Hacking Habits at Scale

We often think big changes require big actions. Everything “at scale” is the buzz within many organisations adopting agile across the enterprise. Unfortunately, these big changes at scale often result in failure.

The surprising truth is big changes often come through small, atomic habits, improved consistently over time. In fact, many agile frameworks like Scrum are a collection of small habits adopted together. The Daily Stand up is a great example of a agile daily habit.

However small is not always simple. For a long time when coaching teams I would be frustrated when teams found it difficult to adopt seemingly simple habits. For example, why won’t developers write unit tests or include testers in design discussions.

Through failure and success in my personal life I’ve now learned that tiny habits, not big changes create breakthrough results. In my work with organisations I realised that the habit changes I desired were too big. The key was to make new habits as tiny as possible. For example, a 2 minute stand up rather than 15 minutes.

In this workshop, we will explore four areas that can help organisations build these tiny habits:

- How to uncover existing organisational habits

- How to decide what are good or bad habits

- Tricks and Tips to hack habits consistently

- How to leverage social dynamics to change habits at scale

These approaches will be illustrated through several real case studies at organisations, demonstrating how tiny changes can help you grow a testing culture in your organisation.