1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,560 So, uh, I talked about this on my other podcast already, software defined talk.com, but I just 2 00:00:05,560 --> 00:00:11,480 want to get it out there. Um, you know, I was in Chicago last week, lovely city, and I had, 3 00:00:11,940 --> 00:00:16,460 I don't want to call it the best hamburger in my life, but it was top three burgers. And it was 4 00:00:16,460 --> 00:00:21,720 this little place. One of our, uh, one of our, um, our, uh, our reps up there was, was taking 5 00:00:21,720 --> 00:00:27,060 care of me. And he took me to this place called three greens market. I'll, I'll put a link to it 6 00:00:27,060 --> 00:00:31,200 here in, in the, uh, the show notes, but it's just that I got a, I got a pastrami burger, 7 00:00:31,300 --> 00:00:36,520 very thick cut pastrami. You got some cheese on that. And then there's two patties, not giant 8 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:39,940 patties. These are like fast food burger sized patties. You know, it's like you'd get an in 9 00:00:39,940 --> 00:00:45,380 and out or whatever you have regionally. And then, uh, and then some French fries. I was 10 00:00:45,380 --> 00:00:49,240 told the French fries were wonderful. They were just French fries. Nothing wonderful about 11 00:00:49,240 --> 00:00:53,960 them. Nothing terrible, but that's what I recommend. If you're up in Chicago or find yourself wanting 12 00:00:53,960 --> 00:00:58,220 to take a trip to Chicago, go get one of those burgers. I think they have two locations. 13 00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:02,860 Well, I wish we had lunch right now doing a podcast. 14 00:01:02,860 --> 00:01:07,640 Yes. We were just joking around that. I just ate a fistful of peanuts before this lunch, 15 00:01:07,640 --> 00:01:12,360 uh, without, without having the requisite water supply. So we'll see if I end up with dry mouth 16 00:01:12,360 --> 00:01:18,140 during the show, but, uh, you know, when you just start wheezing halfway through, I'm going to try to 17 00:01:18,140 --> 00:01:22,360 empathize with you. I'm going to, I'm going to start churning. You just, just, just, uh, just not 18 00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:27,900 feeling it. So we don't, we don't have a, a guest this week. So, uh, uh, we were thinking we would 19 00:01:27,900 --> 00:01:33,060 just kind of blow out the bafflers. Is that right? What are the things you blow out? Anyways, clear out 20 00:01:33,060 --> 00:01:37,500 the, uh, the little items that we have and talk about some of the, the longer pieces that, that we've 21 00:01:37,500 --> 00:01:43,480 talked about. Now, all that said, aside, aside from the, uh, the U S elections, there hasn't really 22 00:01:43,480 --> 00:01:49,920 been that much news going around and, you know, uh, I, I would refer you to, uh, that similar 23 00:01:49,920 --> 00:01:53,980 podcast. We're going to listen to the burgers last, last week on, on my software defined talk 24 00:01:53,980 --> 00:01:58,740 podcast. Uh, we talked about, uh, the effect of the elections on tech and there's actually some 25 00:01:58,740 --> 00:02:03,900 pretty, uh, extensive show notes more every now and then. I like take way too many notes on something, 26 00:02:03,900 --> 00:02:10,480 uh, for podcast show notes. And, and, uh, there's a couple of analyst shops in addition to journalism 27 00:02:10,480 --> 00:02:15,600 who've kind of covered, um, possible implications and things like that. Uh, I think in particular, 28 00:02:15,600 --> 00:02:20,780 like ovum, uh, was really quick and they wrote up a lot of coverage, which I believe is all free. 29 00:02:20,780 --> 00:02:25,560 I think I tested that out and four or five, one has a little M and a thing, but you can go over 30 00:02:25,560 --> 00:02:31,700 there. Uh, if you want to, it's at software defined talk.com slash 78 and, uh, get, get your 31 00:02:31,700 --> 00:02:38,740 fill on that stuff. If that's your bag. Nice. Now, meanwhile, was this, was this last week 32 00:02:38,740 --> 00:02:44,700 or, uh, the week before? I think, I think, uh, Microsoft teams came out. I forget when it was. 33 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:50,300 I think it got leaked the week before and then slack did the, uh, not, I guess not unprecedented, 34 00:02:50,300 --> 00:02:55,860 but bold move of taking the full page ad out in the paper, welcoming Microsoft to the game, which, 35 00:02:55,860 --> 00:03:00,860 you know, that doesn't usually play well. Cause six months later, you laugh when the shot thing, 36 00:03:00,860 --> 00:03:05,520 you know, the competitor shuts up shop, but you know, Slack's awesome. We, we rely on it heavily 37 00:03:05,520 --> 00:03:11,120 at pivotal, but you know, Microsoft teams is an interesting entrant with its more integration 38 00:03:11,120 --> 00:03:15,380 to the, as you'd expect the office suite and threaded conversations versus sometimes the, 39 00:03:15,380 --> 00:03:20,960 the mania of Slack today. So either way, it's an interesting entrant to it that, uh, I'm sure 40 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:22,980 