InflectraCON 2022 - Major Take Aways

Leadership

• Hire the right people - DO NOT micromanage them - put them in the right place. Build a strong team.

• Companies should do four things to demonstrate leadership. First, set up a mentoring program for people to practice developing others, second, have a coaching program to develop themselves. Third, introduce training programs for continuous improvement, and fourth, consider becoming sponsors of experiential programs at local colleges.

• Influence is not about impressing people. It’s about connecting with them. Connecting is not impossible but may be out of your comfort zone.

• You Have the Power to Create a Voice to Change the World through Better Oral Communications and Deeper Relationships

• The one thing you should want to do as a senior leader is to provide a good work culture.

• If you’re in a leadership position and it’s all about you, you’re not meant to be in a leadership position.

• If you do not know your people, you are not a leader.

Artificial Intelligence & Big Data

• Information overload coupled with misinformation is creating a trust deficit. "The solution relies on knowledge discovery, i.e.: extracting insights from data.”
  “A Knowledge revolution happens when AI tools & humans work together.”

• In order to be competitive, you have to be a master of data. A competitive advantage is gained by weaving data strategy across all parts of the organization.

• Event-driven architectures become viable for building new apps by 2024

Quality

• Figuring out what allowed an error is more important than trying to figure it out who made a mistake.

• Compliance is a culture. If you see something wrong, you must say it

• The good thing about standards is that there’s one to follow. The bad thing is that there are too many

• “Great testers don’t find bugs. They help the team eradicate problems from the beginning.”

• There is no perfect software. Done is better than Perfect. And Done can be negotiated.

Risks & Risk Management

• Consider the complexity of Risks - even if a feature is stable and has a low defect count, if the feature is complex, then that should be considered as part of the Risk Assessment along with History and Impact.

• Conceptual, Technical, and Schedule Risk types for Software development can be reduced with Agile methodologies.

• Using the “What’s the least bad idea?” exercise helps reveal hidden risks.

DevOps

• DevOps is a philosophy, a way of thinking, not a technology.

• Most of the waste has nothing to do with processes but rather the stuff we do ourselves… the stuff that has nothing to do with the end product or customer’s needs.

• DevOps is a mechanism for increasing the value of your product to the customer.

Agile Project Management

• Channel all your work through one board…it's like having in-laws, they’ll always point out your flaws.”

• “If everything is critical, nothing is.”

• The role of the Business Analyst is to understand how to ask for customer needs in multiple different ways, taking into account multiple perspectives. Business Analysis is about the Why.

• Agile is about learning one thing today and adapting it the next day.

• In order to respond to changes in society, you need to have business agility.

User-Centered Design

• Ask a lot of whys…there’s always a deeper meaning [to customer desires].

• Human beings are notoriously bad at predicting their own behavior.

• “The optimal number of prototypes/ideas to have at one time is five.” [Anything else is counterproductive]”

• “Make sure that you solve the emotional problem.”

• “The main point of testing is re-experiencing empathy (understanding not sympathy).”

• Games and puzzles help participants learn about the subject and observers learn about the participant.

• It makes social and economic sense to plan for a better user experience by incorporating design philosophies that address Accessibility.

• Users’ time and technology belong to them, not us.

The Metaverse

• Digital economies transcend countries and banks.

• In the metaverse first place is your home, the Second place is your workplace, and the third place is where you relax in public, where you encounter familiar faces and make new acquaintances.

• Most of our data comes from our subconscious.

Security & Privacy

• 82% of our web traffic contains cookies. 37% of all sites use non-secure cookies.

• They’re watching you…With our full consent.

The most attended topics were 

We appreciate all the speakers who gave amazing talks on a wide variety of topics, here were some of the most popular ones:

• Tech and Metaverse - Keynote: Tech, Gaming, And Metaverse - Jenn Bonine
• Automation - Keynote: Myths About Myths About Automation - Paul Grizzaffi
• Software Testing- Keynote: Discussions Testers Should No Longer Be Having - Mike Lyles
• DevOps - Keynote: Alphabet Soup - What Do DevOps, DevSecOps, DevTestOps, SecDevOps, etc. Really Mean??? - Jeffery Payne
• Scrum and Kanban - Scrumban: Effectively Combining Scrum And Kanban - Bob Payne

If you would like to see some photos from the event, check out the photo gallery.

Looking forward to InflectraCon™ 2023

One More Thing: The Star Wars Theme Party

Of course, we at Inflectra like to play hard as well as work hard. So our entire team dressed up in festive attire for the Star Wars-themed happy hour and networking event. The DJ provided some excellent local sound; The themed backdrops provided opportunities for fun photos; The food and wine kept everyone merry. People then headed off to dinner or to the rooftop bar at Union Market.

See you at nflectraCON 2023 in Washington, DC on April 20-21, 2023!