We find ourselves in a complex world where technology and business collide - people with different views working towards the same goal (even if it doesn't always feel like it).

This talk is about effectively navigating your way through that world and bridging the gaps that lead to confusion, conflict, and lost productivity. It speaks about context, communication, empathy, and understanding the businesses that we work in and the people that we work with. It's about the human aspects of software development that transcends across borders and tools.

I use (often humorous) anecdotes from personal experiences (and bashing my head many times) throughout my career working in companies of all sizes - from 12 employees to tens of thousands of employees. I end the talk by sharing links to books, talks, and articles that I've found to be useful, and I touch on development-concepts ranging from Agile to mob programming.

Spoiler Alert: Users are not the enemy, even when they give you grief.

I've presented this talk publicly three times - once at the Regional Scrum Gathering in Cape Town, South Africa in 2019 (although it's a developer-focused talk, it was well-received in the Agile community), at the Developer User Group, and also at my employer - a tech consultancy.

I often feel that talks on specific languages or frameworks target a particular subset of developers, but believe that this talk can benefit developers and other members of technical teams regardless of where they work of what technology they use.

Two of the attendees at the Regional Scrum Gathering created sketch notes based on my talk: https://twitter.com/sketchingsm/status/1185200369963622401 and https://twitter.com/SharnaSammy/status/1185259048603660289.

Lastly, some of my previous talks are available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb9tr6RLysM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qDIZXCbvVY.