7 Things Executives Can Learn From Software Engineers Matt Stratton Staff Developer Advocate • Pulumi @mattstratton

The power of iteration

Small teams move fast

Small teams move fast ● ● ● ● Glue work between the teams Black box squads (input/output) Conway’s law Software contracts extend to teams (“this api does x” etc)

Fast feedback

Fast Feedback ● ● ● ● Set success criteria that is measurable Get changes in front of users/consumers quickly Create a process to share all feedback as soon as possible Automate feedback where possible

Trust but verify

Trust, But Verify ● ● ● Guardrails are good! Make the right way the easy way People want to do the right thing, but mistakes can happen

Collaboration over competition

Collaboration over Competition ● ● ● ● Power structures can create unintended consequences Ownership/fiefdoms “Who moved my cheese”? (or who touched it) Resource guarding

Westrum Model

Community spirit

Community Spirit ● ● ● ● Developers love to work in communities Communities can be internal and external We can learn from our peers - and help them as well Fewer things have to be secret than we think

Learning culture

Learning Culture ● ● ● Learning from Incidents Shadow rotations (not just for juniors and not just for tech) Blamelessness

Incidents are unplanned investments; their costs have already been incurred. Your org’s challenge is to get ROI on those events. - John Allspaw, Adaptive Capacity Labs

RCA != learning

Shadow Rotations

The impulse to blame and punish has the unintended effect of disincentivizing the knowledge sharing required to learn from incidents

Resilience and Organizational Dynamics

Blunt / Sharp End Blunt End Removed from experience Upstream decision makers Sharp End People directly engaged in the work “Chop wood, carry water”

Sharp End Constantly building and destroying systems Strong signaling Improve systems based on strain Will do so naturally if given ownership

[Psychological safety is] a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up Amy Edmondson, Professor, Harvard Business School

Radical candor? If you are asking for candor/blunt feedback, what are you doing to make this safe?

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