Optimize for Developer Happiness

! Optimize for developer happiness Why how you work is
as important as what you work on @benbalter

CONWAY'S LAW "organizations which design systems... are constrained to produce
designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations"

! Developer-centric development

! STARTUP the fairytale

Low value High value Startup Established ﬁrm Ideas Process

Low value High value Startup Established ﬁrm Geeks Suits

! What does your organization optimize for?

! Happy shareholders Successful software Eﬃcient developers Strategic management

! Happy shareholders Good software Happy developers Happy Customers

! You can make software without MANAGEMENT

! You can make software without COMPLIANCE AND OVERSIGHT

! You can't make software without DEVELOPERS

! DEVELOPER HAPPINESS Optimize for and the rest will follow

! Developer happiness (Inside|Outside) the ﬁrewall

! Inside the ﬁrewall

! Traditional software development

! When outcomes can't be measured, institute process

! Daily, synchronous meetings to manually shuttle information around the
organization

! Decisions made in person,   in hour-long blocks with
  all stakeholders present

! Blocking, human-based processes

! Email as the least-common denominator

! Organizational knowledge lives (and dies) with employees

! bus_factor++

! Open-source development

! Transparency solves for process

! The constraints of open source

! Electronic

! Available

! Asynchronous

! Lock-free

! Prefer systems that naturally   CAPTURE AND EXPOSE PROCESS

! Open source inside the ﬁrewall

! Open source is a   PHILOSOPHY AND A WORKFLOW
  not as an alternative technology

! How to   WORK LIKE AN OPEN SOURCE PROJECT

! 1. Share to the widest extent possible

! Openness breaks down silos, reduces duplication, and minimizes on-boarding
time

! 2. Minimize developer friction

! Friction (n)   the time it takes to go
from   "I want to contribute" to   "I have contributed"

! Common scripts to rule them all http://githubengineering.com/scripts-to-rule-them-all/

! PREFER CULTURAL CONSTRAINTS to technical and administrative constraints

! Non-blocking is better than blocking

! Never force a human to do what a robot
can

! ChatOps, DevOps, Hubot, and CI

! If you liked it you should have PUT AN
API ON IT

! Outside the ﬁrewall

! APIs make developers happy

! Openness makes developers happy

! Two caveats

! 1. Open up almost everything

! 2. Openness is about more than just throwing 0's
and 1's over the ﬁrewall

! Treat your data with the same respect that developers
treat code

! Open source, inner source, APIs, & open data all 
foster communities around shared challenges

! Be the hub, not the single point of failure
(or innovation)

! Adopt an expanded definition of stakeholders

! Ensure all stakeholders have the opportunity to contribute  
on equal footing

! Decentralize governance

! Minimize information imbalance

! 1. Work in the open

! 2. Propose and discuss improvements in the open

! 3. One shared, public issue tracker

! 4. Minimize synchronous meetings (and memorialize them when necessary)

! 5. Extensive, automated tests

! How do you optimize for developer happiness?

! Inside the ﬁrewall systems that capture and expose process

! Outside the ﬁrewall treat external stakeholders as internal stakeholders

! No really, how do you optimize for developer happiness?

! TECHNOLOGY is the easy part

! Bureaucracy is an organism

! Inoculate with small doses of culture and innovation

! Involve all stakeholders early on

! Start small and  go through the motions

! Create a "feedback" repository both internally and externally

! Open data Open governance Open tooling

! DEVELOPER HAPPINESS Optimize for and the rest will follow

! Optimize for developer happiness Why how you work is
as important as what you work on @benbalter

Optimize for Developer Happiness

Optimize for Developer Happiness

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