was lighting up last week with, with election talk. 41 00:03:23,400 --> 00:03:28,360 Yeah. And, and, and, and, you know, normally I would, uh, I, if the word is askew, normally 42 00:03:28,360 --> 00:03:33,620 I would skip over talking about Slack because it's just like, uh, as, as, as even medium term 43 00:03:33,620 --> 00:03:37,400 listeners would know, you'll probably know that I have a very jaundiced eye when it comes 44 00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:42,420 to like AI and bots and all that kind of nonsense, which is sort of like Slack is in that mix. 45 00:03:42,420 --> 00:03:48,820 But I think, I think in the context of, of, of what we tend to cover here, like, um, narrow, 46 00:03:48,980 --> 00:03:53,500 not narrowing down, but there's a significant part of Slack usage or whether it's hip chat 47 00:03:53,500 --> 00:03:58,960 or old school IRC or whatever, where people do, um, I think what, what, what's commonly 48 00:03:58,960 --> 00:04:03,860 referred to as chat ops, which, uh, people like Victor ops are trying to, in the same 49 00:04:03,860 --> 00:04:08,900 way that we try to, uh, uh, take up a significant amount of the corner on the phrase cloud native. 50 00:04:09,140 --> 00:04:13,660 I think, I think they, and, and Atlassian, and maybe Slack to a certain extent. I think, 51 00:04:13,900 --> 00:04:20,420 I think Slack's always shooting more towards the, um, non-technical people, uh, you know, 52 00:04:20,420 --> 00:04:21,860 to, to make a bigger market. 53 00:04:22,160 --> 00:04:23,020 Uh, you think so? 54 00:04:23,380 --> 00:04:27,460 Yeah. Well, I don't, I mean, they don't, Slack doesn't spend a whole lot of time nowadays 55 00:04:27,460 --> 00:04:32,060 in nerd talk. They talk more about collaboration and things like that, but they, it's not as 56 00:04:32,060 --> 00:04:36,080 much, they, I mean, I haven't come across Slack talking about like, we integrate with your 57 00:04:36,080 --> 00:04:39,960 GitHub and allow you to do a build. I mean, not that they don't do that, but it's sort of 58 00:04:39,960 --> 00:04:44,400 like, I think, I think their goals are now are, are beyond the, uh, the, the nerds as 59 00:04:44,400 --> 00:04:44,720 it were. 60 00:04:45,380 --> 00:04:47,280 Probably because they won that group over. 61 00:04:47,580 --> 00:04:53,440 In my last job, we did all the chat op stuff and I could push our website to the, you know, 62 00:04:53,440 --> 00:04:58,040 our website to production by typing, you know, four line words into Slack and it would go do 63 00:04:58,040 --> 00:05:03,440 it or, you know, bots would spin up a bridge when there was a service interruption in the 64 00:05:03,440 --> 00:05:08,140 service and automatically kick up, you know, a WebEx and notify who was on call from pager 65 00:05:08,140 --> 00:05:11,820 duty. So yeah, those things are pretty awesome. And the fact that they're pretty easy to make 66 00:05:11,820 --> 00:05:16,500 is wild stuff. So I think, right. Versus just straight up, Hey, here's yet another tool 67 00:05:16,500 --> 00:05:20,280 for us to talk to each other. I think that actually trying to introduce automation, but 68 00:05:20,280 --> 00:05:25,000 in the same place with everybody. So it's not, Hey, where do we go do stuff? But here's 69 00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:27,900 where we chat. Here's where we can kick off certain things. Here's where we can get insight 70 00:05:27,900 --> 00:05:32,860 into commits and to get, I think that's a pretty wild use that I hadn't seen a ton before Slack 71 00:05:32,860 --> 00:05:33,520 came on the scene. 72 00:05:33,740 --> 00:05:38,020 Yeah, no, I mean, you, you hit up on the, uh, I mean, the core things there and it was 73 00:05:38,020 --> 00:05:43,440 making me think of, um, a couple of conversations I was having last week when I was in, uh, in 74 00:05:43,440 --> 00:05:50,680 my, my pre and post awesome burger, uh, like lifestyle choice, uh, which is there's a, there 75 00:05:50,680 --> 00:05:54,740 was a lot of discussion we were having, um, with a couple of large organizations about 76 00:05:54,740 --> 00:06:00,280 how you, uh, how you switch over process and deal in large organizations, how you do a more 77 00:06:00,280 --> 00:06:05,640 agile approach. And I guess there's, there's, there's a tremendous amount of, I don't know 78 00:06:05,640 --> 00:06:10,700 if it's selection bias. I would call it what I know bias, but I found that the conversation 79 00:06:10,700 --> 00:06:17,880 kept going around. Um, well, when it comes to governance and collaboration and coordination 80 00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:23,340 and alignment is another good word that's worth thinking of in large organizations, a lot of 81 00:06:23,340 --> 00:06:27,860 that is due to the fact that you don't have very good tools for doing that. So you have 82 00:06:27,860 --> 00:06:32,680 to go into the meat space and like do it in person. And then as everyone can kind of theorize 83 00:06:32,680 --> 00:06:37,140 or hopefully intuitively knows once you're doing like meatware integrations, like people just 84 00:06:37,140 --> 00:06:42,180 talking