Presentation Title ORGANIZED BY Stop thinking about productivity, start thinking about flow state by Fernando Villalba Online 🎙meetup.com/devops-singapore

⏰ Stop thinking about productivity, start thinking about flow state 🎙 by Fernando Villalba Press RECORD button devopsdays.org/singapore | @devopsdaysSG

⏰ Stop thinking about productivity, start thinking about flow state 🎙 by Fernando Villalba devopsdays.org/singapore | @devopsdaysSG

1 (Too) many definitions of DevEx 2 Defining what great DevEx is 3 What is flow state? 4 Why focus your DevEx strategy on flow state? 5 Optimizing your company for flow 6 Let’s (not) talk about developer productivity Agenda 💡 Say hi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nandoit/

1. (Too) many definitions of DevEx

DevEx Paper “Developer experience encompasses how developers feel about, think about, and value their work”

The DevEx = UX for devs definition “Developer Experience is the equivalent of User Experience when the primary user of the product is a developer.”

The Microsoft Definition “Developer experience refers to how easy or difficult it is for a developer to perform essential tasks needed to implement a change”

2. Defining what great devex is “Great developer experience (DevEx) is what you get when developers can easily get in and maintain flow state at work”

3. What is Flow State? Flow state (AKA “in the zone” or “deep work”) is a mental state in which a person is fully immersed in an activity and experiences a feeling of energized focus, enjoyment, and timelessness.

Flow goldilocks zone

Cognitive load distribution

4. Why flow state? Most productive and quality outcomes will be done while in flow

Common in creative work

Common in video games

Meaning of life and flow state

5. Optimizing your org for flow

Shared responsibility for flow Leadership must encourage and push a culture that enables flow state, but it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure it happens

7 conditions of flow state Condition Antipattern 1 Knowing what to do Lack of vision, context and planning 2 Knowing how to do it Lack of resources, hard to find what’s needed 3 Knowing how well one is doing Lack of feedback loops and adequate tooling 4 Knowing where to go Lack of internal compass, overview, documentation, etc 5 High perceived challenges No project work, too much firefighting and/or drudgery 6 High perceived skills Lack of interesting and valuable skillset at work 7 Freedom from distractions Too many meetings, lack of async communication

Objection 1: Not just about flow Optimizing for flow state does NOT mean flow at all hours, it means optimizing so it is easy to get into the flow when you have to

Objection 2: Not everyone is the same Not everyone gets in the flow the same way, but there are optimizations that are generally applicable to most people

Areas to tackle to improve flow Area Improvement 1 Communication Fewer and better meetings, more async communication 2 Cognitive load Maximize germane cognitive load, eliminate extraneous cognitive load, manage intrinsic cognitive load 3 Engineering practices TBD, TDD, CD, GitOps,12 factor apps, chaos engineering, etc 4 Tooling Favour tooling with great user experience. Use tooling to communicate 5 Working environment Non-distracting environment, help with home office, decor, etc. 6 Culture Vision, values, leadership, hiring, etc

More Areas to tackle to improve flow Area Improvement 7 Planning Agile over scrum: Kanban, XP, etc. ShapeUp(?) 8 Better feedback loops Reduce time to see the result of coding as close to zero as possible 9 Less context switching Reduce WIP and number of complex tools to complete task 10 Trust Blameless culture, safe environment, empathy. 11 Processes Zero step processes, no red tape. 12 Hakuna Matata Because 12 is better than 11

DevEx is paramount If delivering better software, faster is your goal, anything that impairs flow will be your bottleneck.

6. Let’s (not) talk about developer productivity

Productivity as the focus of DevEx

Productivity as the focus of DevEx

Measurement as incentive

Flow State is developer focus Focusing on flow state is developer centric. Little to no incentive to game it

Measurement as reference Productivity metrics should be defined by the team as a reference, not as an incentive or punishment.

Say hi to Fernando Villalba

THANK YOU and see you at DEVOPSDAYS SINGAPORE devopsdays.org/singapore | @devopsdaysSG CONNECTING COMMUNITIES March 21 - 22, 2024