The Signals We Keep: Friction, Feedback, and Appropriateness in Delivery Systems
Quality engineering & Automation Stage
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45 minutes
Testing
Q&A Systems
Automation
The world is noisy. Overwhelmingly so at times.Engineering teams have spent years trying to quieten that noise. We remove friction, smooth developer experience, and optimise delivery systems to feel faster and cleaner.
But lately I’ve been wondering whether we’ve been quietening the wrong signals.Much of this comes from real frustrations in delivery systems where confidence is often inferred from outputs, dashboards, and automation. In testing, we’ve long understood the importance of storytelling and appropriateness in how we interpret those signals, yet even in highly optimised environments, teams can still struggle to understand how their systems actually feel to work within, and what feedback they can truly rely on.As the actors in software delivery evolve, and the systems around us change faster than the expectations we built them on, some of the feedback that once helped us feel oriented has started to disappear. Pipelines are polished, tooling is optimised, and yet that sense of orientation is often harder to find.In this talk, I explore friction through a feedback lens. Drawing on personal frustrations, changing industry expectations, and lessons from real delivery environments, I’ll look at how friction can act as a signal rather than a destination. Not something to eliminate by default, but something that helps us notice when systems are renegotiating their identity and balance.This is a moment to reconsider how delivery systems feel, what feedback still matters, and how we decide which signals are appropriate to keep as our delivery engines evolve.Takeaways:1. Use a simple loop: Notice → Interpret → OrientWhen something feels off, treat it as a signal, not a problem to remove.2. Interpret signals empiricallyTreat outputs (AI, dashboards, automation) as evidence, not truth, and make assumptions explicit.3. Create moments to reorientUse conversations and shared understanding to sense-check what your systems are telling you before acting.
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Chris Armstrong