Inspiration from users

A surprisingly small number of developers ever get to actually meet the end users of their software. Even at Atomic, with small teams and direct customer contact with the team, it’s not so common that we meet, much less observe, the actual people who consume the software we build. Chad Fowler makes the point that closing this loop is a critical part of software craftsmanship.

I had this opportunity last week. Our customer, the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank Group), held a partners conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Local partners of the SME Toolkit came from all over the developing world to train on the new features in the Toolkit, share their stories, and make suggestions for future features.

Hearing the stories from the partners of how the Toolkit helps their local SMEs was inspirational—there’s a lot of leverage in this project, and it’s one I’m particularly proud to be part of. (Receiving all the compliments on our team’s work is always fun, too, and a nice payback for the 15+ hour plane flights.) I’m returning to work inspired by the great people I met, excited to help specify new features, and proud of the work we do to support the Toolkit.