Full-Stack Psychological Safety: Go Beyond the Front End

When someone says DevOps, you probably think of tools: parsers, scanners, compilers, version controllers, and more. Or you may think of a cross-disciplined team with mix of skills to take a product from idea to deployment and maintenance. While DevOps does include both, tools and skilled staff are a fraction of what is needed to be successful. In this session, we will present the main ingredient for gaining the full benefits of DevOps: Psychological Safety. Unfortunately, Psychological Safety is often overlooked or over-simplified. If spoken about, it is often addressed in binary terms – either a team has it or they don’t. We will discuss the nuances of Psychological Safety by build on the model presented in the book, “The Four Stages of Psychology Safety” by Timothy Clark. However, we will extend the book’s model by adding a 5th stage and using a metaphor that will resonate with technical professionals, Full-Stack. We will discuss each layer, detailing the team behaviors exhibited and the techniques that can be used to address issues inhibiting team cohesion. By presenting Full-Stack Psychological Safety, the audience will be able to understand how the lack of Psychological Safety could be hindering their team’s DevOps practices. They should also be able to identify where their teams are in the stack and learn some methods for increasing their Psychological Safety.