The isaque piece of architecture Gathering is the International Conference highlight for all those working on Solutions structures in IT projects primarily software Architects developers and Professionals in quality assurance but also system analyst who want to communicate better with their developers. A selection of well-known International speakers will share their practical knowledge on the most important topics in the state of the art software
architecture. The conference takes place online, from November, 14 to 17. And we have a 15% discount code for you. Enter tlj underscore EMP underscore 15 for 15 percent discount. The other part of experiments that are ilanic is about how you frame failure. So a lot of people are afraid to try something because we could get blamed. So, I think the most important part about building an experiment driven culture is to make it safe to fail and to fail in good ways. Hey everyone.
My name is Henry Surya with Robin. And you're listening to the technology, you know, podcast the show where I'll be bringing you the greatest technical leaders practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to discuss about their Journey ideas and practices that we all can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team and to make an impact in your personal work. So let's dive into our Journal. Hello my friends.
Welcome to the tekhelet general podcast, the show where you can learn about technical leadership and Excellence from my conversations. With great thought, leaders in the tech industry and I'm very happy to present you episode 104. If this is your first time listening to technology, you know, subscribe and follow the show on your podcast app and on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. And if you'd like to support my journey creating this, Cast subscribe as a patron at package.
You know dot, f / Patron. My guest for today's episode is Lisi hot good. Lisi is an active figure in the global testing community in this episode. Lisi shared on Lessons Learned growing an experiment driven quality culture in her recent years, Lizzie shared why it is important to have an experimentation mindset before we adopt something new, or any best practices and to have a safe environment to execute those. Romans Lizzie shared her advice on how to run an experiment from
building transparency. Creating hypothesis getting buy-in and understanding our biases. And in particular, the sun cost policy in the left half Lizzy, shared her, personal transformation Journey learning in public and share her tips on growing technical confidence. I hope you enjoy listening to my conversation with Lizzie. If you also enjoy it. Please help. Share it with your friends and colleagues who can also benefit
from listening to this episode. It is my ultimate mission to spread this podcast to more people. And I really appreciate your support in any way towards fulfilling my mission. Before we continue the conversation, let's hear some words from our sponsor. Definitely D is the top International software development conference with an emphasis on coding architecture. Tech leadership skills. The lineup for this year is truly stellar and features many Legends in software development
names. Such as Robert Uncle Bob, Martin can back Scott Hanselman, Franca subramanyam Carolyn honey, Alan Halep, Mary, poppendieck, and many other prominent names, including some of those who have also appeared in this podcast before the conference takes place online. So you can enjoy it from the comfort of your couch. We spoke to the definite, the organizers and I'm happy to share that technology. You know, has got the 10% discount code for you. Enter the promo code, awsm
underscore tlj. When you purchase the ticket on definite e.com, here's the promo code. One more time awsm underscore, tlj. Depending on the time when you purchase a ticket early price is still available. See you there. Today's episode is proudly sponsored by skills method. The global community and events. Form with more than 100,000 software professionals here members, can organize their learning experiences around the technology topics.
They care about most you get on-demand access to their latest content thought, leadership insights, as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. So whether devops our data science is your bus or you are fan of functional programming or all things Cloud, you can make real connections with people who share your Your interests head on over to skills method or Cam to become part of the tech community that matters most to you.
It's free to join and you will find it easy to keep up with the latest tech Trends. Hi everyone, welcome to another new episode of the package, you know, podcast today I have a guest with me named Lizzie Hawker. Please see is someone who is very active in testing Community. She actually has a lot of blog posts around testing, and in fact the latest blog post when she attended the age Testing day, that looks really beautiful there. So many illustrations that see
this herself. So make sure if you are interested in following a gel testing presentations and materials, go check out Li see how color-block and you can see so many breathable illustrations on that website. These see, thank you so much for attending this session. Basically we'll be talking a lot about testing culture.
So you want to share a great sharing topic from your personal Journey about experiment, driven quality culture and lay down the also have some personal sharing which I'm really looking forward. It to hearing from you as well. So, welcome to the show. Lizzie. Thanks for spending your time. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. So, let's see.
I always like to start our conversation by asking your career Journey. Maybe if you can share any highlights or turning point so far in your career, I'm happy to say. I think I wouldn't have a career that's quite straightforward. So maybe there's quite a story to start with. I never thought for instance that I ended up in Tech and very happy I did in the end. But it's not where I started off.
I studied also different subject coming from completely different background basically, but when I reached the end of my studies, I really felt. Okay, what do we do now? Because it was a quite an Eric study. There were many options for what to pick where, to start a career based on the csis subject that I had. Which was computer games in China, I felt maybe.
Just maybe because that happen, I could also try And see if I can get my foot into the computer games industry because I have a passion there and maybe could combine our passion with my work which would be amazing if I don't try that. I don't know. I having that thought made me actually do it, I ended up in a little startup in the computer game industry. We were not developing games ourselves but actually an AI middleware for computer game
developers. So I was ending up in the software development company, very small. Complete start up. So, that was my entry point into Tech in itself and also got made to contact with a drawl. What is Scrum? What are the different roles that? We need a different skills that we need everything and I just loved it. I actually started as a game designer because they honestly just gave me a chance. I'm not coming from that background either but just a few months in our tester, quit the
drug. That was a turning point for me. Definitely, or basically, my starting point. Because my manager back then called me into his room with a very serious face. I'm, he said like, hey, you know what you doing right now? You're not doing so well, and I was like, oh my gosh, but I'm telling me, I'm fired, my whole world is scattering. I just love this place, please, can I stay here? And then he continued testing
could be something for you. And in hindsight, I know he needed someone to take over that job, but for me, it was like, I have no idea, but let me try it because I definitely want to stay here. Love that place, maybe it does fit or not, I don't know because I have no idea what it even about the thing is he probably needed to sell the position. Yes, but he actually was right. That it was a better fit for me because suddenly, I could really use my strength.
