Samman Technical Coaching

Technical coaches work with software development teams to help them adopt better coding practices. The Samman method is a concrete approach that many technical coaches use. This website is designed to help people who do technical coaching and is maintained by the Samman Technical Coaching Society. This site shares materials you can use for Code Katas and Learning Hours, as well as many supporting materials. We also have official Training courses.

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About the Samman method

Samman is a method for technical coaches who work with software teams. The focus is on iterative and incremental development practices. The Samman method has two main parts:

• Learning Hour
• Ensemble Working

In the learning hour the coach uses exercises and active learning techniques to teach the theory and practice of skills like Test-Driven Development and Refactoring. In the Ensemble sessions the whole team collaborates together with the coach in applying these development techniques in their usual production codebase.

The expected outcome is that teams work more effectively and consistently with iterative and incremental development techniques even after the coach has moved on. This should help the organization to build new features in their software with a shorter lead time and higher quality.

You can find full details of the Samman method in the book “Technical Agile Coaching with the Samman method” by Emily Bache. “Samman Coaching” is an official trademark registered in the EU (#019000476) and owned by the Samman Technical Coaching Society.

Where to go from here

We have a large collection of Code Kata descriptions and Learning Hour plans which you can do with your team. There are also some reference materials including a catalog of Code Smells and Refactorings. If you’d like to design your own learning hours you can find templates for teaching activities. If you are getting started with Samman coaching, you can also find recommended Training courses.

If you would like to find out more about the community of coaches and how to use the Samman method, please sign up for our Newsletter, and/or come to one of our events. If you would like to hire a technical coach, see our list of members and contributors.