XT25 Presentation
Risk-First at XT25
The closing keynote from XT25, where Rob traces his journey from building risk systems at Deutsche Bank, RBS, and Credit Suisse to a revelatory insight: we're not really software developers—we're risk managers.
What You'll Learn
Rob connects dots across two decades of financial services technology, showing how every software practice—unit testing, abstraction layers, agile ceremonies—is really about transferring and managing risk:
- Risk is everywhere — from Basel II banking regulations to your backlog tickets, it all comes down to risk
- Patterns of risk — just like design patterns, the same risks crop up over and over in software projects
- The exponential challenge — CVEs are increasing at an alarming rate, and AI brings new risks we're only beginning to understand
- Open source and FINOS — how the industry is collaborating to manage shared risks around cloud, AI, and open-source adoption
As Kent Beck wrote in the first sentence of Extreme Programming Explained: "The basic problem of software development is risk." This talk makes the case that in the AI age, we're all becoming risk managers whether we realize it or not.