with each other, it's incredibly inefficient. And so, and you know, this is where the notion 85 00:06:42,180 --> 00:06:47,360 of, uh, breaking down silos and chucking things over the wall comes into play. But the more, 86 00:06:47,360 --> 00:06:53,460 uh, transference you have of like this one group did this one thing, this other group needs to do 87 00:06:53,460 --> 00:06:57,020 something about it. Whenever you have that exchange of something, there's sort of like 88 00:06:57,020 --> 00:07:02,620 the group one, the first group has to educate and have the second group understand it. 89 00:07:02,780 --> 00:07:06,940 They also have to build up trust with the other group. And then you also need a verification that 90 00:07:06,940 --> 00:07:11,000 everything went okay. And you know, then also there's just the time to schedule meetings and 91 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:15,680 all of that stuff. And so at the lower levels of something like pivotal cloud foundry, there's 92 00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:19,620 like lots of automation that makes it so you don't need to file a ticket to get a server, which is 93 00:07:19,620 --> 00:07:23,980 great. But I think, I think things like, you know, the way that I've seen people using stuff like 94 00:07:23,980 --> 00:07:31,000 Slack and I would assume Microsoft teams is having, uh, speeding up that communication cycle that I was 95 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:36,520 kind of just going over, but also putting out assurances that in addition to all the automated 96 00:07:36,520 --> 00:07:43,100 builds and like get, get, uh, commits and logs, like all this stuff that allows you to automate a 97 00:07:43,100 --> 00:07:47,560 huge amount of governance, the conversations and things that you have, if you have some discipline 98 00:07:47,560 --> 00:07:52,100 around them, that's another type of automation that hopefully reduces the need to, uh, to do a lot of, 99 00:07:52,200 --> 00:07:56,460 a lot of the governance that was required because there was no other way to do it than to like fire 100 00:07:56,460 --> 00:08:02,460 up a word doc and go talk with people and, uh, you know, just fill it out. So, I mean, you know, 101 00:08:02,480 --> 00:08:07,560 I, I, because I have to use Slack every day, I'm extremely dismissive of it because, you know, 102 00:08:07,560 --> 00:08:12,700 I'm, I'm a, I'm a regular, uh, prints on a stack of mattresses and I can feel the pee underneath it. 103 00:08:12,700 --> 00:08:18,280 Right. So really all Slack has to do is remove that annoying feature so that if someone types in here 104 00:08:18,280 --> 00:08:21,820 a channel, it like freaks me out. Like if they just remove that, 105 00:08:21,880 --> 00:08:25,700 I would probably think it was a perfect communication medium. Uh, but, but they, 106 00:08:25,820 --> 00:08:31,020 for, for whatever reason, I, I, I, uh, I don't know why they're not listening to every time I 107 00:08:31,020 --> 00:08:36,120 complain about it. All they need to do is add an option that says when someone types in at here at 108 00:08:36,120 --> 00:08:42,800 channel, Coté doesn't care. Like that's, that's all I want. That's all I want. But yeah, no, 109 00:08:42,800 --> 00:08:46,280 this will be a good, uh, I think a good link into what we talk about for the rest of the podcast. 110 00:08:46,280 --> 00:08:51,560 But I mean, I think exactly to your point, even things around DevOps come from improved, 111 00:08:51,560 --> 00:08:56,260 faster collaboration and more transparency. And these sorts of tools, I think are completely 112 00:08:56,260 --> 00:09:01,000 foster that versus let's have meetings. Let's try to figure out what happened and do it. No, 113 00:09:01,060 --> 00:09:05,120 instead it's all out in front of people. You solve problems instantly versus dragging everyone 114 00:09:05,120 --> 00:09:08,660 into a meeting. So it's cool to see this space continue to evolve. 115 00:09:08,860 --> 00:09:13,560 Yeah. Yeah. And, and just, just, uh, just to close out that idea by adding some more to it, 116 00:09:13,560 --> 00:09:18,320 so to speak, I, I've, uh, I've, I've been thinking I need to write my monthly column for 117 00:09:18,320 --> 00:09:22,740 the register. And I was thinking, um, I've heard that there's, there's some nerd fight going on 118 00:09:22,740 --> 00:09:30,060 about the safe framework, which is all uppercase S a F and then lowercase E. And, uh, so I've been 119 00:09:30,060 --> 00:09:34,500 reading up on that and I kind of hit upon this earlier. I think, I think, I think there's a lot 120 00:09:34,500 --> 00:09:39,460 of interestingness. Like whenever you see the word alignment, I think that's probably an interesting 121 00:09:39,460 --> 00:09:44,220 area to go explore when it comes to speeding up communication. And I haven't really read a lot 122 00:09:44,220 --> 00:09:51,240 of the pro safe, uh, uh, arguments yet. And just to summarize safe is basically a methodology. Um, 123 00:09:51,240 --> 00:09:55,620 I think maybe it's Jim Highsmith and some other people came up with to talk about, uh, how you do 124 00:09:55,620 --> 00:10:00,880 what you might call agile in the large. What do you do when you have 10,000 or 5,000 or even a 125 00:10:00,880 --> 00:10:04,880 thousand people and you want to do agile, you know, develop software development and 126 00:10:04,880 --> 00:10:09,880 there's, it's got a framework and all sorts of stuff around that. Um, but one of the things 127 00:10:09,880 --> 00:10:14,000 you're hitting on is, is something, uh, you were putting very well. One of the things that 128 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:17,920 kind of comes up in this safe talk and comes up a lot in the conversations that I have. 129 00:10:17,940 --> 00:10:22,780 And I think other people, pivotal people have, which is, well, if you have all the roles you 130 00:10:22,780 --> 00:10:29,140 need on a small team, a team of like, let's say four to 12 people who are working on any 131 00:10:29,140 --> 00:10:34,000 given software, a lot of what we're talking about becomes a moot point. And then, and then the 132 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:39,840 discussion becomes, well, is that possible? Right? Like, like given all the various applications 133 00:10:39,840 --> 00:10:45,660 and services that we have, uh, you know, you're basically proposing the opposite of how most large, 134 00:10:45,660 --> 00:10:52,380 uh, companies run nowadays in their it shop. And so, you know, I, I haven't really seen a tremendous 135 00:10:52,380 --> 00:10:59,580 amount of multi-year convincing case studies that you can push everything down to a single team. 136 00:10:59,580 --> 00:11:04,100 I mean, it's, it's what I think for the past two years we've seen, uh, in the pivotal customer base. 137 00:11:04,680 --> 00:11:09,640 Uh, but I think, I think you need a good five or 10 years of running things that way before you can 138 00:11:09,640 --> 00:11:17,220 kind of like conclusively say it's, it's a works in 80% of the cases. But so far, all the evidence is 139 00:11:17,220 --> 00:11:22,520 that, uh, if you, if you do your enterprise portfolio management correctly, and you kind 140 00:11:22,520 --> 00:11:26,800 of have a one-to-one mapping of an important service or an application to this small team 141 00:11:26,800 --> 00:11:32,720 that has all the roles and is fully dedicated to it, that, uh, all the efficiency you get for all 142 00:11:32,720 --> 00:11:36,860 this alignment stuff we've been talking about, when that gets sucked out, it just speeds up the 143 00:11:36,860 --> 00:11:42,160 process so much that it's worth going, shifting over to that way of doing things. But we'll see what 144 00:11:42,160 --> 00:11:49,240 happens. Awesome. Alignment. It's not just for justification anymore. That's, that's a little, 145 00:11:49,240 --> 00:11:57,440 uh, that's a little word document pun there for you. There you go. Uh, so also, uh, one of the 146 00:11:57,440 --> 00:12:00,580 things we didn't, we didn't talk about last week, cause we wanted to spend the whole time talking 147 00:12:00,580 --> 00:12:04,460 about containers is there was a, uh, I forget the title of it, but the cloud foundry foundation 148 00:12:04,460 --> 00:12:09,220 came up with a, another report. I think it was essentially, uh, I don't remember the N equals 149 00:12:09,220 --> 00:12:14,200 whatnot in a geographic distribution, but I did file it away that it didn't, didn't seem totally 150 00:12:14,200 --> 00:12:19,760 bonkers and it was spread pretty well geographically and across, uh, industry types. So that's great. 151 00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:26,200 Um, but it was essentially on the idea of do companies feel, feel that they have, I think it 152 00:12:26,200 --> 00:12:30,500 was developer focused, right? Do they, do they feel like they have the developer skills that they need 153 00:12:30,500 --> 00:12:36,840 and what's their perception of their own abilities or inabilities to do a developer skill? So 154 00:12:36,840 --> 00:12:41,820 you, uh, you wrote something up on that, which we'll link to what's kind of like the, uh, what 155 00:12:41,820 --> 00:12:46,100 are the highlights of that, that, that, that you liked? Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out. I think it 156 00:12:46,100 --> 00:12:50,660 was a good, I think it was a quality survey. If you look at the, yeah, I forget what you call it 157 00:12:50,660 --> 00:12:54,200 that one, not just the demographics, you just look under the covers at what they did. This was not 158 00:12:54,200 --> 00:12:58,280 like a, Hey, we did interviewed four people on a web survey and came up with these numbers, 159 00:12:58,280 --> 00:13:02,980 right? So these were, this was a legit survey that said, look, is there a skills gap? Are we 160 00:13:02,980 --> 00:13:08,200 manufacturing this or is there actually a problem finding and hiring good developers? And for the 161 00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:13,320 most part, companies were saying, yes, that we're seeing there is an emerging challenge to find the 162 00:13:13,320 --> 00:13:18,700 best people. And, you know, the survey admittedly, I think was trying to tie this to, Hey, companies 