Mastodawn

Carol Lee Jan 16, 2025

We are designing a new research project in the Developer Success Lab, and we're seeking to understand software engineers' experiences with *incidents* ! Good, bad, ugly, all of it!

Have a big story or strong POV on this? We're bringing together a small community group for a one time zoom session, to share stories and help us learn. You'll directly influence what the lab studies on this.

You can let us know if you're interested here (more details below):

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeuQiE0Ww1oElsWNk6a9KyEmIgqfwHdpnV5_dN9CP4qornJhg/viewform?usp=sharing

Incidents community-group

We would love to register your interest to be part of a small (4-5 person), one-time, group conversation about incidents in the context of software engineering and software engineering orgs. This conversation will help inform a new research project we are embarking on at the Developer Success Lab. The goal will largely be to develop ideas about this broad topic and help us find less visible areas of work involving incidents to bring into the light for the broader research and engineering community. You can find out more about our work here: https://dsl.pubpub.org/original-research We will contact you at the email you provide below. Thank you very much for taking the time to be here, and for your interest in contributing to this work.

Google Docs

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

More about the lab: we conduct empirical research to support software teams, and we share this research in open access formats so that all of our participants can benefit. We also seek to always listen to software practitioners to create better and more helpful research (hence this initiative!)

An example of one of our recent lines of research: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-024-10550-9

Understanding and effectively mitigating code review anxiety - Empirical Software Engineering

Anxiety about giving and receiving code reviews has been documented as a common occurrence that leads to developers avoiding code reviews by procrastinating and limiting their cognitive engagement with them. This avoidance not only increases anxiety in the long term, but also prevents developers, their teams, and their organizations from accessing the technical and sociocognitive benefits of effective and efficient code reviews. However, software research has not yet empirically examined code review anxiety, and from this, tractable intervention targets and strategies for mitigating code review anxiety. In this study, we present an empirical framework for understanding the factors maintaining and exacerbating code review anxiety. Utilizing a randomized waitlist control trial, we also tested the effectiveness of a novel single-session cognitive-behavioral workshop intervention. Our results show evidence that positive impact can be obtained from a brief intervention and suggest code review anxiety can be successfully mitigated by targeting developers’ cost bias, anxiety self-efficacy, and self-compassion.

SpringerLink

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

A little more context on the space we'd like to create here: I often host collective gatherings (e.g., Q&As, research webinars) that include discussing human-centered practices that can help us in difficult experiences in software work.

We'd like to learn more about the human experiences that people have while managing incidents (pre, during, and post) so that we can create research that brings important light to psychological needs here. In the virtual room...

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

...we'll have a code of conduct, as well as facilitation by two PhDs in psychology who have both worked with community groups on sensitive topics such as childhood well-being and research in school and health settings, and both of us have had extensive training in managing safe, supportive conversations on social topics 🥰

Cat Hicks Jan 16, 2025

Have gotten a couple questions on this, so just to be a little clearer, *this* isn't a research study itself (yet!), this is a social community event we're hoping to facilitate so that we can listen and learn and then go forward and design a good study, just one piece of a great deal of prep 😎

Christin White Jan 16, 2025

@grimalkina You do such interesting work and I really appreciate your commitment to public knowledge.

Cat Hicks Jan 16, 2025

@ChristinWhite gosh, thank you! 🥰

specialcase Jan 15, 2025

@grimalkina How anonymous or confidential will the identities of participants be?

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@specialcase it's impossible to have anonymity in a live zoom call of this sort, this isn't a research session, just a small social call with two researchers from our lab. Folks should not register interest in this if they're not comfortable being on a live video call with a couple of strangers. But we won't be sharing anything *between* participants other than first names and what folks themselves choose to talk about. (good note that we will be clear in CoC no confidential company info either)

Rob Isaac Jan 15, 2025

@grimalkina I promise I’m not trying to pick a fight here, but I’m hesitant to share this with people who might contribute because it’s framed in a way that seems to suggest that no best practice currently exists. I don’t think that’s your intent, but this is a sensitive subject because the industry as a whole tends not to follow best practice or even admit that it exists (for complex and often gendered reasons). The LFI communities tend to be a little gun-shy about this.

Rob Isaac Jan 15, 2025

@grimalkina Immediately acknowledging that you’re immensely, supernaturally better than me at this, and it’s possible you’ve already thought about this and have a plan to mitigate it. My reservations about sharing it more widely are what I’m trying to surface, not any deeper concern about your methodology.

