mwdalrymple

I LOVE JIRA. The team that I run has a high level of overhead with the system that we have built and support (just due to the nature of what we do) ans we have constructed a great operations dashboard using Jira. I extensively use Epics, Labels and Components to slice and dice our tickets to keep track of where my team spends their time, what parts of our system are problematic, etc.

The Dashboard within Jira that we created has been really great as I have been using it along the charts it produces to communicate with my business partners. The data that we collect isn't perfect, but its good enough to construct a narrative that my business partners can grok. I have most recently used this information to help in successful pitch for a strategic re-design of our systems as well as an ambitious resourcing proposal to go along with it. Knowing how much of your time is lost to overhead allows me to plan ahead and justify the people that I need to make the redesign happen.

Jira having an API has been a real boon too. Personally I have used it with Python to mine for additional data that I need in reporting where the Jira dashboard is insufficient. I have also had my team's dedicate DevOps engineer drive all sorts of integrated work flow automation to ease the development process. My team operates within a large bureaucratic organization, so having the capability to automate all the artifacts for compliance has been a real time savings.

The integration with Confluence is awesome. It really makes managing my teams work so much easier. I love to collect meeting feedback notes in confluence and then tag the bullet points with Jira tasks that I create as follow up work. The Jira issue tables driven by JQL (Jiras Issue Query Language) are super useful when I need to create project plans that combine a mixture of content. I love just dropping in a list of all the tickets that we have outstanding.

I would not be nearly as effective w/o the combination of both tools.

Lucidchart is amazing - love the simultaneous editing. Its the best thing that I have come across for collaborative whiteboarding. It also has great integration with Confluence.

I disagree with that statement. I find that a junior dev is far less jaded by the work world and will often develop a loyalty and dedicate to the team (if it is a good environment) that a sr. Dev wouldn't. Once your are 5 to 10 years into your career how you view your work/life balance and professional relationships changes dramatically.

A junior dev will often stay with an organization much much longer than what is probably good for them, especially if they are actively mentored and engaged.

I would consider soliciting a formal mentor here on hackernews. Hacking on a open source project together would be a way to recieve that help in a remote fashion.

Sounds like there should be a thread to match mentors and mentees here on hackernews. Maybe a bunch of mentors post some open source projects that they want mentees for?

I agree with what you are saying in that it needs to be called out that time needs to be specifically set aside in agile / sprint planning for mentoring. My manager understood this and I was allocated at least a day sprint to just 'mentor' my junior dev through a 8 months rotational stint in the team. Mentorship is very rewarding and I found out that I got just as much out of the relationship as they did. It also helped that for the first 4 weeks I was allowed to run her through a self lead learning program that I designed for them. Giving a new hire out of univiristy time to learn enough of what they needed to tackle some high value work just made the final outcome so much more successful.

My wife works at McMaster. Lots of great research happening there.

But are these little businesses on the books contributing tax revenue?

The LCBO is a good employer for stupid people. Those salaries go right back into the economy. These unionized jobs also come with a great pension providing retirement security. I am quite happy with this.

The government privatizing things such as Ontario Hydro has been a huge disaster. At least they are not stupid enough to give this up.