163 00:13:18,700 --> 00:13:23,520 that don't see a gap are ones that are super cloud native and they have built the culture and they have 164 00:13:23,520 --> 00:13:28,520 the sort of talent gravity. That means they don't really experience it. So if you're running a great 165 00:13:28,520 --> 00:13:33,440 IT group, whether you're an all state or whether you're a, you know, Uber, it doesn't matter if 166 00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:36,460 you're running a great software team, you don't really feel the gap because people want to work 167 00:13:36,460 --> 00:13:40,900 there. So that was, I think the hypothesis they were trying to prove. I don't think the numbers 168 00:13:40,900 --> 00:13:46,280 totally bore that out, but you know, I think that's an interesting hypothesis is the teams that 169 00:13:46,280 --> 00:13:50,220 struggle the most are the ones trying to run, you know, legacy stuff and having a hard time 170 00:13:50,220 --> 00:13:55,540 attracting people to work on that code base. But the more important thing I think in the survey was 171 00:13:55,540 --> 00:13:59,940 how are people handling this either real or perceived skills gap? And the answer was training. 172 00:14:00,160 --> 00:14:05,680 The answer was not outsourcing. The training, you know, it was not, let's find other people to help 173 00:14:05,680 --> 00:14:10,780 do this for us on a contract basis. It was, we need to get this skill in house because we feel like 174 00:14:10,780 --> 00:14:15,700 software is a differentiator. I want people invested in our business. And so I did write up a blog post 175 00:14:15,700 --> 00:14:20,560 that kind of talked about how can companies tackle this skills gap? Because it's one thing to say you 176 00:14:20,560 --> 00:14:25,380 have it. That's not helpful. It's how do I actually get out of the skills gap or just jump over it? 177 00:14:25,720 --> 00:14:29,980 And so I focused on things around training and how do you build up the right team? And how do you 178 00:14:29,980 --> 00:14:35,440 demonstrate some of the things that developers are going to want to see to work there? And that at the 179 00:14:35,440 --> 00:14:39,440 same time, you want to invest in the people you have. Don't just longingly look at the market and 180 00:14:39,440 --> 00:14:43,600 say, Oh, I wish I had that team. You know what? You probably have that team internally. You've just 181 00:14:43,600 --> 00:14:49,180 handcuffed them for the last few years with lousy process and lame tech. So how do you unleash them a little 182 00:14:49,180 --> 00:14:52,860 bit? And then at the same time, you're going to be making it more attractive for new people. 183 00:14:53,860 --> 00:14:59,720 Yeah. I mean, you, you, you bring up a lot of, uh, uh, core pivotal issues, I would say 184 00:14:59,720 --> 00:15:05,420 in, in, in a, in a good way. I mean, there's, you're, you're even reminding me of another interesting 185 00:15:05,420 --> 00:15:12,440 thing from my, uh, my safe reading, so to speak, which is, uh, and, and, and, and again, 186 00:15:12,440 --> 00:15:16,640 I can't really argue for or against safe. I'm just kind of relating interesting ideas in, 187 00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:21,060 in the reading that I've had the research, but you know, there's, there's another interesting thing 188 00:15:21,060 --> 00:15:29,040 that when introducing a methodology, uh, uh, you have to be careful that you're, you're basically 189 00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:36,940 not just, uh, allowing people to keep doing the same thing. And, and one, one of the same things 190 00:15:36,940 --> 00:15:42,020 in that issue is like, well, if, if, if we feel like we're not up to the task of, of doing really 191 00:15:42,020 --> 00:15:46,720 great software development, right. And nevermind the whole argument of like, why you should do that. 192 00:15:46,780 --> 00:15:51,740 Let's just assume that you accept you should be good at doing custom software development. Um, 193 00:15:51,740 --> 00:15:56,520 and we don't feel we're up to that task, then we probably need to change things. Right. And 194 00:15:56,520 --> 00:16:02,420 what, one of the things that I, I like to point out a lot is, um, it's not only developers who need 195 00:16:02,420 --> 00:16:06,440 to change, but you know, also management needs to change how they think about doing things, 196 00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:11,280 how they manage and organize things and, and the, uh, incentives that they give people and what they 197 00:16:11,280 --> 00:16:17,040 do. And that, that was one of the criticisms of, of the safe methodology is it's, it's, uh, it almost 198 00:16:17,040 --> 00:16:23,200 gives management too much to do in, in the sense of it sort of justifies their current way of working 199 00:16:23,200 --> 00:16:27,000 instead of switching them over to doing things. And, and I was thinking of this because, um, 200 00:16:27,600 --> 00:16:34,100 you had a good summary of, uh, um, uh, some of, some of the comments that, that city has had from, 201 00:16:34,100 --> 00:16:38,740 you