This week, we got the opportunity to essentially job shadow a developer at a company. It was a very interesting and eye opening experience. Everyone at the company were nice and very helpful. I got the opportunity to meet the other devleopers that others in my class would be shadowing. They were friendly and talked to us for a few minutes before they took the couple of students up. Everyone seemed very enthusiastic about their jobs.

When I got up to the floor where I’d be spending the day, I immediately noticed the atmosphere. It was very quiet and almost everything was grey. People were working in their cubicles but everyone was very focused. When we got into the office, I kind of expected to see some personal things, but there was nothing. The whole floor was really devoid of all personality in terms of decorations.

The person I was assigned to had a variety of managerial responsibilities. He was supervising several teams, so he had a lot of meetings to attend. I was able to observe two stand up meetings, a meeting for a close and opening of a sprint, and a project planning meeting. Each meeting provided me an opportunity to see how members on the team interacted with each other as well as to see agile practices in action. It helped me to understand the roles that each person had on a team and that each person needed to feel that their voice and opinions were heard. I definitely noticed the SCRUM master doing her job of managing the conversation and ensuring that the team made progress.