This line of articles just doesn’t seem to want to die!
Okay, so….
Today is day 3 of the filter coffee machine near where my team sits being broken despite repeated repair attempts.
There’s one on the floor below but that means carrying full cups of hot coffee all over the building - it seems most of us have been drinking alternatives most of the time for a few days.
We weren’t really aware of the effect this was having on us until we spotted it yesterday!
Sat in a team meeting. A usually energised team were so lethargic we actually called the session short, had lunch and took a walk to the pub to wake ourselves up!
If that’s the impact going cold-turkey on filter coffee had on a 30 minute team meeting, I’m dreading seeing what it did to team productivity this week.
However…
Anyone that’s given up smoking will know that by day 3, the worst seems to be over, as nicotine levels in the body drop further and withdrawal dies down.
Today had been my most productive day all week.
- It might be that I’ve finally capitulated to instant caffeinated coffee rather than very good – but not very caffeinated – tea.
- It might be that the half-life of coffee in my system has dropped below withdrawal symptom level.
- It might just be that I’ve gotten over a momentum hurdle on some of my work.
Chatting to another of the team, their sentiment is the same so I don’t think it’s just me. Now we’ve recognised the risk, we’re making the effort to reach the other machine.
Regardless - it’s a little disturbing (but in hindsight quite obvious) how much the continuous supply of good filter coffee impacts the energy levels of a development team!
Advice to managers – good coffee is a necessity, not a perk.
About The Dread Pirate Crom
Captain Crom started programming and debugging games from magazines on his Brother’s BBC as a small boy in the early 1980s. With early qualifications in both computer science & art and a love of live music it became clear he was destined for bad things.
His tyrannical ways commenced with a degree in Computing & Informatics at Plymouth and from the mid 1990's a career in the software industry. After formative years as "The Scourge of the Thames Valley" between Reading and Bracknell with occasional raids on the San Francisco Bay area, since 2004 he has been seen sailing stretches of the A10 North and South of the Isle of Ely with the primary source of his raids targeted around Cambridge. Sightings have also been rumored as far afield as Scotland, Norway, India, Nevada, Florida and Georgia.
The Captain has served in companies ranging from successful startups and ailing dot-coms to global corporations, spanning roles from IT, consulting, support, development and management through to agile coaching.
The common thread in each of his roles is that he has always chosen to join software product groups - usually large-scale enterprise software. His large-scale product and organizational focus differentiates him from the more common textbook agile captains.
(Other differentiators include his distinctive hoop earrings and love of spiced rum)
The Captain's Agile experience started with a blend of FDD and XP in what he describes as "the most disciplined team he had ever served with". He subsequently moved onto using Scrum and XP blended with Theory Of Constraints, Kanban and Lean philosophies to improve software delivery techniques in other organizations.
He believes every member of a delivery team should spend time with customers supporting the product they produced. “Sitting at the dirty end of a product (or cutlass) completely changes the way you think about business processes and write software for the rest of your softwarefaring career!”