know, around and about, but they did actually, I forget if it's two or three, but they did, 202 00:16:38,860 --> 00:16:43,780 they did a, uh, a small handful of talks at spring SpringOne platform. And one of the things that 203 00:16:43,780 --> 00:16:49,340 was interesting is their plan to, to have, uh, insourcing be the majority of the way that they 204 00:16:49,340 --> 00:16:54,020 do their staffing. Uh, instead of, I think, I think, you know, I'm always suspicious of a, 205 00:16:54,040 --> 00:16:58,640 uh, what is it? A Petro thing or an 80, 20 split, but whatever it's a, it's a, it's a easy way of 206 00:16:58,640 --> 00:17:04,740 doing stuff that now it's, it's basically 80% outsourced and 20% full-time. And they want to, 207 00:17:04,820 --> 00:17:10,500 they want to flip that ratio around, which I think is something that, um, is more or less 208 00:17:10,500 --> 00:17:16,660 the implication of this idea of being good at software is that the relationship that you have 209 00:17:16,660 --> 00:17:22,580 with outsourcers, uh, probably needs to change a lot. And, um, you know, this, this is why I bring 210 00:17:22,580 --> 00:17:28,380 up the management thing is to, to insource or outsource is basically a more or less a high 211 00:17:28,380 --> 00:17:32,080 level management choice. And so man, that's something that management has to do and walk 212 00:17:32,080 --> 00:17:36,440 through and think about how they, they execute on that kind of strategy, which, whichever one 213 00:17:36,440 --> 00:17:41,080 they put in place. So it's, it's kind of one example of how management has to change just 214 00:17:41,080 --> 00:17:46,240 as much as developers do. And then of course, the idea of training and paying for that stuff, 215 00:17:46,280 --> 00:17:49,320 right? Like that's, that's another thing that, that management needs to do. There's only, 216 00:17:49,440 --> 00:17:54,880 there's only so many self-directed brown bags that, uh, a development team can do before, 217 00:17:54,880 --> 00:18:00,640 you know, the brown bag explodes and doesn't, I'm thinking of metaphors of how much stuff you can 218 00:18:00,640 --> 00:18:05,500 put into a bag before it doesn't work out, but you know, probably peanuts. Uh, but how many 219 00:18:05,500 --> 00:18:12,360 honey roasted peanuts can you put in a bag before I eat them all? The answer infinite, but you hit on a 220 00:18:12,360 --> 00:18:16,080 great point is again, I think we've, and you're, you know, and then we'll talk about a little bit in a 221 00:18:16,080 --> 00:18:19,220 moment, but a lot of your work and others focuses on, it's not just about 222 00:18:19,220 --> 00:18:23,980 changing the tools and tech at the, at the grassroots level. It is at this case, you know, 223 00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:28,180 Brad at city coming on stage saying, we're flipping this because we need to be a software company. 224 00:18:28,260 --> 00:18:31,600 And because this makes a difference to us and we're going to put our money where our mouth is 225 00:18:31,600 --> 00:18:35,840 like that is the only way you're going to get your culture to change is when you should people prove 226 00:18:35,840 --> 00:18:39,860 it, not just, Hey, let's send out a memo saying we're going to be agile. Like that's arguably the 227 00:18:39,860 --> 00:18:44,100 most worthless thing you can do because you have to prove it. Like, look, we're going to invest in 228 00:18:44,100 --> 00:18:47,780 training. Look, we're going to bring in coaches. Look, we're going to bring in pivotal labs and do 229 00:18:47,780 --> 00:18:53,240 pairing. Like you've got to prove it. And that only happens at the top, top, especially when you hit a 230 00:18:53,240 --> 00:18:56,780 tough decision point and somebody has to prove that they're going to stick with it. That that's when 231 00:18:56,780 --> 00:19:00,940 you prove that this matters to you. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I mean, and that, that hits on, I mean, 232 00:19:00,940 --> 00:19:06,140 so it's the, uh, as you were alluding to, like, there's this, uh, uh, I don't know what to call it. 233 00:19:06,260 --> 00:19:11,320 Maybe you or some listeners have a good idea, but, uh, there's this cloud native journey 234 00:19:11,320 --> 00:19:16,200 addition to, uh, that I've been working on. And I actually, I'll put a link to it in the show notes, 235 00:19:16,200 --> 00:19:21,340 but, uh, uh, I've actually made it public if you know where the link is. So it'd be great if, 236 00:19:21,460 --> 00:19:25,140 if the, uh, if the listeners go in and check it out and tell me what they think of it. You can, 237 00:19:25,400 --> 00:19:30,300 you can leave comments, but not edit it, but you know, you can try to leave suggestions and comments. 