Do we need it?

A presentation at jsday in in Verona, VR, Italy by Marco Cedaro

For the past decade, Javascriptland has been flourishing, and we had the privilege to learn how to work with an ever evolving landscape of tools, frameworks and practices.

But there’s an obvious dark side to it, and it’s not (only) the FOMO, but the organizational cost. This talk analyzes the current economical landscape, the role of code and ways we could make better decisions, or at least manage decision making to be more mindful about business impact.

Resources

The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.

  • The end of 0% interest rates: what the new normal means for software engineers

    The end of 10+ years of 0% interest rates is set to change the tech industry. What do higher rates mean for software engineering jobs, developers, and careers; and how can you prepare for this shift?

  • The Cynefin Framework - A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making and Action.

    The Cynefin Framework was developed to help leaders understand their challenges and to make decisions in context. It helps leaders cultivate an awareness of what is really complex and what is not and respond accordingly so that no energy is wasted in overthinking the routine but they also never try to make the complex fit into standard solutions.

  • RAPID® Decision Making

    RAPID is a proprietary decision-making tool created by Bain & Company to clarify decision accountabilities with multiple stakeholders. It is part of a disciplined approach that defines the “what, who, how, and when” of decision making and can lead to improved decision effectiveness. Effective decision making is closely linked to strong organizational performance. Successful companies consistently make high-quality decisions at the right pace and execute them well.

  • Zalando’s Tech Radar

    The Tech Radar is a tool to inspire and support Engineering teams at Zalando to pick the best technologies for new projects; it provides a platform to share knowledge and experience in technologies, to reflect on technology decisions and continuously evolve our technology landscape. Based on the pioneering work of ThoughtWorks, our Tech Radar sets out the changes in technologies that are interesting in software development — changes that we think our engineering teams should pay attention to and use in their projects.

  • Algorithms to Live By

    What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of the new and familiar is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not. Computers, like us, confront limited space and time, so computer scientists have been grappling with similar problems for decades. And the solutions they’ve found have much to teach us.