Keynote: The Skyrocketing Costs of Diagnostic Difficulty
Lone Star Software Symposium: Dallas
Dallas · May 19 - 21, 2017
About this Presentation
With the explosion of new frameworks, a mountain of automation, and our applications distributed across hundreds of services in the cloud, the level of complexity in our industry is growing at an insane pace. With increased complexity comes increased costs and risks. When diagnosing unexpected behavior can take days, weeks, or sometimes months, all while our release is on the line, our projects plunge into chaos. In the invisible world of software development, how do we identify what's causing our pain? How do we escape the chaos?
Janelle Klein presents a novel approach to measuring the chaos, identifying the causes, and systematically driving improvement with a data-driven feedback loop. Rather than measuring the problems in the code, Janelle suggests measuring the “friction in Idea Flow”, the time it takes a developer to diagnose and resolve unexpected confusion, which disrupts the flow of progress during development.
With visibility of the symptoms, we can identify the cause, whether it's bad architecture, collaboration problems, or technical debt. Janelle discusses how to measure Idea Flow, why it matters, and the implications for our teams, our organizations, and our industry.
Developer Experience Researcher, University of Victoria
Arty Starr has been a software engineer for 20+ years and is a researcher and pioneer of new theories of the developer's cognitive experience that help us recognize how developers' experiences are changing with AI. Her theories of developer momentum and troubleshooting help us see software development through an ecological lens, recognizing it as a living activity in motion and the living capacities of care and cognition that support this motion. Her aim is to bring heart, human-centric values, and agency to the craft of software development so we can build toward the type of world we want to live in. With richer perception and by recognizing what matters, we can light a path to a future of thriving habitats where humans and AI can collaborate well and thrive together.
Arty is the author of Idea Flow, a speaker, thought leader, and artist who loves mixing ideas across disciplines into a fusion of creativity to help make the world a better place through her projects.