The power of "Alone Together"

Andrea McAts — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 12:48:00 +0000

In my previous post about Bytesize Architecture sessions I described briefly that one of the key aspects of the session is to have “Alone together” time where each of the participants of the session will have a few minutes where they are working on the same task but not collaborating , and they are in the same room (virtual or not).

The quiet time allows a break to engage on the task at hand and have some time to think (time to think during a meeting is sadly underrated ). Because of it, each participant learns to:

Realise that sometimes they don’t have the full picture, and come up with more concrete areas for later investigation .
For people new to the system, it builds confidence in the parts of the systems they have learned by revisiting what they know. New people generally bring great questions. The questions some might have anyway but are tired of, or afraid to ask.
For some people with less confidence or experience, they generally realise how much they do know. It also has the effect of building on that experience since, this is a systems thinking exercise, with a very low failure risk.
Finally, with some iterations, the group can see that they have more or less homogeneous knowledge, and don’t need to always lean on the same people

Meetings are generally not very effective, getting all of that in a few minutes is the power of Alone Together

Bytesize Architecture Sessions

Andrea McAts — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 20:48:00 +0000

The more you do something, the better you get at it. It applies to software architecture too. How to do it more often?

People new to a codebase and those less experienced with programming generally have incomplete or incorrect mental models about the codebase. One would expect that as time passes, the mental models should become correct, how about being more deliberate about it?

Here is an easy to try option: Run a Bytesize architecture session:

An hour long recurrent meeting with your team. Bi-weekly at the start and you can phase it to once a month as people run out of things to draw.
Decide together a subset of the architecture you want to draw. This is not a test, it’s an opportunity to learn together about what you know and, most importantly, what you don’t know.
Set a timer for 5 minutes.
Separately, everyone draws in a piece of paper, this is “Alone Together” time. If you don’t know something, leave it blank.
When the timer goes off show each other what you drew. Yes, it’s kind of scary.
Discuss and find consensus on what is the resulting diagram should be. Finally record the diagram(s) created somewhere (e.g: draw.io, miro, plantuml, etc)

It is normal to forget some parts. Together you can make a better picture.

Outcomes

Understanding of whatever you decided to focus on the session will increase. Now you have concrete questions, and generally you can find the answers in the code.
Deliberately thinking about architecture with a cadence keeps the ideas fresh in people’s mind.
The resulting diagrams become a design tool that is inherently familiar to the team, since they created it.
The resulting diagrams highlight obvious areas for improvement.

What do you need to run a session

Cup of tea / coffee / water
1 hour with your team
pen and paper or an online board
Psychological safety (essential)

What is this practise trying to address

In most teams there is at least one person that has a high fidelity image of the architecture in their heads. It is common for other people in the team to defer questions and decisions about the architecture to that person, this is great (is it tho?) until that person is not available.
If everyone in the team has the same or similar picture of the architecture in their heads, they will make better decisions on their day to day.
I have tried this for a few years and it has proven super useful. Teams are happy to build this together and get a feeling of ownership.

DEV Community: Andrea McAts

The power of "Alone Together"

Bytesize Architecture Sessions

Outcomes

What do you need to run a session

What is this practise trying to address