. And most of the time if I have a concern, or a thought, or an idea, I can just get away with going to the Director over the project and he'll usually talk through it with me and then implement a change if it's good idea. So, I just kind of wanna throw that out there because sometimes the solution is pretty simple.

JIM: Yeah! I've definitely done that; making sure that I'm constantly talking to whoever the project manager is. I don't know, I've kind of looked at conversations like around process and comments and say "You know, I've noticed this and I wonder about changing it to that". Just in terms of thinking like "let's try it!" or maybe "we should try it!". Or if you don't wanna try it, fine. I'm sure there will have other things. But I've never felt like even though sometimes I felt really strongly, we really ought to find a better way to communicate or something like that. I never tried to put my foot down like "look, it must be done this way". And sometimes I feel like I want to be the guy who will do that,