Episode 95 of the Ruby Rogues podcast got me thinking about my previous roles as a developer and how I interacted with my team.

It’s interesting that of all the roles I have had in the last 10 years, I can only count one of them as being a true eye opener in terms of team interaction. My role in an recent team, although short, was the most positive experience I have had.

At the start of each day the team would gather for a daily stand-up where we would go over yesterday’s progress and do a quick overview of what’s in store for today. There was some chat at the start about the latest designs on Qwertree and football results from the previous night. Just enough of an ice breaker for everyone to get comfortable and then commence the stand-up meeting.

At the end of it, everyone knew what they were doing for the day and what everyone else in the team was doing. There was no negative comments on anyone’s part, and if anyone one member of the team had a problem, the rest of the team tried to provide quick suggestions as solutions.

Positive team interaction didn’t stop there.

During the day, we would frequently pair up with another developer to work on a task until it was complete. During this time a high amount of interaction took place between the different pairs on the team for that day. Sharing ideas for problems, learning from one another's coding styles and of course the odd jibe at your preferred text editor.

Team interaction was always high during this time. It was great to see developers sit down together, regardless of level of experience, and move the development team’s project forward by quickly completely the task they were assigned at the start of the day.

I only worked with this team for a short period of time, but it was the most positive example I have seen of a team enforcing positive team interaction. Those readers who are aware of agile practices will immediately see that the team I am praising is in fact a team that uses agile practices.

The amazing thing is that they aren’t doing anything that isn’t achievable by many other teams who have poor interaction and communication amongst their members. All it takes is a change of attitude.