👻👻👻 Fear Driven Development

😨😨😨

Ryan  Kennedy  -­‐  @rckenned

✨💖🌈 🌈💖✨

Slides are onlineh/p://www.slideshare.net/rckenned/fear-­‐driven-­‐development-­‐49842984

This is an emoji-heavy presentation

[👌I  hope  that’s  okay  with  everyone👌]

I’m Ryan Kennedy

Backend  Engineer  at  🔮  Magic  Vibes  🔮

Ada Initiative Advisor

In my past life…

📬  Yahoo!  Mail  Web  Service  Engineer  🎥  NePlix  Search  and  API  Engineer  

💼  Yammer  Infrastructure  Engineer/Director

What is fear?A  feeling  of  anxiety  concerning  the  

outcome  of  something  or  the  safety  and  well-­‐being  of  someone

What causes fear?[❓]

Specific fears develop as a result of learning

[😭trauma😭]

Certain fears are more common than others

[🍩  preparedness  🎂]

Two individuals have a tendency to emotionally converge

[☣emoVonal  contagion😷]

Fear  fosters  flight:  A  mechanism  for  fear  contagion  when  perceiving  emoVon  expressed  by  a  whole  body  

–Gelder  et  al.

“observing  fearful  body  expressions  produces  increased  acVvity  in  brain  areas  narrowly  associated  with  

emoVonal  processes  and  that  this  emoVon-­‐related  acVvity  occurs  together  with  acVvaVon  of  areas  

linked  with  representaVon  of  acVon  and  movement”  

tl;dr fear is contagious

[☣]

Negative emotions are usually more infectious than positive ones

[🐵vesVgial  insVnct🐵]

Negative emotions elicit a stronger reaction

[🚫negaVvity  bias🚫]

This is terrifying for a large engineering organization[😷💉the  heebie  jeebie  flu💉😷]

Fear is additive🐍=😨 ✈=😱

🐍➕✈=🚨🆘🚫

Fear compounds[📈                              📈]

What are humans afraid of?

[💀death…💸taxes…🎲unpredictability]  

and…

PUBLIC SPEAKING[😶💬🎥]

I'm afraid of databases[💻  yet  I  was  paid  to  build  one  💵]

What do developers fear?[💻😱]

Refactoring[🚧🔧🔨💣]

Performance[⏰🚅✈🚤]

Scale[🐳]

Upgrades[🆕]

Deploying[📦🚢]

The Unknown[❓]

What's the downside of fear in software

development?

Fear induced loss of agility

[🏃🔜🚶]

Fear creates local maximums

😱

💖

👻

Compounding fears make matters worse

😱

💖

👻

Fear erects barricades around the code and

systems that need the most attention

Ways of dealing with these fears

Exposure therapyexposure  to  the  feared  object  or  

context,  without  any  danger,  in  order  to  overcome  anxiety

Reproducible, extensive testing as a safety harness

[💡🔆]

Development and staging as safe zones

[⚾⛳]

Build confidence on non-critical systems

[🎠]

Double dispatch when replacing existing functionality

[✌]

Hack Day![🔎]

Sharing my fearsSomeone  else  has  probably  seen  or  done  this  or  something  like  it  before

Decatastrophizing"If  the  feared  event  or  object  

happened,  what  would  occur  then?"

Organizational selective amnesia

[let  the  new  person  do  it  🔴👕]

Where are the managers, architects, leads, etc. at?

[👉this  talk  is  actually  for/about  you👈]

Are you a source of fear?

[👤👈]

Make time to test[⏳]

Make time for research

[⏳]

Make time for maintenance

[⏳]

None of this should impact anyone’s personal life

[\]

Thank you~~~  🙇🙏💕~~~  

💯