Beyond the Backlog: A Junior Dev's Six Months at Mavericks

Hello, Chian Hao here! I’ve been working in Mavericks Consulting as a Junior Consultant for 6 months. Prior to this, I’ve been working as a software engineer for the last 3 years, ranging from industries like public health and safety to telecommunications. 

The Journey so Far

Joining a tech consulting firm for the first time, there were a lot of adjustments that I had to make. In my brief time here, I’ve embarked on 3-4 different projects, all with different technological stacks and business requirements. They also ranged from building solutions from scratch to long-term maintenance and support projects. Working on these different projects has really helped me gain experience in the full range of the development cycle and their processes.

I’ve also had the opportunity to work in a variety of roles, such as the Epic Owner that is in charge of planning sprints, to the Scrum Master that is responsible for conducting standups and retrospectives. I also had to prepare end-of-sprint showcases which I had not done since public speaking modules during my uni days (I got a D-). Despite all this, work here is never stale nor boring, and every week presents a new challenge!

Agile in Action: Shortening the Feedback Loop

When I first joined Mavericks, I noticed that Agile principles were enforced on a daily basis. Before Mavericks, I found Agile to be very theoretical and it never felt intuitive or meaningful to apply to my previous work/projects. Suppose that you really stuck to it and worked closely by those principles, how would it affect the work that you do?

Here at Mavericks, there is a strong emphasis placed on iterating the product as quickly and as often as possible. This really pushed me to adapt my working approach and style. From my previous experiences, feedback was slow, and was usually done through emails or online messaging platforms like Slack. Otherwise, feedback or clarifications for task requirements had to be scheduled into meetings, and I was stuck waiting for those meetings to happen. Needless to say, waiting for feedback and my tickets was a huge cause of friction to my development velocity.

For some projects the downtime spent could severely impact the team from completing their sprint goals. This pressurized environment has pushed me to close my feedback loops as much as I can. Furthermore, the short timeframe really pushes you to really hone in on the work that would move the needle forward for the team as much as possible.

My Key Takeaways

Delivering an MVP quickly and frequently may seem restrictive and limited in scope, but I realised it sets a transparent working environment and a symbiotic relationship between all stakeholders involved in bringing a solution to market. Clients have more chances to interact with the product, reflect if the product solves their problems and provide feedback to the development team. As time goes on, the understanding of the problem can evolve and business requirements will shift accordingly. Iterating in this manner allows everyone to pivot quickly and ideate faster to build an overall better product.

My time at Mavericks has accelerated my exposure to new and evolving technologies and has pushed me to increase my agency as a developer. I am looking forward to what’s next in store for me during my time here!