Keynote / General Session

Keynote: Building Effective Development Teams the Hard Way

08/14/2018

11:15am - 12:15pm

Level: Everyone

Phil Haack

Director of Engineering, Client Apps

GitHub

Six and a half years ago Phil left Microsoft and joined what some internally deemed an anarchist organization, but is known publicly as GitHub. At the time, they were fifty employees with no managers. It was an interesting time. Over the years, they added more structure, managers, etc. Amidst all these changes, he picked up some lessons on what makes a team (and organization) effective.

He wishes he could tell you there's a magic formula and it's easy. It's not. However, it can be easier for you than for him! In this talk, Phil will describe some of his failures in this journey and some of his successes. Hopefully, both will give you some ideas of what to avoid and what to try to make your own teams more effective.