Encouraging a culture of learning across your organisation

A presentation at DevOpsDays Edinburgh 2017 in October 2017 in Edinburgh, UK by Jenny Duckett

Jenny Duckett Senior Developer   Government Digital Service   @jenny_duckett

� 2 I’m from the UK Government Digital Service (GDS)

� 3

First, a sad story � 4

� 5

� 6 Inappropriate content :-(

Why run a workshop? � 7

� 8

� 9 Show that it’s ok to take time out to learn

� 10 Scale your impact

� 11 We’re all responsible for what we build

Why focus on security? � 12

� 13 Developers often don’t feel confident about security

� 14 Expand the community of interested people

� 15 Security is one of many areas we care about

But I’m not a security expert! � 16

� 17 …so I can’t do this

� 18 …that’s fine, do it anyway

� 19

� 20 Treat it as an alpha - prototype and iterate

� 21 You don’t have to cover everything

� 22 Experts aren’t always the best teachers

� 23 It isn’t about having all the answers

� 24 Find someone to work with

Alex Muller (with egg for scale) � 25

Hypotheses to test � 26

� 27 The OWASP top 10 is a good starting point

� 28 Keep a strong practical focus

� 29 Make it a single day

� 30 Use the source code of exercises to learn

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� 32 Learn how to use your everyday tools better

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� 34 Bring it home by using examples from your own applications

� 35 Get people to work together and help each other

� 36 Make something that other people can build on

Practical tips � 37

� 38 About 15 people, with a range of skills

� 39 Ask people to set up in advance

� 40 Set up a local network

� 41 Run a short retrospective

� 42 Ask for volunteers to run the next one

What did we learn? � 43

� 44 It’s totally possible to do this!

� 45

� 46 You’ll learn about the topic in more depth by preparing to explain it

� 47 Be ruthless with your MVP

� 48 Running the day well takes effort

� 49 Organising an event can be time-consuming

� 50 • organising space, facilities and people • researching topics • structuring the content • writing presentations • preparing practical exercises

What happened next? � 51

� 52 Share what you’ve made

� 53

� 54

� 55 Fix the biggest problem for next time

� 56 Support the people who come after you

� 57 2 workshops have happened since ours

� 58 They’ve taken the format forward in exciting ways we didn’t expect

� 59

� 60 Workshops aren’t the end of the journey

You can do this too � 61

� 62 What can you run a workshop about?

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� 64 You can encourage a culture of learning in your organisation

� 65 Thanks! @jenny_duckett

Jenny Duckett
@jennyd

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Workshops are a great way of developing skills and sharing knowledge within your organisation, and they also encourage a culture of learning together. But running a workshop by yourself can seem daunting, especially if you aren’t an expert in the area you want your organisation to get better at.

I’ll talk about my experience of running a web security workshop at the UK’s Government Digital Service, what we did to improve our culture of learning and how you can do something similar where you work.

(This is the talk I was scheduled to give at The Lead Developer 2017, but was unfortunately unable to give at the last moment due to civil service rules about speaking in public around election times.)

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