Dealing With A Project's Complexity In A Changing Environment

Have you ever felt confused, frustrated, or unmotivated at work? Especially when working on a new, big and complicated project? I’m going to show you why you felt this way and explain what this emotional rollercoaster actually means, how to move forward, and learn a thing or two in the process.

We, as developers, need to adapt to the business that drives the companies we work for. This is not easy - we often feel confused, frustrated, or just plain unmotivated. On top of that, when the codebase grows, so does everything else: the scale of the tech problems, the team or company size, the product expectations, and the overall stakes. In this talk, I’m going to walk you through the emotional rollercoaster of implementing growth-induced changes from the perspective of a developer, manager & psychologist. I will guide you on how not only to survive it but also how to learn a thing or two in the process.

This talk is dedicated to every developer out there, whoever was or will be working in a product team. You will be equipped with information that will help you not to panic next time a project goes downhill.

Hi! I’ve spent almost a decade in IT, the majority of it as a backend RoR developer. Around a year ago I shifted my career toward management and currently, I am responsible for two teams in a fast-growing company. On top of that, I am about to finish my master’s degree in psychology. This gives me a pretty unique perspective on programmers’ work that I want to share. The talk itself is a result of the process I went through earlier this year with one of the teams and is based on the change curve by Kubler-Ross and Lippitt-Knoster’s model for managing complex change.