What does good enough look like right now for your product, team, or project? Are you investing in features you think you’ll need in the future because going back and changing things is too hard?

As individuals and as teams, we often deliberate for days (or longer) on the perfect solution, because we can’t decide on the “right way” to build something.

However, typing code is rarely the slowest part of delivering software.

We also often get caught by surprise near the end of a project by things we didn’t anticipate. Too often the lesson we learn from this is to spend longer analysing requirements and design.

This talk will explore how optimising for learning, and having a bias for action will help you iterate towards a better solution faster.

Damian will discuss some concrete patterns, techniques, and strategies that software teams can take to get working software in the hands of users earlier, and help you build the right thing.

“That’s not good enough”

That was Larene’s response to when Damian told her “you’re doing a great job, keep doing what you’re doing”.

This talk is about the journey of a grizzled industry veteran and a young ambitious engineer thrown together in a small startup environment.

Forced to establish fast feedback cycle, not just iterating on the product we were developing, but also how we worked on it together. We were both pushed out of our comfort zones to create a productive collaboration.

We’ve distilled some of our lessons from this process into a handful of tools you can apply straight away, whether you’re seeking mentoring, or are in a tech leadership/manager position.

We’ll share how we give and receive feedback, how mentors can grow the technical skills of more junior people, how men can mentor women more effectively, and how even the most hardened “seen it all” of us can grow individually.