Software development requires focus, direction, and understanding: three things most software teams rarely enjoy. To build better software, we’ve tried to protect teams, to integrate teams, to elevate teams. We focus on the team, but not the individual coder. We focus on the team, but not the individual manager. We focus on the team, but not the individual ops person. We focus on team team team, but not the people on the team.
Since software is not created by machines, but by people – doesn’t it make sense to pay attention to the people? Universally, people in the industry are overloaded, distracted, and stressed.
Stress Sucks. This stress is where technical debt is born. This is where unnecessary features are released. This is where integration issues are inevitable.
In this talk, Jim Benson will tell painfully funny stories (because they’re all true) about teams of wonderful people who built terrible products, simply because they were focused on the object of value at the expense of who produced it. They were focused on process and not people. They were focused on their task-at-hand and not on what their peers were actually working on.
And … he’ll give specific and tested recommendations to cure this pandemic of overload.
Jim Benson promises a powerpoint-free presentation.