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The ITx 2016 Programme may change without notice
Personality quirks, character traits, mental diversity.
IT attracts a wide variety of people who think, react, work, communicate, interact, and socialise differently, and one-in-three of us will have a mental health issue at some point in our lives.
Many development practices have emerged, especially in the Agile world, that actively encourage and promote collaboration and team work, and this, for the most part, is a good thing. But for many people, some of the ways we work, and the working environments that result, present unique challenges on top of the day-to-day technical challenges of software development.
Aaron Hodder will open the discussion by describing his experiences with mental health and how it has impacted his career in IT, both positively and negatively.
He will then explore how some IT practices, from hiring through to development, might be subtly discriminatory, and then suggest how different characteristics and behavioural types can be an asset in the IT world.
Finally, Aaron will offer some suggestions on ways to assist and work with mental diversity.
Senior Test Consultant, Assurity Consulting Limited
Aaron Hodder works for Assurity Consulting Ltd and part of his role is to develop and deliver new and innovative testing practices to better suit the demands of modern day software development.
Aaron is a passionate software tester with a particular enthusiasm for visual test modelling and structured exploratory testing techniques. He regularly blogs and tweets about testing, and is a co-founder of Wellington Testing Workshops.