Leverage Communities to Spread Better Practices
Communities (meetups, Slack groups, conferences, internal guilds, blog posts, newsletters) are where practices propagate. Not by mandate or theory, but by exposure and shared experience.
Hello, developers! 🚀
Welcome back to the Learn Agile Practices newsletter, your weekly dose of insights to power up your software development journey through Agile Technical Practices and Methodologies!5t
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Now, let's dive into today's micro-topic!
In short
💡 Many developers have never experienced high-quality software practices like test-driven development or continuous delivery. The article argues that this isn't because they resist improvement but because they simply don’t know better options exist. Exposure to effective methods is essential — you can't adopt what you've never seen.
🌍 Communities and peer conversations are the true engines of change. Whether it’s through blog posts, Slack messages, meetups, or lunch-and-learns, showing how your team works helps others imagine and apply those patterns. Real-world stories have more persuasive power than abstract best practices.
🧩 Sharing doesn’t require grand gestures. Small contributions — a tweet about rapid PRs, a gist about code review flows, or a short talk — can shift someone’s perspective. These micro-insights, when amplified across networks, help spread healthier and more efficient development cultures.
⚙️ Ultimately, developers who’ve witnessed effective ways of working have a responsibility to speak up. Sharing is what lifts the baseline. Better software isn't handed down — it grows from grassroots knowledge, peer examples, and everyday storytelling.
Tell people what you do, and listen what they do
The way your team works is not just a private matter — it’s a drop in the industry-wide pool.
If you care about clean code, continuous delivery, testability, or healthy workplaces, you need to tell people about it.
Too many developers work in environments where low standards are normalized. They’ve never seen TDD done well. Never seen trunk-based development in action. Never been part of a team that prioritizes quality and flow over ticket throughput.
And that’s a problem — because you can’t adopt what you don’t know exists.
Communities (meetups, Slack groups, conferences, internal guilds, blog posts, newsletters) are where practices propagate. Not by mandate or theory, but by exposure and shared experience.
This is why talking about your way of working matters: it shows what’s possible.
Working in a team where PRs last 2 hours tops? Say it out loud. Have 100% of code in production guarded by feature flags? Tell that story. Moving from monthly releases to daily deploys? Share the journey.
Because when developers hear these things from peers — not just unicorn companies — it becomes credible. And doable.
Awareness is Step Zero. Before change happens, someone needs to know there’s an alternative.
This is also where responsibility kicks in. If you’ve seen better ways of working, and never mention them, you’re not helping shift the baseline.
Software gets better when practices spread. Practices spread when people talk.
You don’t need to run a conference. Just:
Share your approach in community chats or retrospectives.
Give a 10-minute lightning talk at a meetup.
Publish a quick GitHub gist with how your team organises reviews.
Explain to a junior why your team values small deploys.
These micro-drops of information compound. A better developer culture doesn’t come from top-down initiatives. It grows from shared stories, local examples, practical improvements that others can see and adopt.
So next time someone asks, “How does your team do __?” — take it seriously.
Because your normal might be someone else’s turning point.
Until next time—happy coding! 🤓👩💻👨💻