With the benefits of having a tech book club in an office, the next steps are to figure out how to get it setup.
What are the logistics?
The great thing about self-organizing teams is the autonomy to decide how to go about coordination. The downside is not knowing what to do in those situations.
Before anything can really get off the ground, initiatives like this need support from the higher ups (typically management). Before you have this conversation it helps to first prepare for what you’re going to be asked.
- What you want to do and why (Start a book club, because they’re great)
- Who’s interested (Talk to other employees, who’s going to participate?)
- What you want from the company.
- Buying the books to read, that then get re-circulated into a company library for later use and reference.
- Approval for a weekly time slot for members to meet in a room and talk.
- How it gives back to the company.
- Self-improvement, communication, leadership, learning centers.
When selecting the next book to read
- Solicit members around the office for the next round of the book club.
- Survey members of the book club for recommendations.
- Have a vote on the next book everyone would like to read.
- Send a request to your manager for which book and the number of participants.
- Find out what time slot works best for everyone and set a recurring meeting.
After finishing a book
- Summarize the group’s final thoughts.
- Organize a presentation or Lunch and Learn to share what you’ve learnt.
- Return the books and let people know they’re there as a resource.
- Schedule a retro to discuss how things went and changes you’d like to make to the format of the club meetings.
Deciding on a book
We decided on Google docs to share our thoughts on what books to read. We listed them all out and decided on a date to open and close voting. Everyone who was involved voted on all the books they would be interested in reading and once finished we sent a request out to get the paperbacks ordered.
We had a conversation about if we prefer electronic or physical books and although there’s some great services for getting them online we found ample reason to go with paper.
- Physical copies can be kept around and used as an office library
- We already spend 8 hours a day looking at screens, using this would make a great break
- Left around the house, books make great self reminders
- Easier to flip through during open discussion for quoting purposes
You can find reading inspirations on sites that lists dev related books like pragprog.com or you could just google it.
For an example of books we first voted on, check out the recommendations below.
Going to the club
What to talk about
Now that everyone’s read the assigned chapter(s) it’s time to distribute some knowledge. It’s at these meetings where everyone gets a chance to talk about their thoughts and opinions on the reading. But with great meetings come great minutes, and even greater tangents. By taking notes and facilitating you’re making the time spent more result driven.
We focused our sessions by always returning our discussion back to what we Agree with / Liked, Disagree with / Dislike, and any additional Comments anyone wants to make
And if you’re looking to create action items the group could be asked What we would like to do or learn from this
How much
The question of what sort of commitment am I committing to comes up quickly with new initiatives and processes. To ensure we got through the content of a book quick enough, we decided to meet every Tuesday for an hour. Not planning on using all the time but keeping it open in case of longer discussions. We later found that the size of the time slot was too large and cut it in half to make it more accessible to those on a tighter schedule.
Reading between sessions?
This question answered itself for us in the first few weeks of reading Kent Beck’s Test Driven Development By Example. The TDD book, like it’s practice has very short chapters.
An excerpt from the team’s first few book club minutes.
How did we feel about the length of what we read?
- Too short, try 15 pages a week
- Next week Chapters 5 – 8
- Still too short, let’s read the first part of the book
- Next week Chapters 9 – 17 (p. 87)
- Last week we had too much content between sessions (reduced before this week)
- Next week Chapters 13 – 17 (p. 87)
- Pages 61 – 87 was manageable
- Next week Chapters 18 – 21
Too busy chopping
After the first few weeks you may have noticed a decreasing trend in the number of attendants. This sort of behavior can happen, in fact I think it’s to be expected. It’s easy for people to over commit, or change how they see priorities. Maybe they didn’t find time to read, or they’re too busy with some other work they’ve committed to. What are some options?
Can you encourage the people who didn’t read to join anyway? Although members who didn’t read the chapter may not be able to speak directly to the content we’ve found that they still contribute to the discussions and can provide to the conversation we have in a constructive manner.
- Being a part of the discussion also boosts people’s desire to keep reading
If not enough people read the passage we’ll sometimes reschedule the club for later in the week, if availability or overload of work makes it not possible we’ll decide to completely reschedule. We’ve had crazy weeks where the group decided it was best to delay the book club until next week (be cautious not to let this happen more than twice, any more and you may have a dead book club)
Find out what works for you
The correct format for a book club is relative to it’s situation and will require an iterative mindset to find out what works for you.