I could contribute in many different ways that we couldn't before, so it really played to my strengths. I realized this is something that I could imagine working in for very, very, very long time. So that's sort of how I was gently pushed. Into testing and quality or fell into testing, but in the end, I really just found my place in Tech and realized this is something I never imagined I could work in, but it makes a lot of sense.
When looking back at the history, I also grew up with technology grew up, with computers. I just was socialized differently. So, I never thought I could really work there and not turning point that really showed me how well I could work there now, back then there was no other person. It was a really small start-up, so the other tests that quit already I was alone. We had some very old books in are very little library to learn about testing and quality.
That's where also started to find the community outside. All the people that are sharing the knowledge and sharing their
insights. I learned a lot by trying these things out, one of the big highlights back then was my product owner back then we didn't have a training budget, not very small starter but we could at least five books and one of the books that I got with agile testing NG but Lisa crisp in Edina Gregory and that opened my eyes to A Whole New World and then that it started following them on Twitter and seeing old are so many other great people and so many resources and
started to learn from. There's I've received a lot from that Community back then that I could actually try out because again, I didn't have anyone else to talk to or to learn from at work. So I got a lot from outside to try. A dozen spiration that work well, that's sort of in the end, it didn't make it. So it was sort of a roller coaster phase but Wouldn't miss it because I learned a lot back them about all things of the development and teams and collaboration.
A lot of stuff later on. I went to, let's say a consultancy so, working on projects and learned a lot about operations, third level support and so on. But it got me away from product development, where was before, where was really happy. It also got me further away from testing quality and feel like they want to get back to that my last company where it stayed for six years. I I was Finding product development. Again, I really realized saying, okay, this is my happy place,
this is where I'm driving. This is where I can also. Contribute newest, I had a great journey then. Also, that company, I had another Turning Point basically, for me, because I became a speaker at conferences. So suddenly not only getting input from the community of Floyd, but also being able to give back which was a journey in itself. But it was definitely a turning point in the sense of increasing my network, having a lot.
Access to knowledge this way, getting even more Inspirations because speaking conferences means you have, like, an entry ticket to a lot more conferences. Now, I had a training budget, but obviously, no training budget is paying. You like five, six conferences per year. Speaking, really open that door for me. I got to know a lot more people,
lot more inspiration. I think the next turning point then was to level up in seniority and getting in fancy new title of the senior Back down in a company, was principal titles are context-dependent. So it was just the next one of the senior at that company. But without I was also suddenly part of leadership fully leadership, not in a management role, but in that individual contributor role.
So I started to make more intentional impact across the organization and seeing, how could this look like I realized suddenly people also perceive me differently because I was still the same person but suddenly have that title. So that's something that all Open my eyes a lot in the last year's. And I think the final one is now that I have just started at a new company to see how much value is actually my experience with. Can we transfer to another company?
Because if you stayed for a long time with the last places, at least I start to wonder, like, okay, is this actually applicable or some other context? Or is it really not context? Is it really constrained to that? And then that brings me to today and organization. Thank you so much for sharing your journey, Lizzy. I think, some people might relate to that particular Journey as well. So where you started in, probably not intact the background, but then you gave it a try.
You didn't find the first fit of the job. The game designer thing, right? Probably some people also experience the same thing but hey sometimes opportunity happen. And if I remember correctly Janet Gregory and Lisa, Crispin themselves, actually didn't start it to pick testing in the first place. So they somehow Grew From opportunities to Opportunities. Now, they become. So, He does. And I'm sure you are also quite active in the testing world and becomes inspirational for other people.
So, thank you so much for sharing this story. I'm also intrigued by your journey going through conferences, over conferences. This is acting, probably some people aspire to do as well. We'll be discussing about that later, but I just want to maybe go through our first topic, where you probably are sharing some of the experiment things that you did in building some kind of quality culture.
I think changing culture is hot no matter which company you're in small or Big maybe big is even tougher. So, tell us a little bit more about this journey that you have maybe a little bit of background about this story. So this is a story about the last three years and my last
company. So from 2019 to 2021 basically discovering that Pine stand back in. 2019 the company I've worked out was in the phase where we have a lot of product teams, like think 38 around that time, we had nine different domains, all those teams, We're really autonomous.
Or at least that was also, our aim always, to have the Independent to enable them to really make their own decisions in their own context because all those proteins really have a different context and each of them owned like either a full product or maybe a few services, but definitely, they were quite
autonomous. The result that we saw back in 2019 was we actually have not really insight into how these teams were doing, especially regarding casting quality or they actually Driving and they could share more across teams like good practices and everything. Or are they having struggles? Maybe there's room for improvement. Maybe we could help, but we just don't know. It's like a black box back then our CIO and also sponsored an initiative to figure out.
Okay, how's it going? Well, that's all blended with me. So I was still embedded in one of the product teams because that was the setup we had. But with my seniority level, I was meant to also Drive these kind of initiatives across teams And while in the testing quality space, that was dear to my heart. So I picked up that topic. What I made really good experience with in my personal purpose.
