Forget Velocity, Let's Talk Acceleration

GOTO Copenhagen 2017

Velocity gives us motion in one direction. We want to work faster -- and more, we want to do the most useful work. We need acceleration: deliberate changes in speed and direction.

How? The same way we accelerate our customers' work: automation!

We already automate our work: from CI to our favorite editors to command-line aliases, we smooth our workflow. We can take this farther -- but should we? Where is the balance between racing forward, and tweaking our racecar?

To achieve this, first look closely at our own work. A few observations give us data on what's really slowing us down. It may not be the technical debt you think it is: what hurts us is different from what we dislike.

Next consider automation: it changes more than our speed. Jessica suggests more powerful justifications, up to generating contributions larger than our own productivity.

Let's find the sticking points in our work, and then apply our superpowers of automation to change our own world, so that we can change our users' worlds, faster.