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Ben Balter
April 26, 2016
Technology
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Optimize for Developer Happiness
Why how you work is as important as what you work on
Ben Balter
April 26, 2016
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Transcript
! 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