Speaker announcement: Aslam Khan

About Aslam

Aslam Khan is an African by birth and a software developer by choice. An entrepreneur, author, presenter, and coach. His career spans three decades of building businesses, architecting software solutions, and raising high-performing software teams.

Grounded in the belief that software solutions can only ever be as good as the people who build them, he has never stopped advocating for improving how people interact and work together. At this stage, he enjoys the unexpected ways in which the experiences and relationships he has formed on his scenic route through the world of technology are starting to intersect.

In recent years, a large part of his time has been invested in building platforms to train young developers. He believes there's a lot to do and address in our world and work by harnessing technology's power to level playing fields. His commitment is to play his part both as an individual and as a capacitor of Africa's youth.

Get to know Aslam even more on his LinkedIn page.

The talk: The Mind Behind the Method

When I first encountered Extreme Programming. I was inspired and determined to work in this way. Easier said than done. I found it difficult and oscillated, but I persevered. As I improved at some practices and appreciated their value, I started encouraging and helping other teams adopt them. This came to occupy much of my career. However, the lack of enduring adoption bothered me enough to question my own ability as a practitioner and teacher. Now, I am returning to my persistent observation: some teams resist adoption from the beginning, others start enthusiastically, and many more than I like gradually revert to prior ways of working.

Recently, I came back to this challenge after being inspired by Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow". It has taught me how we judge and make decisions and increased my awareness of our unconscious biases and cognition. I'm in the middle of writing my exploration into understanding practice adoption through the lens of Kahneman's work. I shared an early draft with Jimmy Nilsson and he encouraged me to share my thinking on myConf. So, as I often do, I will take the brave step of testing my ideas in the spirit of improving them.

My work is not bound by research, and no conclusive answers exist. Instead, I want to open a conversation that bridges technical practices with human cognition. By examining software development this way, we may find more natural approaches to practice adoption that respect how developers think, decide, and work. Maybe this will introduce cognitive psychology's vocabulary into the context of software development, and this interdisciplinary perspective will offer insights into why teams struggle with changes that would benefit them.

As a spoiler, present bias is our tendency to disproportionately value immediate rewards or costs over future ones, even when the future benefits are objectively greater. This cognitive tendency causes us to heavily discount future outcomes in favour of immediate gratification or avoidance of immediate costs. When it comes to adopting pair programming teams (and managers) viscerally experience the immediate "productivity loss" of two developers on one task, while the substantial long-term benefits remain abstract and easily discounted. I'll share more in the talk and about other practices too.

I looked at the speaker line-up for this year's conference and noticed that Aino Vonge Corry is also spending time in this space. I see Kent Beck and Beth Andres-Beck going deep into how teams behave depending on different work environments. I think my isolated work will benefit from these other talks, too. Maybe there is something interesting bubbling here.

Why I look forward to this talk

I met Aslam on a mountaintop in Switzerland in 2007 and he has been a dear friend of mine ever since. We were there to attend a workshop that turned out to be super inspiring, to a large degree thanks to Aslam! :)

At a later date, while spending some time in South Africa, Aslam called and invited me to join him for a wine tasting at a vineyard. He was working with Kent Beck for a couple of days, and they were done for the day and wanted a break. That was the first time I met Kent in real life. Thanks, Aslam and Kent!

As you might know, Aslam gave a presentation at myConf in 2023. The same thing that I mentioned in the announcement back then, happened a few weeks ago. After a brief period of silence, Aslam and I reconnected, and as usual, he had a new line of thinking that I found very inspiring. How does he do it?

Aslam’s presentation will be about his new thinking, which is actually a solution to one of my long-time mysteries. It might also pave the way for Kent’s and Beth’s presentation in a really nice way!

I know it will be great! Thanks for inspiring us, Aslam!

/Jimmy Nilsson, co-founder, CEO and consultant at factor10