As a developer, does the business not listen to your voice in tackling technical debt, implementing continuous improvement or automating your testing strategy? Are you waiting for management buy in to work in the way you’d like in focusing on value, getting closer to understanding the customer and being empowered? You are the business, come and learn some ideas about how to start the change regardless of your perceived rank in the machine.

1. Don’t just write code,
change your business

2. Dan Bass
@dannojb
Domenico Musto
@mimmozzo

3. Developers
“Managers”

5. Our steps to start change
● Prioritisation
● Clearly articulate the problem
● Ideas in Influencing

6. Prioritisation

7. What technical problems do we have ?
Build
Time
Poor
Code
Manual
Release
Introduce
bugs
Spaghetti
Monolith

8. How to identify the ONE
problem?

9. Prioritisation
● The bottleneck
● Cost and impact matrix
● Risks vs opportunities

10. The bottleneck
In case you didn’t see it

11. Build
Time
Poor
Code
Introduce
bugs
Spaghetti
Monolith
Cost and impact
Cost
Impact
Manual
Release

12. Risk vs Opportunities
Likelihood
Impact
Cost
Benefit
Risks Opportunities

13. Risk vs Opportunities
Likelihood
Impact
Add
automated
feature
testing
Cost
Benefit
Increase
system
performance
Developers
visit clients
Network
bandwidth
Database
deployment
failing
DB Capacity
Buying more
storage
Investigating cloud
Removing old test
DBs
Current actions

14. Risk vs Opportunities

15. What technical problems do we have ?
Build
Time
Poor
Code
Manual
Release
Introduce
bugs
Spaghetti
Monolith

16. Articulate the problem

17. • It’s a slow process
• It’s not tested
• It’s not repeatable
• I’m quite annoyed
• 3 man days for techops to release
• 2 man days for devs to fix bugs
• At least 1 week for a feature to be
released
As a developer... As anyone else in the business...

19. Ideas in influencing

20. Ideas in influencing
1. Extending the T shape
2. Dealing with conflict
3. Knowing who to influence
4. Ladder of engagement
5. Milestones

21. Influence 1 - Extending the T shape
General Understanding
Specialism
Testing, Analysis, Development, Operations,
Performance, Databases,
Capex vs Opex, EBITDA vs Net Profit, P&L, Sales
forecasts, CRM activity, Market Opportunity
Backend
development

23. Influence 2 - Dealing with conflict

24. Beta state
● In the moment
● Tension and stress
● Flight or fight
● Defensive
Alpha state
● Day dreaming
● Free thinking
● Creative
● Safe
Influence 2 - Dealing with conflict

25. Attack
Defense
Counter
Attack
Conflict

26. https://www.lulu.com/

27. Attack
YES
Invitation
Encouragement
Acknowledgement
Agreement?
Collaborative
(even in disagreement)

28. Ideas in Influencing (so far)
1. Extending the T shape
2. Dealing with conflict

29. 3. Influencing - knowing who to influence

30. Strong Backer Weak Backer Weak Opposition Strong Opposition
Chris Young and Kate Gray on Winning Hearts and Minds of People
Swing votes
Effort and
energy

31. Strong Backer Weak Backer Weak Opposition Strong Opposition
No real
influence
Key
decision
maker

32. Strong Backer Weak Backer Weak Opposition Strong Opposition
No real
influence
Key
decision
maker
CEO
Dev
Manager
Team
member
Architect
Head of
Ops
Sales
manager
Marketing
director

33. 4. Ladder of engagement
Sherry Phyllis Arnstein - “Ladder of Citizen Participation”

34. Therapy
Informing
Consulting
Placating
Partnership
Citizen Control
Delegated
Power
Manuipulation
Degrees of
citizen power
Degrees of
tokenism
No power

35. Small shifts over big changes

36. Influence individuals over crowd

37. 5. Milestones

38. Why milestones matter?
Keep
stakeholders
on board and
included
continually
Teams are
intrinsically
motivated by
progress
You can
pause at a
milestone
and
reprioritise
Of course;
get value
early

39. Milestones
RELEASE

40. Milestones
RELEASE

41. TL;DR
● Prioritisation
○ Tackle one problem
○ Bottleneck
○ Cost and impact
○ Risks vs Opportunities
● Clearly articulate the problem
○ Define the business problem
○ Align in your team
● Ideas in Influencing
○ Extend the T shape
○ Dealing with conflict
○ Knowing who to influence
○ Ladder of engagement
○ The importance of milestones

42. Thanks
Questions?
@mimmozzo@dannojb