Coding Dojo: an environment for learning and sharing Agile practices
A Coding Dojo is a meeting where a group of programmers gets together to learn, practice, and share experiences in an inclusive and collaborative environment, while solving together a programming challenge. In this session, the presenters will share their experiences of creating and running a Coding Dojo in São Paulo, Brazil. They will present their tailored process to conduct the sessions, outline lessons learned from the weekly meetings since the first session in July, 2007 and discuss the aspects of a Coding Dojo that foster learning and tacit knowledge sharing.
A Coding Dojo is a weekly meeting where a group of programmers gets together to learn, practice, and share experiences. The session is organized around a programming challenge (Code Kata) where people are encouraged to participate and share their coding skills with the audience while solving the problem. In an inclusive and collaborative environment, the participants discuss and practice a wide range of topics, such as: TDD/BDD, Agile, refactoring, pair programming, OO, design, Algorithms, different programming languages, paradigms, and frameworks.
In this session, the presenters will share their experiences of creating and running a Coding Dojo in São Paulo, Brazil. They will present their tailored process to conduct the sessions, improved over time by retrospectives. They will also discuss the aspects of a Coding Dojo that foster learning and tacit knowledge sharing, presenting the lessons learned from the weekly meetings being held since the first session in July, 2007.
Introduction (10 min)
- Why a Coding Dojo?
- What is a Coding Dojo?
- Coding Dojo @ São Paulo
- Our numbers (session agenda, # of participants, # of meetings, …)
- Our process
- Our roles
Lessons Learned (10 min)
- What went well?
- The goal is not to finish
- Information radiators
- Communication
- Inspiration for the meeting
- What went less well?
- Moderating brazilians (hard not to speak on red)
- TDD/BDD and algorithms
- Balancing randoris and prepared katas
- Programming environment
- What puzzles us?
- How to reach a wider audience?
- How to share our efforts with the community?
- How to keep attendees engaged?
Dojo and Learning (10 min)
- Deliberate practice
- Collaboration and self-organization
- Creating and sharing knowledge
- No single master
PS: The “Lessons Learned” represent our current view on the subject, reflecting the experience of the last 8 months. Until the conference, we may have more to share and the proposed time for each section may change.