Improving conceptual understanding in development

by Sebastian Helzle

Who am I?• Developing websites since

Geocities was cool ~1996

• Working with TYPO3 since 2005

• Freelance consultant since 2007

• Fell in love with Neos in 2013

• Certified Scrum Master since 2015

• Love hiking, mountains and cooking

What I will talk about

• Why is conceptual understanding important

• Fostering project ownership

• How can agile methods help you

• What you can do

Why is conceptual understanding important?

Websites and webapps are not

Rocket science Just pieces of code

COMPLEXWebsites and apps are

Idea & final resultCan look similar but the result might behave unexpected

So, why are they complex?

Organisational complexities

• Requirements engineering

• Team work

• Limited budgets

Technical complexities

• Dependencies & their management (bower, npm, composer, bundler, …)

• Continuous delivery (build, test, integrate)

• Performance & scalability

The sometimes forgotten complexity

People must actually be able to use your product

What makes a product usable?

• Customised solutions

• Well thought out workflows

• Good performance

Danger!

WO/

Miscommunication is expensive

Every change can have undesired effects

• Performance degradation

• Usability

• Stability issues

• Relationship with the client

There are already some solutions

• Automated testing (stability & performance)

• A/B testing for userexperience

Sadly, no automatic tests for editors efficiency or clients

happiness :(

Clients are used to bad solutionsThis is not a good thing!

Many development teams don’t know what clients are doing

Ignorance?I don’t think so

(maybe sometimes)

Fostering project ownership

Empathy

• Client has bad experience? -> a team should

• feel the urge to improve it

• find sustainable solutions

• work with the client

• try to understand the client

• Let a team get to know the client (he’s not the devil)

Use agile tools

RetrospectivesTalk about your processes, teamwork and growing as a team

ReviewsDo internal reviews and user testing Let developers present their work

Invite the client

Keep some slack in your planning

Improvements need time too

Don’t kill ideas with overcomplicated processes

A process can be bent

Refresh a projects vision regularly

Sometimes the trees block your view on the forest

As a developer you can• See tasks as challenge

• Try to see your work from a different point of view

• Involve in shaping a project

• Defend your ideas and concepts

• Teach others

• Cooperate & ask for help

• Write down or draw what you know

Celebrate success!

Okun!Thank you!

Questions?

More

🐦 @sebobo

✉ me@helzle.it

📖 http://www.mind-the-seb.de