PM Camp III Report in Dnepropetrovsk
Not so long ago, on November 5-6, Ciklum's Dnepropetrovsk office organized the already traditional PM Camp, hospitably collecting both current managers and employees from the managerial reserve, as well as their clients who wanted to share their management experience and get to know the people who ensure their success. business.
We did not make a boring and lengthy press release, and decided that it was better to give the floor to one of the participants, whose essay we give to your attention. Details - under habrakat.
PS Grammar and style saved.
')
The end of the week before last was marked for me by attending a very curious event called PM Camp. It was organized as part of a campaign conducted by Siclum to exchange experience and improve managerial staff. Despite the fact that I am a technical person, it was nice that there was a place at the event not only for managers at various levels, but also for mere mortals like me. It is worth noting that this is the third such event, which was organized by the company over the past years, as well as the second, which I managed to attend in person.
Before turning to the description of the event itself, I would like to share my own, perhaps subjective, opinion about the benefits of such camps for technical people or those who have no direct relation to management. First of all, communication, communication, and again communication. At the very first PM Camp, I met wonderful people from Kharkov and Kiev, and, of course, I was glad to see them again, but here in Dnepropetrovsk.
Communication is an extremely important component of such an event, because we all have our own projects, our customers and, often, common problems. Every day we are confronted with the solution of similar problems and we accept essentially the same challenges: communication with the client, organization of development processes within teams, and our technical problems are similar to each other like twin brothers. Direct communication, with people interested, often allows you to look at the situation with a fresh look, and, sometimes, it just gives rise to completely new ideas that offer us the most effective ways to solve problems.
The second undoubted plus of PM Camp is the clients of our company, the opportunity to look at the business through their eyes, to feel their expectations. To realize their goals is worth a lot. Often, being on one side of the monitor, it is difficult to understand the motives that drive a person on the other side of the fiber. Personal communication eliminates discomfort and makes it possible to establish contact, which is important in further work, and this allows you to work and communicate with the client in a more comfortable, trusting environment. And the opportunity to just practice in English is never worth neglecting.
Actually you can talk about the event itself indefinitely, but let the court chroniclers take care of it. I will tell you about the venue, the atmosphere prevailing there, as well as some of the activities that I had to visit.
The venue was chosen country hotel complex «GoodZone», which is located on the shores of a wonderful forest lake and river 35 km from Dnepropetrovsk. Do not think for advertising, but the place makes more than just a positive impression. The hotel area has more to relax and passive recreation than to work: a peaceful pine forest, neat winding paths between trees, houses with terraces and real marinas, friendly staff. In the end, I reminded myself that I had come to the training - that is, to work, but for myself I firmly decided that the next time I would take my family with me and then we would definitely rest to the full.
Upon arrival, each participant was given a personal package with the event logo and other, mandatory for such meetings, attributes: a company notebook and pen, a program with a detailed schedule of activities, business cards and, importantly, a map of the relaxation center itself. The first serious activity, not counting breakfast, was to be the grand opening of the event. 150 - 160 cyclists and their guests gathered at 11:00 in the Grand Conference Hall. For me the most important thing is that this part was absolutely not tightened, the number of keynote speeches was kept to a minimum, and everyone could feel the atmosphere of the upcoming celebration of communication.
In the same place, at the opening, our speakers-presenters were personally represented and the working program of both days of work was described in some detail. Each of the speakers tried to attract as many people as possible to their own performance and it was visible to the naked eye that they were worried that they could remain with an empty hall in front of themselves and that none of them was constraining themselves in eloquence before a potential audience. According to the results of eloquence, I decided to go to the presentation of Katia Kurtz, which I did not regret in the future.
What can you say about the performance of Kati? Probably the fact that it was sincere. Sincere, honest, and - exclusively German. The presentation took place in a small but cozy conference hall on the second floor of the hotel business center, there were no free seats at all. A company from Germany only recently joined the collaboration with Ciklum, but, despite this, they were ready to present their own flexible software development and support model for everyone to see. The system was presented in conjunction with the use of the original metrics system, which, in my opinion, with German thoroughness and, it should be noted, not without success, tries to embrace the immense.
I was and remain delighted with the directness and honesty with which Katya shared the problems that their company went through on the way of implementing Agile in projects, as well as the ways in which the company solved the problems that arose in its way. Just like in life - a sequence of ups and downs, with a tireless desire to achieve the highest quality results in time. At the end of the presentation, one rather juicy situation arose, when someone from the audience tried to protest the fact that an increase in investment in QA was an obvious achievement of the German company. There was a discussion. Later, I thought that it could be because they look at investing in QA and in the quality of their own product a little differently than many of us have and the roads are many times better than ours. Well, let's not talk about sad things.
The first afternoon event was to be a business game. To my deep regret, I could not visit her, but later I was quite pleased with the fact that our local guys were able to win the main prize there. Following the game, there was again a difficult choice for where to go next. The choice offered: Speakers corner, World Cafe and Debates. I decided to go to the debate. The topic of the debate “Introducing changes: Evolution vs Revolution”, examples and controversial situations for the debate are copied from real-life projects. Our team did not get the simplest scenario: to defend the position of revolutionaries and protect developers from the manager they dislike, and the customer liked the project. From the position of a union worker, the option is excellent, read Bingo, but our opponents were managers, and the expert judges were clients. Evolution is boring - with this mood the debate has come to its logical end.
Next was dinner, and after it was a wonderful evening entertainment program prepared by enthusiasts from the ranks of managers and guys from the Dnepropetrovsk administration team, at the end of which all participants of the event received gifts, and countless balloons were released. I can not say for everyone, but we decided to postpone the call for several hours, as a result, we enjoyed nature with guitar accompaniment, although perhaps this is a completely different story ...
The second day consisted exclusively of trainings. Ten trainings to choose from, six trainers and a dozen topical (and not so) topics. It would be appropriate to note that we did not have the opportunity to visit all of them. The trainings were held in parallel, and therefore each of us, in the end, had to sacrifice something. I had to confine myself to two four-hour trainings and a farewell speech by the organizers. Without overloading with details, I can say that the day was again extremely intense and already habitually filled with communication.
I went home late on Saturday with the feeling that it was still Saturday, and the houses were already waiting for me. But it’s not for nothing that they say that many of us feel at home in slippers at work.
Juice
We did not make a boring and lengthy press release, and decided that it was better to give the floor to one of the participants, whose essay we give to your attention. Details - under habrakat.
PS Grammar and style saved.
')
The end of the week before last was marked for me by attending a very curious event called PM Camp. It was organized as part of a campaign conducted by Siclum to exchange experience and improve managerial staff. Despite the fact that I am a technical person, it was nice that there was a place at the event not only for managers at various levels, but also for mere mortals like me. It is worth noting that this is the third such event, which was organized by the company over the past years, as well as the second, which I managed to attend in person.
Before turning to the description of the event itself, I would like to share my own, perhaps subjective, opinion about the benefits of such camps for technical people or those who have no direct relation to management. First of all, communication, communication, and again communication. At the very first PM Camp, I met wonderful people from Kharkov and Kiev, and, of course, I was glad to see them again, but here in Dnepropetrovsk.
Communication is an extremely important component of such an event, because we all have our own projects, our customers and, often, common problems. Every day we are confronted with the solution of similar problems and we accept essentially the same challenges: communication with the client, organization of development processes within teams, and our technical problems are similar to each other like twin brothers. Direct communication, with people interested, often allows you to look at the situation with a fresh look, and, sometimes, it just gives rise to completely new ideas that offer us the most effective ways to solve problems.
The second undoubted plus of PM Camp is the clients of our company, the opportunity to look at the business through their eyes, to feel their expectations. To realize their goals is worth a lot. Often, being on one side of the monitor, it is difficult to understand the motives that drive a person on the other side of the fiber. Personal communication eliminates discomfort and makes it possible to establish contact, which is important in further work, and this allows you to work and communicate with the client in a more comfortable, trusting environment. And the opportunity to just practice in English is never worth neglecting.
Actually you can talk about the event itself indefinitely, but let the court chroniclers take care of it. I will tell you about the venue, the atmosphere prevailing there, as well as some of the activities that I had to visit.
