Sturgeon’s Biases: how communities of practice lie to themselves & everybody else

As a technical leader do you have problems with different disciplines and communities of practice within your organization? Do you find misconceptions about what different groups can do getting in the way of achieving your objectives?

In this talk, I’ll explore these problems through the lens of Sturgeon’s Revelation usually stated as “ninety percent of everything is crap”!

In a career, it’s surprisingly easy for a good developer to have only worked with bad product people. Or a good product manager to have only worked with bad UX people. Or a good UX Designer to have only worked with bad developers. And so on.

Each of those people builds generalizations based on their experiences. Creating coping mechanisms for those generalizations that start being counter-productive when they finally get to work with good people. You’ll see how easy it is for people inside and outside of a discipline to have radically different experiences of its competencies. We’ll work through some options to help break down those misconceptions — so we can create happier, more empathic, teams!