Basically, was to frame these kind of things as experiments with a real hypothesis to know what I want to try and what I hope to have as an outcome, from what I want to try before I do it. So I can really measure against and I cannot still communicate clearly about all these things. And also hold ourselves accountable as well. So that's what we tried back down. The mission was really to level up the culture regarding testing
and quality. We wanted to have those teams grow mature in the sense of, as soon as we're there, we can really scale further because that was the ultimate goal of the company driver behind what we want to scale. We already included a teams but we want to scale like heavily. So we better know now where we are, this led to an experiment and actually was like an experiment of a lot of small
experiments. It was like an overall In goal to level up the knowledge skills and practices of teams by also enabling them to experiment themselves. Because again, their contacts was massively different. It's not one size fits all that we could apply there. We went into the teams. We have some pilot teams to start with, basically, to test our hypothesis. If that could be proven or we need to find something else because they could also very well, be right with
experimentation. It could totally be that we're on the wrong track, it could have also So been that actually teams that are thriving and they're doing well, they just don't share enough fine. No problem here. That would be cool. What we found was. We went into four teams for different product teams, quite different aspects. So quite a nice subset of the teams that we had. We worked with each of them, to first of all, create transparency, where they
currently are. How do they build quality in? What are they currently do to test? What they build? Are there any pain points because usually they are, right. And usually Know about that the best because that's their context, what could they try to improve? So transparency was one part but they also needed to have the awareness of what kind of options they have to improve their situation and then to experiment to really try something new and see if that
works or not. This is what we did with each of the four teams. Obviously, there's more details, how we create a transparency, these kind of things, but the end was that we helped them to design their own experiments. Help them support The Run following up and so on and also design a second experiment for them. This whole initiative span across like ten months, we also have like a lot of reflection points because, again, in the end, we wanted to see stuff hypothesis that we have to help
them create that transparency. Help them spread the awareness and experiment is that actually leading us further to that quality culture that we wanted to aim for. I would say. In hindsight, it was partly doing the job partly in the sense of it, triggered, a lot of great. About testing and quality and also the underlying problems in the team. Because usually, when you start talking about housing quality, a lot of communication issues are unreal.
Door collaboration issues like deeper things, foundational, things that need to be fixed first. And then we can talk about testing and quality itself, but it's actually an interesting trigger about these conversations and really valuable. It also could raise a lot of awareness. We could break down some misconceptions. We could Inspire teams definitely to improve their Isis, which is great. Well unfortunately, that was the impact. They had.
We hope for other impact as well, but we didn't have it. For example, doubt not the whole team was on board, no matter how much we encouraged everyone to really draw in those sessions, no matter how much by in we got before from manager. From everyone, not the whole team was on board in the end. Also not all people opened up for New Concepts. I mean humans we can't force them which is totally fine,
right? But misconceptions Prevail in the end but the sad Paul was that the team's really struggled running the experiments, which was sort of the core of our hypotheses to enable them, for continuous Improvement and to really look further, they really struggled more because they didn't want to, but it was that fall back into everyday business, which so easily took over like that roadmap, that's
higher priority. So, we need to work on that, like, yes, it would be nice to work on this experiment but the other one, we feel the pressure, any other results of actions, spoke, a lot louder than words, and That matter. And again, we have a lot of encouragement and a lot of support from management but the decisions of the actual people doing the work painted, a different picture. So there was something else going on. We felt, okay, we need to switch this around.
It also was too heavy weight for stealing, because we spend a lot of time with the 14. So we had 38 how to scale that it would have taken way too long. So next experiment started and further experiments followed, especially from what we observed. Spam across the years. Basically, I would not claim.
We have found the perfect way to do that quality culture, but it has triggered, a lot of thoughts, a lot of conversations and that itself was already valuable enough to always continue trying the next thing that could hopefully help cater to what we need and cater to what we need from a product in perspective where we started. But also as we later found for our Tech leadership. So my peers basically because they have different needs this underlying system that we all
work. Get in where I realized, there's something systemic here. So let's look at our reward system, what do we actually reward them for it? Do we reward actions contributing to toss in quality, or is it something different? Because usually people have good reasons why they show certain behaviors. So, yeah, that's sort of the whole initiative in a nutshell. Obviously there's a lot more detail as a starting point.
Thanks for sharing this and do, and I'm sure that when you telling the story, you look back and bring back those memories. So in the first place, He just took that from the beginning, many people wants to drive culture, change, many people has great vision, I want to be a world-class Tech organization or Tech teams. I want to follow Google or whatever big companies out there.
So the vision is always great. Building, the culture itself is tough and you have this angle, which I find very interesting, not many people do. So you actually make it such that it's an experiment. When you have an experiment, that means you have a hypothesis, you have things that you want to try to do and you have some kind of measure. I meant, right? The outcomes that you want to
try to achieve and measure. Whether you meet that over a certain period of time, tell us why experiment driven is something that we should aim for when we want to build a culture.
So originally I started out to you start because I just made personal good experience with it but in the end over the years and then that this is definitely something I want to build as a culture that we do more experiments idea is that we focus on learning on false Learning that we really need to try things out in our context before we actually know if it works or not. So that's also the case with what often are called, best practices.
Yes, they might work in a majority of context but does it work in my own context? Right now, with these very specific, I don't know if I haven't tried it. Also when we think of like the Canadian model of the different domains in which like be aware, are we working on something? That's really simplistic. Is it something that's complicated but actually we have good structure. Jurors and we know a lot of good practices that we can use. Or is it so complex? So we really have to explore
that space. We don't know yet. Mostly what I faced in software development, we usually always build something new. We work with new people, we work in a new domain. We try to discover new none. So, it's a lot of exploration. We need to do for out. We need to experiment with need to try something new. The other part of experiments that I really like, besides that, we obviously can really have them help or It's about how
you frame failure. So a lot of people are afraid to try something because we could get blamed. We could fail personally. Maybe I lose my face because of that, right? It's like there's a risk involved. So I think the most important part about building an experiment driven culture is to make it safe to fail and to feel in good ways like that hypothesis. That I came up with could not fully prove it. You could see it as a failure.