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and feelings on this and am curious to understand more ❤️ it is all good! I totally understand these involve deeply painful experiences for folks, which is why we're hoping to create a small group space where we can learn before we jump in and design a study without listening enough first!

Rob Isaac Jan 15, 2025

@grimalkina Ok yay. Bluntly summarised: there’s a standard for best practice in incident response with a fair amount of academic verification (Allspaw, Jones, Cook). A lot of their findings are counterintuitive and the industry tends to ignore it. Inviting “strong POV” sounds like you might put people who understand LFI in a (virtual) room with people who are loud but wrong (most of the industry). For the people you want to hear from, that’s every day and they probably don’t want more of it.

Rob Isaac Jan 15, 2025

@grimalkina I’m not the best person to explain this and I feel clumsy even mentioning it, but that’s why sharing or promoting it felt uncomfortable. Hopefully someone better qualified will show up with more detail.

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi I appreciate your time and consideration!

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi ok! It sounds like you are feeling very concerned about how folks with a lot of expertise and experience are treated for existing work. That seems like a fair concern in the context of industry-level arguments. Maybe a few pieces of context will help

1) I have actually read Allspaw et al and been in contact with some of these folks! and we intend to further our grasp of the literature and use it to steer our research, research is a WIP. So this community call isn't per se about 'expertise'

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

2) you are right, it's possible that in a setting like this, someone could show up & hear a perspective from someone else that they quite disagree with. If that would be a sensitive experience for folks like Allspaw et al, or exhausting, I agree with you that they should NOT engage with this kind of event nor would I expect them to. We will adhere to positive community norms, but this is not a space where I'm going to say "you can only share thoughts if you agree with x method"

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi 3) my goal is actually not necessarily to center expertise in this room "for the people you want to hear from" -- actually, I am very interested in hearing from "every day" people having every day experiences, including failures, mistakes, things that went wrong. This is because it's a generative place to start thinking about human experience and hear community voices vs trying to derive best practices. I frequently find eng audiences do not understand this but this is a typical process!

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi 4) I'm sorry that the "strong POV" language struck you badly, but, I think this is a pretty far read to project from that one phrase. I can't control the future or other human beings' behaviors, but I can tell you that it's really difficult to recruit people to engage in any research process and it's fairly standard language to encourage people to come 'with a point of view' to share. I get that there's industry context! But I don't think it's fair to put that on my lab

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi in general, it is important to me as a scientist that when I study a topic I don't take on the ideological commitments that exist in an area (even if they end up being correct). We will certainly try to learn from and integrate the evidence of this community, but it's my hope that we will also make unique contributions in other elements, such as a richer description of the psychological experience of practitioners, which is my focus instead of best practices :)

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi "the entirety of our initial message can feel like a pretty visceral, context-free attack on how others lived their lives or conducted their careers." - https://www.learningfromincidents.io/posts/the-changing-climate-of-resilience-in-software

"Strong POV" sounds like it goes both ways here!

Reader: The Changing Climate of Resilience in Software

Rob Isaac Jan 15, 2025

@grimalkina Oof, I want to keep digging into this, but truth or falsehood in incident management is orthogonal to our original discussion and I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to continue that argument by other means 😁

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi deep philosophy hours needed!!

Rob Isaac Jan 15, 2025

@grimalkina I think you have this under control, and you’ve addressed my concerns.

It didn’t strike me particularly badly, btw. It’s not my area of expertise and I’ve sadly accepted that this topic has too many layers of scar tissue for most people, but I’m not pick-mastodon-fights levels of mad about it. Sometimes getting past the scar tissue needs someone with your skills, and I have reason enough to trust you.

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi I hear you and totally didn't see any of this as a fight! Just a nice chat. I try to lay things out in a lot of detail sometimes in replies like this just because I know sometimes other folks are reading trying to get my context. Heard on the scar tissue, and it's useful feedback for us as we consider whether to even get into this area at all and our capacities to do it!

Cat Hicks Jan 15, 2025

@rmi I'm not totally sure I follow why this is a concern or why this would be offensive to folks!

We're interested in hearing people's experiences and stories, and that could certainly include their thoughts on best practices, but I don't feel it's appropriate for us to lay out OUR conviction about what "best practices" are, because we're interested in hearing about how people think about taking care of themselves, stress, and other social topics that our lab studies?