238 00:19:30,300 --> 00:19:34,720 That'll be, uh, enjoyable, but I mean, there's a couple of things that I've been kind of wrestling 239 00:19:34,720 --> 00:19:39,120 with in there. One of them, just to connect to this is the, the, I mean, so basically what I'm 240 00:19:39,120 --> 00:19:45,440 doing in there is over the past year, I've had, let's say are about seven to 10 of the same 241 00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:49,820 conversations on the same topics as I go and talk with, with organizations. They have the same 242 00:19:49,820 --> 00:19:56,040 questions either of why am I doing this or how do I do this? How do I switch an organization over to 243 00:19:56,040 --> 00:20:01,000 being, um, uh, really good at doing its own software? So I've tried to collect together, 244 00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:06,080 uh, those questions and the answers to them. I'll, I'll see when I get finally down to editing, 245 00:20:06,080 --> 00:20:09,880 if I don't have answers to questions, if I just delete them and pretend like they didn't exist, 246 00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:15,300 but you know, cause that wouldn't be a very good section. Uh, how do I do such and such? I don't 247 00:20:15,300 --> 00:20:20,820 know. See you in the next section, but, uh, it's a little shrug, shrug shape. If that fills in 248 00:20:20,820 --> 00:20:25,840 your document, we got problems. Exactly. Exactly. But this, this outsourcing topic is one of the 249 00:20:25,840 --> 00:20:31,080 sections I have in there. And, you know, uh, I always like to have some, uh, some numbers and 250 00:20:31,080 --> 00:20:36,500 analyst stuff to hide behind as it were. And the, um, the, uh, the horses for sources firm, 251 00:20:36,500 --> 00:20:40,480 I think is, is the one I'm sure there's many other firms, but it's a firm that I know an analyst 252 00:20:40,480 --> 00:20:44,700 firm that covers outsourcing pretty well. And I was looking at some of their surveys and you see 253 00:20:44,700 --> 00:20:50,240 similar things from their surveys that like a huge percentage of the, uh, of the executives at 254 00:20:50,240 --> 00:20:55,500 companies when asked what they think of their outsourcing, it's not so much that I would say, 255 00:20:55,640 --> 00:21:00,520 retroactively. Well, at least it doesn't really say retrospectively if, if they don't like it, 256 00:21:00,580 --> 00:21:04,940 but looking forward, they, they want their outsourcers to begin behaving in a different 257 00:21:04,940 --> 00:21:11,360 way. And, and I, I assume it's a lot more around help us create business value, not just optimize 258 00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:16,860 the process by which business value is provided, which I don't mean to be demeaning towards outsources, 259 00:21:16,860 --> 00:21:20,900 but I kind of think that's what a lot of outsourcing and especially BPO stuff is about. 260 00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:25,300 Um, and so you look at these surveys and people want to reorient how they're doing outsourcing. 261 00:21:25,300 --> 00:21:29,540 And so, you know, in that section, at least at the moment, it's essentially is, is sort 262 00:21:29,540 --> 00:21:34,380 of that, that part of the conversation I've been having over the past year is it's not 263 00:21:34,380 --> 00:21:38,200 so much. And I just had a conversation like this last week. It's not so much that outsourcing 264 00:21:38,200 --> 00:21:44,540 is inherently 100% bad. It's just that the way you're currently thinking about it as a tool 265 00:21:44,540 --> 00:21:50,160 and, and, you know, managers are thinking about it has to be reoriented. And I think as one 266 00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:55,220 example that I was talking with a large insurance company with, uh, last week, you know, if you 267 00:21:55,220 --> 00:22:02,500 look at the, the layers of pivotal cloud foundry, as an example, or, or any cloud stack, the, the 268 00:22:02,500 --> 00:22:09,840 huge degree of automation you have at the infrastructure layer, uh, it's basically the main reason you 269 00:22:09,840 --> 00:22:14,780 call out your outsourcers of the infrastructure layer is just to add capacity to the overall 270 00:22:14,780 --> 00:22:19,640 cloud. And, you know, the analogy I was using, or I don't know why it's, you know, no one's heard 271 00:22:19,640 --> 00:22:24,760 it except the people in that room. But the analogy I was using is a stupid one, but if you have a 272 00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:29,840 house and let's say you build five houses, five rooms in your house until you filled up those five 273 00:22:29,840 --> 00:22:34,240 rooms, you don't need to call a contractor anymore. But once you want to call, you know, once you need 274 00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:38,940 a six room, either you have to build it yourself or you call a contractor. And so again, it's kind 275 00:22:38,940 --> 00:22:43,300 of a stupid analogy, but the notion is that like, you don't, you don't need to every single 276 00:22:43,300 --> 00:22:47,880 time you want to enter a room and use that room. You don't really need to like call up your 277 00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:53,800 contractor. And the issue becomes, uh, you know, the way that normally you deal with a lot of 278 00:22:53,800 --> 00:22:57,680 outsourcing people, the infrastructure layers, you have like a service desk