You could also see our it's not a failure because we actually learned. It's a good thing. Thing that we learned that this port is not working, other parts are working so we can find something better, but it's a whole range of how we can perceive failure. Every like, I think it's from Amy Edmondson, like a spectrum of failure where she arranges a from, like, blameworthy failure, really stuff that could be avoided that maybe you should
not go into. Again, to really praised with the Athenian in the sense of experimentation of exploration to learn fast. And I feel building that safety Can help in so many ways and allows us to experiment and to allow people feel safe to try something and not get the play him but actually get the praise. So try something in a good way in a safe way that also Limits The Fallout physically of what could go wrong. And I think we all need to learn how to do that. Better and mean cling better.
I mean, the spirit of a gel itself is basically a lot of experiments and trying out and, you know, short feedback loops and things like that. You brought up two good points actually when we We hear about best practices sometimes we think, okay? This is the way to go, but you brought up a good point that sometimes we have to think about the context where you are at. Some people put it like you're not Google, so don't try to be following the Google practices
for example. So some best practices even though it's best practices for many people. Sometimes it doesn't work for your context for certain situations. So thanks for highlighting that and I think I like the last part when you frame it as an experiment. So experiment sometimes can fail. It's not like a commitment that you will Chief, what you intended to do in the beginning. So I think experiments allow you to frame it.
Such that even if you don't meet the outcomes, it's kind of like a success in a way, of course you bring up the spectrum of failure. We all should aspire to what's more praiseworthy kind of failure, rather than some things that we under look or something like that. So I think that's definitely a different kind of failure. You brought up about transparency in the beginning. When we started about this experiments, you brought up the
point of building transparency. No way the team at what kind of pain points And things like that. Why do you think this is important to build this transparency in the beginning of the experiment? So what helped me without is to have a baseline, to really have a look into where are we right now? Not only from Individual point of views, but also from a team point of view because it might be a different perceived reality for everyone on the team or what we're doing right now.
Honestly, I had teams were different roles were on like, for example, the Yaks person, the developer someone from quality, someone from product. All of them, share different things, what needs to happen, for example, to get an idea to production, not any of them, had the full picture only when they really put that together visually in front of them, they realize. Oh, there are other things I never knew about or never thought about and also pain points that come along with that.
So T have that Baseline? For me is really important to not only face the truth of a current and acknowledge where we are right now with a good into that because it's just fact. And then we have a baseline to From because then you can see the Delta, basically, you can really know how things improved or maybe not, maybe they went in a different direction, so you have that information to evaluate your experiments.
So, transparency in itself I found really valuable because you can really share also the pain and also hopefully Inspire others to reduce the friction that you currently experiencing. But then when you start taking action on that, you see that Delta are we going into a better Direction? And before it doesn't have to be perfect just a bit better? Or are we maybe regressing could also be right? But then you know otherwise how could you tell?
So I think yeah this comes back to if I'm not mistaken. It's the scientific method in a way where you need to know where you start, right? Because sometimes we all tend to want to build a culture. Yeah, we know, there is a problem, it's not written explicitly, we just kind of feel, it's a gut feeling and we start our experiment and things like that but at the end of the day we don't know whether we are
progressing or regress secret. So building this transparency and Baseline I think actually Be very important in any kind of experiment so that you need to know at the end whether you actually progressing making good progress. And the changes is intended, or is something that is completely out of the blue. Are you didn't intend it to happen but it happened anyway. So I think they are this kind of transparency. I can see it's important.
I think after you build That Base Line, you have hypotheses in experimental, scientific method, you have this hypothesis. So tell us why we should build hypotheses when building culture as well. How should we come up with this hypothesis? You put, this is politics actually one that many people struggle with. And for me it's also personally, the hardest part, the reason I'm still doing that if it forces me to really write down, what is it? Exactly. I want to do and what do you
expect out of it? Just a thought exercise for me is actually the most valuable part even if maybe I haven't framed it perfectly because wording is hard writing out hypothesis is also something tricky. Again, they don't have to be perfect but it forces us to write things down. Down to have it, not adapted afterwards, as we go, but really see. Okay. This is what we wanted to start out from maybe we discover better directions.
It's totally fine to also cancel an experiment and try something else, but then it's an intentional practice. So formulating those hypotheses in itself I felt always extremely valuable to clear up my thinking but also then in hindsight to hold myself accountable, am I really working on that? Can I prove that kind of disprove it? How's it? This is what I wanted to set out if I want to change directions
again, let's find her. Should be intentional about it and also be open about it. So yeah, I think this kind of thought process where you want to experiment something but if you don't write it down, sometimes it can happen. Also things change and you go into different direction unconsciously. I think this is what we don't want to do because that means you are at running a different
experiments all together. I think having this kind of hypothesis stage where you write down or maybe make it clear to people who are involved. Okay, this Is the things that we want to experiment and this is the outcome that you want to try. So let's give it a go. Everybody in the same picture and either try. Another thing that you mentioned about this hypothesis is that we need to be conscious that it should not be too big in terms of hypothesis or maybe to open-ended or generic.
We should make it such that is small enough and we should aim for faster iteration or short feedback loop. So tell us more how we can build a better hypothesis actually. Again, this is one of the key things, I feel if you heard my story right now we started out for example with a huge experiment, it was very big took a long time to get that feedback on and heavyweight and I built this despite having practice more feedback loops and everything before.
