Writing software has some commonalities with science: we need to figure out how our world works. But every team works in a world of its own: different environments, languages, integrations, codebase, customers. That means we want to re-form our conception of how our world works, constantly.
This session draws from scientific methods, and applies them to software teams: from systematic testing and measurement (great for coding) to Action Research (in our sociotechnical systems). The purpose of experimentation is to choose better actions, and one purpose of action is to advance our understanding through experiment.
Jessica brings concrete examples, from Honeycomb.io and elsewhere, of work that is both useful and a source of learning. When coding, deploying, making product decisions, or designing process—everything is an experiment if we look at the results.
Jessica Kerr (better known as Jessitron) loves software because you can almost design right into it. She believes in Step 1 deploy; Step 2 develop--because coding is about changing how the world works. She speaks about systems thinking, because there's no one like software developers for consciously growing complex systems. Find her at jessitron.com, and at work at Honeycomb.io (because observabil...