Carl Bruiners Agile / IT Development Consultant

Professional pride

For me one of the key characteristics of a good worker is that they have professional pride in what they deliver. Not a quality obsessive who keeps over engineering a piece of code to make it 'perfect', for those reading this who fall into that category perfection is subjective and often means little in valuable return with diminishing returns (a future blog post) and aren't normally working in a TDD environment.

Someone with professional pride wants to get the job done right and deliver on time with a hint of exceeding the expectations of those they report to / deliver to.

Characteristics of someone with professional pride;

• Chips in when a team member is struggling
• Doesn't like letting the team down
• Works overtime to get the job done if they fell behind
• Push's the technical edge slightly without risking the timeline or complicating the product
• Constructively helps drive the team to meet the required QA within the commitment period
• Personally feels responsible for a successful delivery
• Thrives on kudos and not only focused on money (though the persons boss should reward accordingly for a individual having professional pride)
• Willing to take on challenges outside of their expertise when asked
• Wants to help raise the teams productivity, efficiency, etc..
• Wants to demonstrate a piece of tech or an improved way to work / product enhancement that they have researched in their own time

Characteristics of someone 'lacking' professional pride;

• Doesn't care if they fail to meet a commitment
• Doesn't care if the team fails to meet its commitment as long as they have completed their work
• Fails to communicate any risks at the earliest possible point
• Doesn't want to help assist a team mate in trouble
• Makes excuses for not being able to work outside of their comfort zone when required (i.e. coding language, product domain, etc...)
• Only concerned with getting paid and doesn't care about the success of the product
• Only enjoys the glory jobs and shy's away from mucking in when required
• Doesn't care.... feel free to add any point here

There are more characteristics, but I like to time box each posting I write to a maximum of 20mins, so I'll revisit the lists above again in the near future.