👻👻👻 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[⏰🚅✈🚤]
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
[✌]
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~~~ 🙇🙏💕~~~
💯