Webinar: Broken promises - how to keep your word and your sanity too

Wednesday 12th May 2021, 7:00 pm.

Speaker: Clare Sudbery

Online

Synopsis

How often in your working life do you or your team break your promises?

Javascript promises are about committing to a particular action. But asynchronicity demands that they make no assertion about WHEN the promise will be fulfilled. When we are asked to make software delivery estimates and commitments, we don't get the same leeway. The javascript model is much more fitting, and we could learn a lot from it.

Not only does the principle of focusing on WHAT rather than WHEN hold in software development, it also works for personal time management. In both contexts we tend to put unrealistic expectations on ourselves - because we're so scared of breaking promises.

The trick lies in choosing carefully which promises you make, and then learning how to use data to replace over-optimistic guesswork with informed forecasts.

This is a talk about software estimation, delivery management and personal time management. It will outline various key principles for use in planning your time and your commitments.

About the speaker

Clare is a lead consultant engineer with Made Tech. She is a maths graduate with 20 years of software engineering experience, and a particular interest in teaching and mentoring; encouraging more women into IT; and banishing impostor syndrome. Seven years ago she returned to IT with a sigh of relief after a few years as a high school maths teacher. Since then she has embraced all things XP. She is on a mission to awaken the inner geek in clever women (and men) everywhere. Clare Clare hosts the Making Tech Better podcast (https://tinyurl.com/MTBetter) and blogs at https://medium.com/a-woman-in-technology and https://insimpleterms.blog/. She loves her job.