Our list of demands

I am working on a rewrite of the web tier at work. We’ve set this up as a “dugnad” where we do a section at a time with the team responsible for that part of our service. This effort is called the Strap-on Project and each section should take max 3 weeks (which is our release cycle). When we bring in people (max 2) we have a list of demands in order to make things work:

  • No meetings or similar activities during your stay with us
  • The person joining in is responsible for all communication with the rest of his team
  • There will be no status meetings or similar activities except what the person joining does on daily stand up with his team

These points might seem odd, but you’d be amazed how happy people are to hear them. After the three week spell there is a case of strap-on blues. Because nothing beats just working, right?

The core Strap-on team does not communicate with the team we work with. This sounds strange, but the purpose is to make sure the team responsible for the section we work with feels ownership and take responsibility for the end result.

This is not some magic formula. It is just what we figured would be a way of doing it and it probably won’t work anywhere else.