The Frontend Club

February 4 saw the first meeting of our Frontend Club

At our meeting we aim to:

1. Transfer our vast knowledge to our younger colleagues;
2. Discuss relevant problems in production;
3. Share our expertise and potential solutions for current issues;
4. Discuss any and all innovations and tools that can help increase our performance.

The club’s first meeting was devoted to the topic “Estimation. How to give the right estimates? How to conform to sub-optimal estimates, perform, and show initiative?”

 

In the course of the meeting, we discussed the biggest “pain points” in the project estimation process. We began with project formats, their varieties, and how to approach the task of estimation. That conversation covered our first two goals.

 

After that we turned our attention to potential solutions for trivial and not-so-trivial issues and tasks we may, or have already encountered on active projects. Of course, we brought up mistakes we have made in all processes. Although whether we should call them mistakes or experiments is a matter of some debate. To elaborate: you can dig through tons of documents describing millions of best practices, but we all know that any project/product (much like development in general) is unpredictable. So, it’s better to think of it as a chess game. It’s the same set of pieces, but with millions of possible moves and combinations. That is precisely why our team of specialists is not afraid of experimenting. Try a new approach -> fail -> try a different one. Try a new approach -> save on development time and/or reduce difficulty by 10% -> success, keep using it.

 

That took care of items 3 and 4 on our list. In the end, we summed up what we learned, and chose the date for the next get-together.

 

What did we get as a result? A pleasant surprise for both the employees and the Unit Manager. Besides reaching all the goals set before the event, every member of the club got a boost of positivity and motivation for their current tasks and projects. Such a positive effect can be attributed to the interesting format and the novelty of the event itself. It had nothing in common with traditional meetups, courses or lectures, which have all grown a bit stale by this point. The club succeeded in transforming the shapeless blob of information written in dull documents, and presenting it to colleagues in an easily digestible and entertaining manner. More of a friendly chat than a training session.

“Friendly” is the operative word, as Exposit is not a family or a gathering of bros, but a team of qualified specialists who can solve a limitless range of business tasks supplied by our customers.