What To Do When Best Practices Aren’t Best for You

It seemed like every month there was a new book, process, or technology that promised to improve how we deliver software, making us faster and better as developers. Each new tool or method was an exciting chance to dive in and try something new at first. But often, these solutions didn’t quite fit the specific problems developers face day-to-day in software development. Something always seemed to get in the way of applying these great new ideas to unique situations.

So, what to do? One thing always rang true: rigorously validate your assumptions as soon as possible.

By doing this, we were able to adapt new ideas to fit our specific contexts and apply them in both big and small beneficial ways. Once you saw this, it became much easier to use the core concepts in real situations.

In this talk, we covered:

• Quick Validation: How to quickly and rigorously validate assumptions to ensure new ideas fit your specific problems
• Adaptation: Ways to adapt new concepts and tools to unique situations and challenges
• Practical Application: Tips on applying principles like TDD (Test-Driven Development) even when working in teams that disliked testing or when participants lacked the authority to make process changes
• Case Study: Real-life examples from 17 years of experience demonstrating how to navigate and apply these practices effectively

This event was designed for junior developers who didn’t have the power to apply these practices and senior developers who weren’t seeing the intended results.d accelerate hypothesis validation. Attendees also shared their own experiences and experiments using AI in their product development lifecycle.