The Psychology of Software Teams - Cat Hicks | Craft 2025

Developers’ problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration is what grows and maintains functioning software systems–and all the technology that interacts with software. And because modern technology is constantly changing, how well developers keep solving problems, creating and collaborating is at the heart of maintaining any technology organization’s performance and capabilities. But designing for developers’ problem-solving simply hasn’t been at the forefront of how we put software teams together or how we run technology organizations. It’s showing up in their stories and in the data. Across decades of research on software teams, one thing is startlingly clear: developers do not feel understood. In this talk, we'll explore a mission to change that: how using large-scale empirical research rooted in the psychological sciences brings us new evidence about critical aspects of developer thriving, such as agency, belonging, and learning culture, and can help us build new models for understanding our software teams. Along the way we'll untangle how old misconceptions about developer productivity hold us back, and the alternatives that come from a science-backed model for collaborative and cumulative cultures in software that drive sustainable innovation. This talk was recorded at Craft Conference 2025. The event was organized by CraftHub. You can watch the rest of the conference talks on our channel. If you are interested in more speakers, tickets and details of the conference, check out our website: https://craft-conf.com/ If you are interested in more events from our company: https://crafthub.events/