And still I caught myself coming up with a huge experiment, no matter how often I preach. Otherwise I still caught myself doing that in the end. It was too big. Definitely I think There was important, part is to reflect on what we're actually doing, also create transparency with ourselves. Basically to realize, okay? Maybe I'm doing something differently than I speak. There's a mismatch. What makes me do something else? If there's something that he knows me, is there something
that's missing anything? So I can again also change my own behavior and see what would be helpful to make it smaller. The experimentation part for improvements again, for this initiative, it was huge. It was cross. In many people actually have this kind of experimentation opportunity within the daily work in the teams. We also don't have to be in a leadership position to experiment, it shouldn't hold you back, but you're not having the expected role or position, or whatever.
If you're working, for example, in a team, you can use your cycle. Whatever that is, maybe you're working in Sprint's. So maybe every two weeks you have and reflection cycle, anyway, all you could use the time frame to say, okay? We're going to try this for two weeks. Weeks, see what happens. It's like this continuous Improvement idea of agile, you
could also try it with yourself. So one thing that I tried also because of knowing that I'm the past actually, I came up with way to large experiments, would I try it? Now in my new job, especially my first month? Try something daily, just very small thing, just a different thing every day and see, does it help me if you understand? I'll just incorporate it in my daily habits.
If not try, something else. So to make it really small and tangible, And also to ReDiscover actually better ways of working because yes, I'm working now for quite some years. I got used to certain working Styles. So things work for me and know that but maybe there's better things out there. So I should never stop learning and looking for better approaches.
So these daily experiments really helped a lot especially starting at the new company, which is like a natural point where I have a new set up, maybe a work with new tools suddenly. So have a change anyway in my life and I could incorporate that Depot Hill has like a phrase that I really love. Of its many more much smaller steps. So ever since I read that that sort of sticking in my head, I'm trying to use it as a guideline to come up with even smaller
things. I'm not yet, always succeeding. I think that the only thing I'm aiming for you might take that off the price of not is to always think. Can we make that faster? Can we break it down? Just like what we try to do, usually with product development, get faster feedback, good learning quicker. But I haven't found the Golden Rule yet, but I think that kind of golden rule that I said from Depot here, adding many much
more smaller step. I think that's kind of like crucial maybe in a jelly bean experiments as well. I think it can be a golden rule. So we should not aim to start a big experiments where you have multiple teams, and multiple activities in the end. One, big bang. So I think we should try to have more smaller steps experiment and reflect at the, you mention about reflection. The other thing about doing all this culture change is about
getting buy-in. In fact, in your story, you mentioned that some people understand about the value of of doing the things that you are driving, but they fall back into BAU staffs. I mean, life happens, right? You have so many other things you may have incidents. You may have road map features and things like that. How can you drive people to be on board to your experiments?
So, to speak? So, who this big initiatives that really went across teams, we have doubt, sponsorship from sea level from the start, which definitely helped because we could use it in our communication with everyone, but we also made intentional effort to get buy-in from PP level, for
example. So for example, from our VP for product whose is basically also driving for example, product road maps to get that buy-in from the start so that there is not a complete Clash of priorities that would instantly pull people apart those again, also with the team's managers to include that leadership level and the hierarchy but in the end we wanted to work with the team's themselves. So we made really intentional effort.
Also here to not just select people our select teams top down But to really investigate, which could be great teams and then they get their explicit by and we had a short, very small interview round with your short list of teams that we had in mind like a teams in that case to interview them just for half an hour about a few aspects that interested us. Part of that was also the actually eager to join us in this initiative or the eager to try this out.
Do they currently have the capacity because we also made clear. You will need to invest time, all you currently in a place where he could do that. And then when we found up here, we have known for teams. We got again the explicit commitment and only then we started, I think, even though in the end they still fell back into everyday business and still struggled. It was a better. Starting point to make them aware hate. You also want B rate, we're here to help. Let's do this together.
We also had an explicit communication guideline, how to approach the teams because we didn't want to impose ourselves like, hey, Rudolph, the experts, we tell you how things work, know what they No, their contacts, they know the reasons why things are currently as they are. I bet they're all a lot of things that are working so this appreciate what's working already for them in their context is also right for turning up the good but also seeing if we can find custom tailored Solutions.
So something that's really helping them and I think I was big part of Getting By and also from the single individuals on the team that we're not coming from outside. Basically, I mean, not outside from the company but outside from their team, which is sometimes if teams also Independent quite similar but to not go there and like just overall everything but really make clear we're here to help. We're here to help in your way however you want to frame it.
We have custom tailored workshops or whatever you need, but in the end it's also up to them to take action and to really come up with those experiments were there to help but we're not imposing but she'll there was a big pot to first get measurement board but also to really how you push teams or how you push people. I think mix. A whole world of difference. If they would like to really
join them and work together. Or if you feel older someone threatening us, you brought this point as like an ownership thing, right? So the experiment should be owned not by leadership management, order change agent group, but it's actually from the team themselves. They array need to be on board versus you mention about this. Should get a binder should understand and they shoot one this, when I read your blog, it's about focus on inspiring them. Getting them want to change.
They can see their pain points again coming back to the transparency where they are and their pain points and they can see really this change affecting them.
I also learn from my reading. Actually, if you want to create long-lasting change, it should come from within this, you're not come from external, impose, maybe you have Consultants, maybe you have resolution from some other people, it should come from within and only, then you can make a long lasting change that can be impactful for your life. So, thanks for sharing about this ownership thing. The other thing about experimenting, right?
