Interview with Rob Sabourin for McGill University undergraduates (20th February 2024)

Another opportunity to work with McGill University undergraduate students came my way when Rob Sabourin again asked me to be interviewed during one of his sessions of the ECSE-428-001 – Software Engineering Practice course for his Winter 2024 cohort.

My first involvement with McGill folks was back in February 2016 when I took part in a small group interview with some students. In April 2022, I was interviewed during a lecture to talk through my experience with distributed agile teams and I did a similar interview in November 2022.

My latest interview was different, in that the focus was on the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) based on my recent experience of being involved in a large project using this framework. We discussed the general ideas around SAFe as well as talking specifically about where and how testing fits in. While there are many criticisms of this framework from the agile community, we discussed some of the beneficial aspects of it in the context of very large programs of work.

It was great to have so much engagement from the students physically in the room with Rob and I hope that by hearing about real-life experiences they get a more well-rounded perspective of not only the theory but also the practice of software engineering.

I’m always willing to share my knowledge and experience, it’s very rewarding personally as well as providing an opportunity to give back – I’ve had a lot of help and encouragement along my career journey (including from Rob himself) and remain incredibly grateful for it.

(Featured image for this post by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash)