Marshmallows and Constructive Conversation
Have your conversations at work gone in the wrong direction? Has the impact of what you are saying been lost because of when it was said? The type and manner of what you say should change depending on where you are in the software development lifecycle:
- Conversations about risk are too late to have their full worth if they happen in planning meetings.
- Feedback about team issues may be good when saved for retros, but that may be too late for some interpersonal feedback.
- The same person you can be blunt with in design meetings may become defensive when talking about code quality.
Come learn about feedback within the context of building a physical object using marshmallows and toothpicks! You’ll get your hands a bit, well, sticky, and you’ll get perspectives from a quality engineer and an engineering manager who have made their share of mistakes and are better for it.
Building good software requires good collaboration, which in turn requires sensitivity to timing, people, and context. These skills can be learned! We’ll give you a framework for interpersonal feedback, questions and conversations to raise at different stages of development, and discuss the intricacies of code-related feedback.