You brought Up about failure. Many people couldn't forego about this failure, but when you have spend your effort, spend your time and resources, and in the end it failed. We all have this tendency of sunk cost fallacy. They must be something that works. So we kind of like have our own biased. So tell us more about this sunk cost fallacy and what we should do instead in order to frame the experiment. More objectively. Yes, that's another part of the struggles, when framing experiments.
Also, when just coming up with hypotheses, what you want, You to keep our bodies. So it is really hard to do. I think, the first step is to be aware of our biases and reflect on them, for example, some cost fallacy. Well, we missed it already has a large, so we definitely want to bring it to the end. Although it might all be worth it. Actually, might not be leading us to better results or more learning.
So, I think this one is a big one when it comes to having experiments frame to huge to largely. So what I did basically, in the beginning, where it started out, We're how big the first one, which is like the cross 10 months. There might have been a point where it would have needed to stop it. I did not make that coul also biased in that very first one. Another by is also came in because I wanted it to succeed. So if you look up that hypothesis, the formulation is
actually Boys in itself. Because I mean it was my first initiative after being leveled up as a principal and my standing and so on serve. I'm also in part of this reward system. I really wanted to make this a win and you Feet out in power, formulated that experiment. So that's another bias that came in and that's probably also. Why it didn't? Then cut it at some point facing the truth. Okay, it's too heavy weight. We should cut it here. Find something else.
Why is this? Are really what drives us, unconsciously and implicitly. So if we are not aware that these are in play, it's really hard to catch ourselves. It's still hard to catch ourselves even though we know about them. So I think the key Point here is to continue learning about biases. How our brains work, basically, I mean there for good reason, but sometimes they get in our way. This is the part we need to learn about. I can only recommend, for example, condiments book,
thinking fast and slow. It's one of the major resources. I gained a lot of insights about the cognitive biases but again, just knowing about them doesn't help. We also need to continuously reflect on our own actions and really challenge ourselves and others uncomfortable, right? To tell yourself, the big thing that like my work there. Maybe was just built on biases and maybe it's not the best thing that could be, what made me really come up with out.
Like, for example, I wanted to end my standing, I wanted to earn the appreciation of my technique peers, this definitely influenced my decision making so yes, we need to become aware of the biases. We need to reflect continuously. I'm pretty sure I'm not catching myself always. I can just hope someone else might also give you feedback and call me out. Guess again that's part of learning to Always improve ourselves as well, and our next experiments can only benefit from that as well.
Thanks for reminding this biases and show that we all have biases due to our childhood culture school, and things like that. So, I think the key thing is always be conscious about so many different biases. That's the first thing, of course, if you don't have this awareness, it's really hard to catch. You have always unknown unknowns in your life, right? In your knowledge. So always continuously learn about those biases and yet sunk cost fallacy is sometimes. Dangerous, it could bring you
too much more worse failure. So to speak where you dig your rabbit hole and it goes nowhere. Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing about your personal agenda. I think sometimes we do have that kind of tendency eagle and wants to prove something and we just continued much on knowing that one day we will achieve it somehow but actually sometimes that's not true because that's very dangerous. So thanks for sharing this beautiful thinking about biases.
So let's see, let's move on to the next topic which is more personal to you. So you mentioned in your career Journey that you started from not having the tech background, you leverage a lot from the community. You started buying that book age of testing book, we followed Community. You met Lisa, Janet and all that and you kind of grew out of that experience.
You make a pledge. So to speak a few years back that you would Embark your journey of learning in public, I think many people would have heard about this term learning in public, tell us what made you make that decision.
That's the first thing, and while earning in public for people, Think about it. So once I learned about Lisa and Jenna back, then through the book and I realized, oh book, authors are on Twitter, they spread more knowledge and insights and what they currently learn like them. I also started to learn about oh there are conferences or maybe I could join at some point, the conference that would be really
cool. But it would also be scary a bit because I don't know anyone and I'm very introverted and also grew up very shy. I'm not that high anymore, but it need a practice, but I'm still very introverted. So, like, big crowds, for example, like a lot of people but it drains energy. So I always need to recharge, but still, I had so much inspiration.
From what I read and saw and I could instantly see, like the results when trying things at work, I felt like, okay, I need to go to the conference where, for example, lease and gendered are. So that's when I started out to join my first conference, it was like in 2015 where I had for the first time a connection to the community. T. It really inspired me so much that I felt like. Okay, let's come back.
Okay. Next year, same conference because I was really inspired and in 2016, something happened, there was a really inspiring opening keynote about being brave and having courage and do something that scares you every day. Like to really get out of your comfort zone, it was super inspiring and setting a tone and atmosphere for the conference. And it happens that on that day, I met another person in a workshop for your mama G and it sort of clicked. So Next day over lunch.
We found ourselves in a nice conversation. We spoke about that opening keynote. Like, okay, what is it that scares you? What is that? We realize it's very similar for both of us. We both thought about speaking speaking in front of people. Oh my gosh. This is so scary. No way. We also talked about writing a Blog and these kind of things, but they always came back to speaking at conferences.
Suddenly toy looked at me and said, like, you know what, let's make a deal if you submit Look for next year's conference to speak at that conference, that work early on. I'll do the same way too, but if I do it, you have to do it too. Usually, I'm not the type of person. You just agree to such a challenge for me, but it was so inspired and like the whole conference and like, having courage and taking a leap and everything. And I just decided. Okay, let's be it.
