Productivity is king. Today’s engineering teams are judged on their ability to deliver more efficient and higher quality products faster, and the best engineers in the world are breaking new ground by leveraging collaboration in development.  Your method of choice may be Agile and pair programming, or you may be outgrowing pairs in favor of mob programming, but each methodology seeks the same outcome: to ship with the quality, speed and scale your organization requires.

Individuals who work together as a team report being more productive, creative and confident than individuals who work alone.  According to a recent survey by Deskmag, when co-working:  

• 71% of respondents report that they are were more creative
• 62% of respondents report that their standard of work improved significantly
• 90% of respondents felt more confident in their work

• What can you do to supercharge your engineering team?

  The same is true of learning and writing code. StackOverflow, Github and numerous other developer communities prove that it is easier and more satisfying to solve problems alongside peers and mentors than alone. Giving your existing engineers the ability to surpass their learning plateaus together – struggling with full stack web development, the nuances of Android, or data analysis with R – increases their ability to master the latest skills that will keep your organization ahead of the competition.

  In our experience, learning from your peers has an exponential effect on professional skill development. Employees training online with Udacity can connect with real-time code reviews and peer forums to solve problems and learn new skills, processes that better prepare them for programing as a team. One recent graduate of the Front-end Developer Nanodegree found that some of the coding challenges were too difficult to solve on her own. She credits the community of peers and mentors as transforming her understanding, preparing her to thrive in new and bigger roles.

  Build a highly productive and creative team by upskilling your existing developers, and have them learn these new skills in a co-working environment. Remember your hardest class in school and how you got through it? Most likely, it was not long lectures that got you to learn the material. It was your classmates. It was working in the trenches with them, struggling together on that problem set or project.

  “The forums are really where Udacity stands apart from other technology education providers. There is a real sense of community between students and instructors. Whenever I felt stuck, I knew I could find guidance in the forums. The willingness of other students to help with the crazy problems that arise is really invaluable.” – Cynthia, Udacity student, Front-end Developer Nanodegree

  The Bottom Line

  Your organization lives or dies by the skills of your team, and building the best team requires that your engineers learn the latest skills quickly to keep up with evolving technologies. Peer training, like peer programming, accelerates their learning by connecting individuals to shared challenges and reinforcing the importance of collaboration to catch patterns, develop solutions and work creatively as a team. Provide your engineers with the opportunity to learn together and they will drive the results your organization expects–out-innovating and outlasting your competition.

  Transform the effectiveness of your team with Udacity Nanodegrees, where developers can learn from one another and benefit from a broader network of peers to acquire new skills.