Innovative Software Development with Managed Risk

Stephen Bussey delivered a talk at GigCityElixir 2023 about embracing risk to drive innovation in software engineering. He began by quoting Avadne Wu from a recent Code Beam talk, suggesting that software engineering could be seen as a form of risk management. Bussey argued that while reducing risk is generally favorable, there are times when taking risks is necessary for innovation. He described the natural inclination in software communities to gravitate towards risk-averse solutions and shared practices for identifying and managing risks within a team, including understanding context-specific risks and being aware of so-called one-way doors, or decisions that are hard to reverse. Furthermore, he introduced the concept of 'Innovation Tokens' as a way to budget and manage risk in the development process. Bussey shared examples from Elixir libraries such as Phoenix Channels, Absinthe, and Pow, emphasizing how extensibility and customization through behaviors, pipelines, and pre-defined hooks can lead to development of innovative solutions like Phoenix LiveView. In essence, Bussey's stance is that while developers should strive to minimize and manage risks, they should not shy away from taking calculated risks that could lead to significant breakthroughs and advancements.