Want to Make a Change? Stop Talking and Start Listening (Android Makers 2018)

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Jonathan Maltz [email protected]/@maltzj Want to Make a Change? Stop Talking and Start Listening

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Yelp’s Mission Connecting people with great local businesses.

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Empathy + Trust

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Empathy

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Em·pa·thy - the ability to share and understand the feelings of another.

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In·cen·tive - a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something.

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Individual vs. Group

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Engineers

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Engineers Designers

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Engineers Product Managers Designers

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Engineers Product Managers Pick the right features to build Designers

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Engineers Product Managers Pick the right features to build Designers Make those features beautiful and easy to use

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Engineers Write maintainable code Designers Make those features beautiful and easy to use Product Managers Pick the right features to build

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Engineers Product Managers Designers Beautiful project that never makes money

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Engineers Product Managers Designers Unmaintainable pile of technical debt

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Engineers Product Managers Designers Unusable solution to a real problem

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Engineers Product Managers Designers Where the magic happens

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Takeaway #1: Other disciplines are not martians out to get you. They’re people solving hard problems in a different way than you are.

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Show how your change matters in their language

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OMG drowning in technical debt

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I should talk to our product manager about paying this down in our sprint.

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● Incentive for engineer ○ Code is easier to work with. More testable and extendable What are the incentives?

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We should pay down tech debt in our next sprint. It will make our code easier to work with.

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That doesn’t sound like delivering customer value...

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I don’t think we have time for that

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● Incentive for engineer ○ Code is easier to work with. More testable and extendable What are the incentives?

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● Incentive for engineer ○ Code is easier to work with. More testable and extendable ● Incentive for product manager ○ Bug free features as fast as possible What are the incentives?

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● Incentive for engineer ○ Code is easier to work with. More testable and extendable ● Incentive for product manager ○ Bug free features as fast as possible ● Incentive for everyone ○ Build the best possible version of Yelp What are the incentives?

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Can’t do this? Re-evaluate your solution

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We should take time to pay down technical debt in our next sprint. We have a bunch of work on some challenging code coming up, and taking time to refactor first will make that work quicker

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I can pay short term cost to get long-term benefits

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Sure! Let’s see if we can get that scoped!

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Be Curious

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Takeaway #2: Learn about what other stakeholders value in order to align what you want with what they want.

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Trust

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You really should change the way you’re rendering views. It’s causing performance problems.

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Who is this guy telling me how to do my job?

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You really should change the way you’re rendering views. It’s causing performance problems.

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Romain knows a thing or two about performance. I should listen to him

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Takeaway #3: No matter how right you are, you will only get to execute on your ideas if people trust you.

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How to Build Trust?

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● You have a proven track record of being correct ● You show that you’ll consider other people’s perspective even without their input ● You are willing to admit when you’re wrong Why would people trust you?

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1. Start With Small Changes

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● Changes with engineers ○ Try out changes in tests ○ Write a small, throwaway feature Start Small

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● Changes with engineers ○ Try out changes in tests ○ Write a small, throwaway feature ● Changes with product managers ○ Do only a few days of work ○ Timebox Start Small

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● Changes with engineers ○ Try out changes in tests ○ Write a small, throwaway feature ● Changes with product managers ○ Do only a few days of work ○ Timebox ● Changes with designers ○ Build a prototype ○ User test Start Small

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Let’s Try It

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2. Provide Touchpoints

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touch·point - a point of contact between a buyer and seller.

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● Touchpoints for Engineers ○ Code reviews ○ Design documents Provide touchpoints

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● Touchpoints for Engineers ○ Code reviews ○ Design documents ● Touchpoints for Product Managers ○ Tickets/Progress Visualizations Provide touchpoints

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● Touchpoints for Engineers ○ Code reviews ○ Design documents ● Touchpoints for Product Managers ○ Tickets/Progress Visualizations ● Touchpoints for Designers ○ Over-the-shoulder design reviews ○ Sending screenshots before shipping Provide touchpoints

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3. Have a Plan

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● Turn your long-term goal into milestones ○ Gives more touchpoints ○ Closer milestones should be well-defined ○ Further milestones can be fuzzier ● Have checks at each milestone to make sure you’re accomplishing your goals Have a plan

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Example!

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Rewrite our app in Kotlin

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● Incentives? Faster iteration speeds, more features, better Yelp Rewrite our app in Kotlin

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● Incentives? Faster iteration speeds, more features, better Yelp ● Milestone 1: Write + build a single file in Kotlin Rewrite our app in Kotlin

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● Incentives? Faster iteration speeds, more features, better Yelp ● Milestone 1: Write + build a single file in Kotlin ● Milestone 2: One engineer writes their tests in Kotlin Rewrite our app in Kotlin

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● Incentives? Faster iteration speeds, more features, better Yelp ● Milestone 1: Write + build a single file in Kotlin ● Milestone 2: One engineer writes their tests in Kotlin ● Milestone 3: All engineers write their tests in Kotlin ● Milestone 4: Write all new code in Kotlin Rewrite our app in Kotlin

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4. Help Others Accomplish Their Goals

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Don’t Always Get Your Way

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Don’t Always Get Your Way

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Don’t Always Get Your Way

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Case Study

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You’ve just joined a new team and you’ve noticed that they’re struggling to ship effectively. There’s no tests and no CI, so the build occasionally breaks and features need to be frequently patched

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● Continuous Integration to prevent people from breaking builds ● Automated testing to ensure that old features don’t break ● Rearchitecting the app to introduce new patterns which make it more unit-testable What you think should happen

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● Incentive for everyone ○ Build the best possible version of your app ● Incentive for engineers ○ Less time spent fixing builds and bugs, more time writing cool new features ● Incentive for product managers ○ More features built because each one is more reliable Incentives

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1. Build Trust

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● With Engineers ○ Write excellent code ○ Do great code reviews ○ Be a resource of Android knowledge ● With Product Managers ○ Deliver timely and effective tickets Building Trust

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2. Understand Incentives

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● Why is there no CI in place? ○ Are people unfamiliar with CI? ○ Do people know about it but haven’t had time? ○ Is it too expensive? ● Why are there no tests? ○ Is there a knowledge gap? Understand

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3. Educate (as necessary)

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4. Suggest a small change

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“Hey team, I think we should invest some time in implementing a CI Server. It will help us prevent these issues where master hasn’t compiled. It’ll take about 1 week if we setup ${service here}”

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5. Execute Effectively + Measure

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● How many times were people breaking master previously? What about now? ● Call this out in your team retrospectives Execute and Measure

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6. Make a Larger Plan

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“Hey Team. I think we should start writing tests. It would help us prevent all these errors in production. It’ll take a few months, but we can first setup espresso, then write tests for high value flows, and then test everything”

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7. Gather Feedback

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I’m worried that we won’t have enough time to do that

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Hmm, maybe we should just setup Espresso and write high value tests

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8. Finalize Plan + Execute

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● People in other disciplines are solving hard problems with different incentive structures ● Learn what’s important to your other teammates, especially cross-functional ones ● No matter how good your ideas are, you need to build trust that you can execute them Three Big Takeaways

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● How To Productively Disagree ● Life’s Great and Everything Will Be Ok, Kotlin is here ● The Lean Startup ● Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Software Business ● Agile Software Development In Scrum ● Don’t Make Me Think ● A Designer’s Guide to Android ● Fundamentals of Design: How to Think Like a Designer ● Learning To Speak Designer External Links