A day with our adessi: Guus de Wit

Every week, there is one day where I have to get up a little earlier than usual. No bother, for as you will see, we have plenty to look forward to on our weekly office day at the Rabobank! However, that does unfortunately not start with the morning rush hour...

After reaching the office while dealing with traffic jams, kamikaze truck drivers and an overloaded parking garage, the fun can finally begin with the informal "pre-standup" at the coffee machine. Having caught up with my colleagues, I hurry over to my laptop to get a little bit of work done before the meeting block starts. This is the perfect time to look at some pull requests and start a couple of pipelines.

At 10 o'clock sharp, we start the standup. As man of the week, I share my screen to the people working from home and we go over the sprint board. Part of my responsibility here is to make sure we don't dwell too long on specific backlog items. We know that at 10:30 the refinement session will begin, so luckily, we have a bit of time left to grab a coffee and check if our services are still running smoothly.

Before the refinement begins, we quickly decide on a number and say: "Today, let's poker everything as a 3", as our way of streamlining the experience a bit. All jokes aside, we go in-depth over the tickets our Product Owner has prepared, making sure the work is clearly defined and acceptance criteria are noted down. And then we poker it as a 3. We expect the refinement not to take very long, but after one and a half hours of discussions, the time has flown by. Now we have to quickly reach the next consensus: where to go for lunch?

Getting some air and going for a quick walk are always the perfect excuses to get lunch at one of the shops near the station. If you are ever around Utrecht Centraal and want to get a sandwich, I would recommend "Broodje Gerry" (but do check how long the queue is before you commit to it).

In the afternoon, meetings are less frequent, so we pair up and get some coding done. Pair programming helps us to tackle problems more swiftly and it's always nice to have someone to spar with. We develop and maintain multiple backend services which are used all throughout the bank, so it's beneficial that we are always on top of (potential) issues and keep the communication lines short between us and our users.

After a couple of hours, it is time for the big finale of the day: the weekly board game session! Every week, one of us brings something to play, since it is important to also have fun with the team. If you are looking for tips on what kinds of games to play with your team: look out for my next blog where I will give some recommendations. I'm sure there will be something that fits your taste!

And that's it! After another successful and entertaining office day, it's time to drive home and enjoy the rest of the evening.