I took his hand. We shook made a pact for instantly announces to everyone. If I like, okay, account duck. I love. No, it's not possible. I don't want to disappoint people. So we better do it. This was the start of something beautiful happening for both of us because in the end for learning partnership, that started back, then would have handshake at the conference grew into a lot of different personal challenges. We did actually manage to come back as conference speakers from, then on.
We both spoke now regularly, a conferences, but we also took up all the personal challenges to continue their learning in public because well, actually, that starting point was already learning in public, in the sense of the whole conference credit. And about our deal. So again, I felt like a camp together, everybody knows it already. So I can totally be open about it.
So it tweeted about it and made it the public K. We have this deal going on and told her that the same, so it sort of started that learning in public period. But again, after we became conference speakers, we felt like this was so successful. It worked so well, we have the chemistry, we can really support each other. We hold ourselves accountable. What next, what else? Could we try? And then we started but judging challenges, but still, Supporting each other and that
made me then set out to you. Having a lot of pair testing sessions for example, with other people, other challenges, followed always continuing learning in public publishing. Also, my blog posts to gives, there was a side effect, actually same conference. I also started can also time to stop my block. Something that I also thought about for years before, but I never, they're doing it.
But I doubt conference with the speaking talked, basically, I also had a great conversation with someone who said he told me. Why are you scared of? Building a block, just do it for yourself, just for your own learning, but for anyone else, just do it for yourself.
And I really freed me up to not think of an audience or who might that provide value for all the thoughts that hindered me always from starting to put myself out there basically and just do it. Ever since only good came out of it, then I can just recommend to give it at least try and see if it's for you. Because again we're all different persons, it might or might not work but if you never tried it, she don't know for me. It ruined.
It looks like another experiment, but for your personal thing, first of all, thanks for sharing this story, it is very beautiful. So there are few key things from me when I heard about your story. Accountability is. So you have a partner where you make a pledge to each other and you never back out. That's another good thing, right?
You never back up. Another thing is about getting inspired so you were inspired by that first keynote and you mentioned something about Doom things that always scare you. I think this is also mentioned by Tim Ferriss. If I'm not wrong that if you want to grow rapidly. We always have to try to do things that always scares us. I myself, personally, I admit, I was also very introverted. I couldn't bear standing in front of a lot of audience, even in meetups. I'll tend to sit in the corner
or something like that. But then, I think the challenge is do something that scares us. I think there are so many good things about learning in public, many people preach about it, but many people get this first challenge. I want to learn in public but the confidence is not there because when you started, we can assume the many People don't have the skills, they don't have the experience, they may not even know what to talk about. So they don't have the
confidence about doing this. So you have also a good advice here for people who do not have that kind of technical confidence, how should they actually start growing this confidence? Because also taking from your background, you didn't start from Tech. You may not have the background, but you did it anyway, and look where you are at now. So, maybe you can share a little bit about this growing technical confidence, but Absolutely. It's sort of also accompany me through my career.
As you mentioned I didn't start out from that background so don't have that argument basically to convince people. Hey you know I can actually I have a place here and it's Justified so I had that conversation with myself long times, it was over here's I also presented myself as non-technical something, I stopped doing for good reasons years ago before long time, I was always like now, I'm not technical having that sort of, as a shield of Defense.
Mechanism upfront. So to not let people attack me because I'm coming from a different background. The more I said I'm not technical. Also, the more people believe that obviously and they also saw me as long technical because I'm stating it myself. I stated it out of that missing background out of insecurities uncertainties. I didn't have any mental. There was always the loan tester and never knew actually, am I
doing well? And what I do or not, maybe I'm doing something completely wrong and I just don't know about it. That also Into the first conference speaking. Like, I mean, who am I to tell something about that? Until I realize, I can just share my own experience because that's valid. Anyway, nobody can challenge that because I lived through that and maybe it helps people and learned over the years, it helps people actually a can help. A lot of people.
I'm still just sharing my own experiences. Part of these experiences was my journey of growing technical, in a sense of growing, the confidence to know that I am actually Technical and to be able to present myself as such The moment I started presenting myself as technical, which again, I had inspiration from Andrea Kelly. Actually a resonated with her journey. The moment I started presenting myself as technical things changed. I grew my own confidence with
that again. It was a scary thing to do, because it didn't yet fit like own internal beliefs, but I realized people started changing how they see me. I realized about myself, I suddenly died from two. Things that scared me for a small walk and Or about it, and actually grows in my technical competencies when my team changed or now, starting a new company for quite some time and practice presenting myself. Also as technical. Nobody questions me at all, it was all about perception and the
confidence. I'm still the same me. The difference is how I talk about myself and how others talk about me. I also realized, I'm on my own Journey there. I can only compare myself to myself and as much as I would love to compare myself to so many others who are better there. There who are like more advanced there, something that I grew up with it, always turned in circles because I can never be
as good as someone else. What I learned is when I try to put that aside, sometimes these thoughts still come up, right? It's still a Learning Journey. But when I tried to put these kind of thoughts of comparing oneself with others aside and instead just focus on our own progression over the years, it's a whole different picture and then I can't actually validly.
