Practitioners and experts from the web operations and performance worlds came together in Barcelona, Spain for Velocity Europe 2014. We’ve gathered highlights and insights from the event below.
Managing performance is like herding cats
Aaron Rudger, senior product marketing manager at Keynote Systems, says bridging the communication gap between IT and the marketing and business sectors is a bit like herding cats. Successful communication requires a narrative that discusses performance in the context of key business metrics, such as user engagement, abandonment, impression count, and revenue.
Designing designing
“Before we design the final experience or product, we need to design the design process,” says Mark Zeman, founder at SpeedCurve. He shares three tactics to improve performance through better design: establish a set of 5-10 high-level principles, have a single prototype on which everyone on the team works from day one, and share key performance metrics through visualization.
Focus on failures in the context of systems, not humans
Steven Shorrock, project leader of safety development at EUROCONTROL, discusses the problematic nature of resorting to “human error” to explain a failure. Using a lens of language complexity and a human tendency to oversimplify, he argues that instead of focusing on who did what wrong, we should focus on the system in the context of normal work. He also astutely points out that there are hundreds of words used to describe failure; we have hardly any words to describe success or normal situations.
The tech meritocracy is false, but it could be true
Laine Campbell, AVP of open source database practice at Pythian, challenges the idea that tech is a meritocracy. A lack of diversity within tech companies creates a loop of exclusion. But that can change through recruiting, metrics, and mentoring. “Meritocracies do work, but they work with a lot of focus on diversity,” Campbell says.
Continuous integration for your brain
Vanessa Hurst, CEO of CodeMontage, talks about creating cultures and environments that cultivate continuous learning — what she likens to “continuous integration for your brain.” The core components center around active attitudes and behaviors that focus on and encourage learning, which in turns combats stereotypes and imposter syndrome, and embraces the Dunning-Kruger effect.
You can see more coverage in our Velocity Europe 2014 playlist.