The venue was chosen country hotel complex «GoodZone», which is located on the shores of a wonderful forest lake and river 35 km from Dnepropetrovsk. Do not think for advertising, but the place makes more than just a positive impression. The hotel area has more to relax and passive recreation than to work: a peaceful pine forest, neat winding paths between trees, houses with terraces and real marinas, friendly staff. In the end, I reminded myself that I had come to the training - that is, to work, but for myself I firmly decided that the next time I would take my family with me and then we would definitely rest to the full.
Upon arrival, each participant was given a personal package with the event logo and other, mandatory for such meetings, attributes: a company notebook and pen, a program with a detailed schedule of activities, business cards and, importantly, a map of the relaxation center itself. The first serious activity, not counting breakfast, was to be the grand opening of the event. 150 - 160 cyclists and their guests gathered at 11:00 in the Grand Conference Hall. For me the most important thing is that this part was absolutely not tightened, the number of keynote speeches was kept to a minimum, and everyone could feel the atmosphere of the upcoming celebration of communication.
In the same place, at the opening, our speakers-presenters were personally represented and the working program of both days of work was described in some detail. Each of the speakers tried to attract as many people as possible to their own performance and it was visible to the naked eye that they were worried that they could remain with an empty hall in front of themselves and that none of them was constraining themselves in eloquence before a potential audience. According to the results of eloquence, I decided to go to the presentation of Katia Kurtz, which I did not regret in the future.
What can you say about the performance of Kati? Probably the fact that it was sincere. Sincere, honest, and - exclusively German. The presentation took place in a small but cozy conference hall on the second floor of the hotel business center, there were no free seats at all. A company from Germany only recently joined the collaboration with Ciklum, but, despite this, they were ready to present their own flexible software development and support model for everyone to see. The system was presented in conjunction with the use of the original metrics system, which, in my opinion, with German thoroughness and, it should be noted, not without success, tries to embrace the immense.
I was and remain delighted with the directness and honesty with which Katya shared the problems that their company went through on the way of implementing Agile in projects, as well as the ways in which the company solved the problems that arose in its way. Just like in life - a sequence of ups and downs, with a tireless desire to achieve the highest quality results in time. At the end of the presentation, one rather juicy situation arose, when someone from the audience tried to protest the fact that an increase in investment in QA was an obvious achievement of the German company. There was a discussion. Later, I thought that it could be because they look at investing in QA and in the quality of their own product a little differently than many of us have and the roads are many times better than ours. Well, let's not talk about sad things.
The first afternoon event was to be a business game. To my deep regret, I could not visit her, but later I was quite pleased with the fact that our local guys were able to win the main prize there. Following the game, there was again a difficult choice for where to go next. The choice offered: Speakers corner, World Cafe and Debates. I decided to go to the debate. The topic of the debate “Introducing changes: Evolution vs Revolution”, examples and controversial situations for the debate are copied from real-life projects. Our team did not get the simplest scenario: to defend the position of revolutionaries and protect developers from the manager they dislike, and the customer liked the project. From the position of a union worker, the option is excellent, read Bingo, but our opponents were managers, and the expert judges were clients. Evolution is boring - with this mood the debate has come to its logical end.
Next was dinner, and after it was a wonderful evening entertainment program prepared by enthusiasts from the ranks of managers and guys from the Dnepropetrovsk administration team, at the end of which all participants of the event received gifts, and countless balloons were released. I can not say for everyone, but we decided to postpone the call for several hours, as a result, we enjoyed nature with guitar accompaniment, although perhaps this is a completely different story ...
The second day consisted exclusively of trainings. Ten trainings to choose from, six trainers and a dozen topical (and not so) topics. It would be appropriate to note that we did not have the opportunity to visit all of them. The trainings were held in parallel, and therefore each of us, in the end, had to sacrifice something. I had to confine myself to two four-hour trainings and a farewell speech by the organizers. Without overloading with details, I can say that the day was again extremely intense and already habitually filled with communication.
I went home late on Saturday with the feeling that it was still Saturday, and the houses were already waiting for me. But it’s not for nothing that they say that many of us feel at home in slippers at work.
Juice
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/108473/
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