Say yes, I grew a lot in that area also, with my technical Is that made me also start out to give a workshop about that to help others because I see still a lot of people very unsure in whatever technical needs, right, even though it's like, there's so many things often. It's just used as a gatekeeping. Tell him. So, again, it's about perceptions about the confidence part to grow that confidence that we can figure things out. I always get reminded about the
quote. I learned from indeed, owns another person, I completely admire and I learnt a lot from she's actually in never going to To know everything there is to know in Tack and stand in for the confidence to know that you can figure it out. Ever since she tweeted that, I'm always getting reminded of that and I find so much wisdom in there to keep the confidence that we can still learn and we
can still figure things out. We can still grow, we're not that the end, there will always be something. We don't know, especially the most senior. We grow the more. We know what else is there and that's okay. Thanks for sharing your perspective. I think this is very key. For many people who aspire to start building content, learning public wants to be perceived as technical or expert in some fields, and yeah, I mean, being technical is just a matter of
perception, right? So I think many people in Tech has this imposter syndrome, where we feel? Somebody else is better than me. How could I be someone like that will present in big conferences and things like that? I'm nobody. But I think you brought up a point where. Yeah, you always compare yourself to yourself, right. It's not compare with other People, the key to that event is about changing your identity.
I think this is also something I learned from Atomic habit, James Clear book for people who haven't read that book. One of the suggestions that you have, if you want to change your Habit to a better way, right? You don't start with what activity, or why you should do that, but he actually change your identity. So think of it. Like you want to be technical, right?
So first of all, yeah, have that identity that you are Technical and then you figure out how to be Technical and then you grow actually along with that kind of identity. Because you On a confront your identity so to speak. You want to follow based on their beliefs. So thanks for sharing that Lizzie. I think that I learned a lot from your sharing your journey,
it's been a pleasure. Unfortunately we have to wrap up pretty soon but I have one last question that I normally ask for all my guests, which is about three technical leadership is Liam think of it just like advice for you to impart to the listeners from maybe from your journey or experience or Lessons Learned because you seem to have run so many experiments and you have meet failure along the way and Success is also at the same time. So what would be your tree?
Technical leadership wisdom? They see, so I'm going to draw them from another experiment that I actually did in 2021 where I could co-host and co-create series of leadership workshops together with cheaper. Krishnan, that's also where one of stalled like Ricky does belong credit where credit is due. She recruitment is the one that I learned most about leadership from. So the three wisdoms that I'm about to share There is something that we also co-created and build on each
other's ideas. It's still following me around all sin everyday life. So that's why for me they're really valuable. I hope they also valuable for others. The first one is actually starting with ourselves who you are, is how you lead that something to remind ourselves leadership starts. Definitely with ourselves, we need to reflect on our behaviors, we need to understand how we do things, what drives us, which kind of values that we have, knowing Ourselves, really enables us. Thank you.
Also to increase the impact, but first, we need to be really aware of ourselves. The second one is about the other people. They also suspect basically. So leadership is about relationships in most cases, we do lead other people. It's really about building. Those effective relationships to Foster them deep in them. That's the key for a lot of things, if you want to initiate change, if you want to drive experiments, you first have to
have those relationships with. People and it could be any initiative, but same is true for a lot of technical topics as well. If you're missing out on those relationships. Good luck with Frosty feedback. Loops, for example, we do have the power to influence their no matter if we have a formal leadership position or not. So it's about relationships. The third one, the last one is about our environment impact over intention.
That is something that really drives me, especially in the last year's where I have to learn a lot about systems, basically. So, I hope people start out with good intentions, most people do, but intentions alone are not enough, because even with the best intentions, you can still do harm. And especially when using your leadership skills. It's really about more like reducing the harm. Hopefully, increasing the positive impact. So, let's shape our systems and
set the scene basically grow. The garden to nurture that culture where people can really Thrive to always look at the impact that our decisions and actions can Off just before we take them. But even if it happened to acknowledge potentially harmful impact that we done. Acknowledge apologize, do better next time. So that's my third. One impact over intention is sort of a guiding principle for me that I always try to live up to and it's not easy but let's do better than the last time.
Wow, it's pretty good summary, very beautifully said, so thanks for sharing that. I liked the last one impact over intention. We all have good intent. Like assume good intent anyway but sometimes we kind of like the Rail from the intention and maybe biases and things like that made us make the wrong decision. So I think you're always try to focus on the positive impact that you want to create in your life or other people's life.
Thanks for sharing that message, so Lizzie for people who are inspired by you from all this sharing but if they want to talk to you or maybe continue the conversation, is there a place where they can reach out to you? Yes, the easiest way is for a Twitter in case you happen to have a Twitter account, my direct messages are open. So feel free to contact me through. Another option is LinkedIn. However, for LinkedIn are not as active.
So, in case you are reaching out there, please leave a message as well, so I can really set that in context. Otherwise, I'm not really active as I shared you can. Obviously also follow my content on my blog and website, maybe we meet each other at one of the other conference or meet up. So that's another chance to connect in person. We're just join me on my paring session for example.
So I'm sure if you still continue your pledge being in conferences, people would see you in any kind of testing or quality kind of conferences and I do recommend Lisa's blog as well. There are so many just about testing because they're like I said in the beginning DC has summarized the latest stage of testing day in such a beautiful illustrations written by her. Okay. So it's created by her in real time. That is really an admirable skill to have. So thanks again Lucy for your time.
I really enjoyed this conversation again. I hope you feel inspired by your message today. Thank you so much for having Me with a pleasure. Thank you for listening to this episode and for staying, right until the end if you highly enjoyed it. I would appreciate if you share it with your friends and colleagues who you think would also benefit from listening to this episode. And if you are new to the podcast, make sure to subscribe and leave me your valuable
review and feedback. It helps me a lot in order to grow this podcast better. You can also find the full show notes of this conversation on the episode page at tackling journal. The death website, including the full transcript Arresting courts and links to the resources mention from the conversation. And lastly, make sure to subscribe to the shows mailing list on package. You know, dot f to get notified for any future episodes. Stay tuned for the next package, you know, episode.
And until then, goodbye.