One Year on from ThoughtWorks University

by Khali Young, Developer

ThoughtWorks University provided me with a lot of the context around what I was going to be doing on the job. This didn't stop me from feeling nervous and overwhelmed when going onto my first project. There was still the inescapable fact of lack of experience. My first project had been going for almost a year when I arrived. This meant there was a sizeable code base. There were several technologies being used that I had never touched. I had a lot to learn. I stayed on this project for 8 months and did just that.

It was not a good time to join the project. ThoughtWorks was running an Agile project, delivering a system that talked to many other systems all of which were being developed in a waterfall fashion. Pressure was mounting and not everyone was bought into the Agile practices which made things difficult.

It wasn't all bad though, everyone on the project was very friendly and the work environment was not overly tense (besides some overtime here and there). The ThoughtWorkers on the project had regular meetings and I had ThoughtWorks coffee buddies that I'd go out with every day. During these sessions discussion took place giving me a lot of perspective on the situation we were in. This was fantastic for developing a good consulting perspective. A few months after I started work on the project, the team was ramped up sizeably (with non-ThoughtWorkers). When this happened, I went from being a graduate who felt overwhelmed, to someone who knew their way around the system. I was asked questions regularly about the system and how bits of the system should be designed. This was very strange for me - going from feeling completely junior to somewhat senior! I think it was good for my confidence.

Now I'm a few weeks into my second project. Many aspects of this project are completely different. This team has 4 developers (3 of which are ThoughtWorkers) compared to the last team which had around 25 developers (5 of which were ThoughWorkers). We have total control of the project. We started from scratch. It is completely Agile. I certainly felt a lot more confident starting. This has not stopped me feeling a little overwhelmed at times. I guess that will always be the case to some degree starting on a new project. If I started my first project knowing what I now know, I would have been more confident with my lack of technical knowledge. This is part of the job, there is always going to be more to learn.

If I did not go to ThoughtWorks University, I believe I would have felt even more overwhelmed. I would also have had to learnt about the context of my job as well as new technologies and all in an unforgiving environment. This would have been very tough. Instead I had a sense of what it meant to be a consultant, how Agile worked and the practices that were involved. This was a tremendous benefit.

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