Arty Starr
Pacific Northwest Software Symposium
Seattle · November 13 - 15, 2015
Author of Idea Flow, Founder, FlowInsight
Arty Starr is a recognized Flow Experience expert, researcher, speaker and thought leader, and author of Idea Flow, how to measure the friction in software development. Arty's PhD research is developing a theory of momentum in software development, and she is creator of the FLOWS platform designed to help developers thrive and find joy through more time in the flow state. The company she founded, FlowInsight, is on a mission to bring back joy to our everyday work.
Arty is also a 2D/3D animator and artist, and has spent the last couple years building 3D apps in AR. She loves to share about her experiences with these technologies.
Presentations
How to Break the Software Rewrite Cycle
Despite our best efforts with Agile best practices – CI, unit testing, design reviews, code reviews – every few years we end up rewriting our software.
This talk is about my personal experiences with project failure, improvement failure, patterns across the industry, and the key lessons that were critical to success. I had a great team. We were disciplined with best practices and spent tons of time working on improvements. Yet still, I watched my team slam into a brick wall. We brought down production three times in a row, then couldn't ship again for another year.
We thought our problems were caused by technical debt building up in the code base, but we were wrong. We failed to improve, because we didn't solve the right problems. Eventually, we turned our project around, but with a lot of tough lessons along the way.
The Art of Better
What does “better” really mean? If we eliminate duplication, is the code better? If we decide to skip the unit tests, are we doing worse? How do we decide if one design is better than another design?
In this talk, I'll introduce the Idea Flow Learning Framework, a data-driven feedback loop for improving your software development skills. By measuring the “friction” that occurs when developers interact with the code, we can identify the biggest causes of friction and systematically optimize developer experience.
With an unambiguous definition of “better” and objective feedback to learn what works, we can learn our way to better despite the vast world of gray.
Open Mastery: Let's Conquer the Challenges of the Industry!
What if you could get upper management to care about your technical problems? Would you be willing to measure and prioritize the problems?
What if WE could stop the relentless business pressure that drives our software projects into the ground across the industry? I know this probably sounds impossible, but before you dismiss the idea entirely, let me show you that it is possible.
We can start a cascade of changes across the industry with only a handful of people that are willing to work together to make it happen.