In 2001, I was working at F-Secure, going through a wide scale agile transformation. I was facilitating testing (and releases) for a product where we first got to weekly releases on a millions of personal computers scale, and was pretty proud on learning the ideas about controlling the leash of change to make scope of testing manageable.
Being pretty proud was founded on the idea of being completely opposed to CI/CD when I first learned about it some years before it. I still send a proverbial wave to a particular Petri from Reactor whose face I see whenever I realize how many things I have had strong opinions, loosely held, and completely wrong.
At that time and age, with that particular CI/CD change, I remember learning some skills that are invaluable now when AI is the thing. I learned to be deliberate about how I use my our time.
Before this whole agile thing, test environments rarely worked. We had this gated model, like a countdown to release, from letting developers build components, and them having quality engineers work with teams to package changed components into products, and test those. You tested, and things didn't work. You waited a lot.
Whenever we were waiting, a group of us got together to discuss how we could improve things. Well, we also used time on rating dark chocolate, a pastime I could not directly enjoy due to being allergic to chocolate, but the atmosphere was relaxed and lovely. I made so many lists of experiences, ideas and cross-pollinated those things both within the organization and outside. And because we were learning so much, we improved a lot too. For years, F-Secure Quality Engineering was known as the source of all relevant testers in Finland.
With CI/CD, the waiting for environments quietly vanished. The natural breaks the environment-related handoffs created for us were gone. And we were more productive than ever. But also, we started stagnating on improvement. With the learning culture we had in place, we called it out, and adapted. We started taking deliberate time for fun; for learning; for cross-pollinating our ideas as a community.
I see people on socials discussing now the sense of overwhelm that AI gives us. And I remember that I learned this early on. You have agency. You can choose the appropriate speed for the conditions at hand, deliberately. Even when someone in the world uses the Ferrari run run full speed on German autobahns, youe appropriate speed is one that is healthy for yourself and your team. If you are learning to drive and your attention is on the gear change, go slow to see if people are crossing.
We have choices to make, and the power to make them. Don't be the person telling yourself otherwise.
