Keynote Video – Seven Attitudes For A Better Programmer Life

This is the studio recording of the keynote that Alex and Adi did at the Working Software Conference 2024 in Brescia – https://www.agilemovement.it/workingsoftware/schedule.html.

For slides and related resources, see the link.

Abstract

As the story goes, a bunch of experienced people gathered together to ski and vent about the heavyweight approach to software development. And they ended up writing the Agile Manifesto. Scrum was for a while the big winner of this new philosophy – adopted by companies around the world for the promise of easier adaptation to changing environments.

However, not all is well in the world of software. Countless programmers wake up dreading the ritual words: “yesterday I did jira 20346, today I work on jira 21437, and I have no impediments”. They dread finishing the task because they are then forced to write tests for it. And there’s never time to fix suboptimal decisions from the past, because we always sprint.

Well, we’re here to say that it doesn’t have to be this way. If you want to work in a better environment, the change starts with you. To help you, we will discuss in this keynote a few attitudes that, if you decide to adopt, will change your approach to software development. It helps you, your colleagues, your codebase, and your organization benefit even in a fast changing environment.

To gain a different, better perspective, these attitudes are: