Faliing Your Way To Success

Given at PGHTechFest 2015

Abstract

Do you avoid failure? This session is about how you can use failure to learn faster, build better systems, and enable innovative organizations. Learn about cognitive biases, like regret avoidance, that need to be overcome to move past the stigma of failing. Explore experimenting with failure to supercharge learning. Investigate the skills to reframe failure and enable a mindset and culture suitable for success in a world full of random events. Come succeed at failing!

Notes

Failure is not simply something to be avoided, but is critical feedback that we often rush to forget. From this basis of embracing failure as feedback, I then present a series of hypotheses that I'm applying to overcome my natural human bias to avoid failure. This talk borrows heavily from a number of concepts in Thinking Fast and Slow, Antifragile, and other "pop" psychology works. It's a soft talk, but it's going to be most relatable to software developers, as that's where all of my stories and background come from - testing, continuous delivery, and version control are some of the examples I draw on.

Transcript

1. Failing Your Way To Success Steve Jackson @stevejxsn steve.jackson@leandog.com
2. OMG SO MANY tests
3. Takeaways • Importance of failure in learning
4. Failing Your Way To Success Steve Jackson @stevejxsn steve.jackson@leandog.com
10. Option 1: IGNORE IT
11. Option 2: *I* CAN’T
12. Option 3: STRATEGY
13. Option 4? I WILL FAIL
14. Premortem "Imagine that we are a year into the future. We implemented the plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Please take 5-10 minutes to write a brief history of that disaster."
15. Hypothesis Embrace failure to overcome Regret Avoidance
16. Regret Avoidance
18. http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/153/d/f/the_scientific_method_by_jackcomstock- d3hv0yo.jpg
19. ATDD Define Fail Fail Refactor Pass Pass Acceptance Test Developer Test TDD
20. Meetings •Define success criteria •Define failure criteria •Strive to end the meeting
21. Hypothesis Antifragile software is easy to change
24. Antifragile
25. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tpapi/2765541278
28. Hypothesis Debt makes you vulnerable
30. Hypothesis Local failures are preferable to global failures
34. Hypothesis Tests (Experiments) are change enablers
37. Hypothesis Reverse expected failure to learn how to reverse random failure
39. Continuous Deployment
41. Failure as a non-event
42. Hypothesis Blame prevents innovation
47. Failure Failing Your Way To… Steve Jackson @stevejxsn steve.jackson@leandog.com Success
48. Thanks! Steve Jackson @stevejxsn steve.jackson@leandog.com
49. Hypothesis Antifragile systems resist top-down design