and you've got to 279 00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:02,000 file tickets and do all this stuff. So you just imagine that if you remove that, it's sort 280 00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:07,260 of like, well, what do we do now with the outsourcers? And so again, the idea is once you put 281 00:23:07,260 --> 00:23:12,700 something like a pivotal cloud foundry in place, the staffing and the function that happens at each 282 00:23:12,700 --> 00:23:17,540 of the kind of layers from the dirt to the physical infrastructure, to the, the infrastructure as a 283 00:23:17,540 --> 00:23:21,480 service, to the, the, basically the platform as a service layer, to the application layer, 284 00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:25,560 things switch around because the software is different. And it's a good opportunity to go 285 00:23:25,560 --> 00:23:29,580 back and figure out the relationship you have with your outsourcers and what you expect them to do. 286 00:23:29,880 --> 00:23:33,200 So where are you seeing that? I mean, I put you on the hot seat a little bit. I mean, there's, 287 00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:37,780 there's different models, right? I mean, I think pivotal labs, we like to say we should be the 288 00:23:37,780 --> 00:23:41,460 last consultants you ever hire, which on one hand sounds, you know, really ominous, but I think the 289 00:23:41,460 --> 00:23:46,360 point is you shouldn't need consultants after that because we try to train you and ECS team and others 290 00:23:46,360 --> 00:23:50,940 who come in and do a great job of helping people modernize, help them replatform, learn good 291 00:23:50,940 --> 00:23:55,220 models. So in a cloud world where I don't want a service desk because I should be able to do 292 00:23:55,220 --> 00:24:00,780 self-service and provisioning, or I don't necessarily want to have teams that just take 293 00:24:00,780 --> 00:24:05,120 up requirements spec and six months later, you know, throw some code back at me. Where, where 294 00:24:05,120 --> 00:24:08,600 are you, when you talk to some of these folks who are considering, you know, what's my future 295 00:24:08,600 --> 00:24:13,560 look like? Where do you see some of that value for an outsourced model? Is it to do platform 296 00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:18,500 ops and to do things that don't necessarily slow down delivery, but still serve a valuable 297 00:24:18,500 --> 00:24:22,120 function? Or do you see it as this agile partner, which I have a hard time getting my head 298 00:24:22,120 --> 00:24:28,480 around how that could work? Yeah. I mean, I, I can, I can think of, let's see, I'll do 299 00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:33,960 something out later. I can, I can think of, I can think of three things, uh, which, which 300 00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:38,200 I'm writing down now, so I don't forget them. And then what was, see, I almost forgot the 301 00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:45,380 third one. All right. I think, I think one, what you could do there's, there's a different 302 00:24:45,380 --> 00:24:49,220 word that seems slight, but it's, it's a big difference. And that is you might think of 303 00:24:49,220 --> 00:24:54,220 outsourcers as contractors. Now, I don't know how it is in the rest of the world outside 304 00:24:54,220 --> 00:24:59,420 of tech, but in the tech world, a contractor basically means, uh, you're someone who works 305 00:24:59,420 --> 00:25:03,340 here, your badge color is different and you don't get our health insurance, right? Like 306 00:25:03,340 --> 00:25:09,060 you might be paid hourly, uh, you know, whatever, but you basically report and are responsible 307 00:25:09,060 --> 00:25:14,320 to the same manager as the insource talent. And you're on the team. Like I'm thinking of a 308 00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:19,320 very specific contractor that I worked with once and more or less these contractors, and 309 00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:23,100 it gets a little squishy if it's an offshore person versus onshore and all this, but the 310 00:25:23,100 --> 00:25:28,660 contractors are just there. And for whatever reason, they're not like a FTE, like a full 311 00:25:28,660 --> 00:25:35,600 time employee. So I think that model is kind of like a, um, uh, it's a weaselly way out of 312 00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:40,420 your question, right? It's, it's just like, for whatever reason, they're not full time 313 00:25:40,420 --> 00:25:45,440 employees. And that part of that reason is probably like, I remember this one guy I'm thinking 314 00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:50,420 of, he didn't want to be a full time employee. He wanted the option of, of leaving and doing 315 00:25:50,420 --> 00:25:56,500 whatever benefits that he perceives, uh, of, of being a, a contractor. And on, on the employer 316 00:25:56,500 --> 00:26:01,400 side, it's also a, there's a certain amount of debt or not debt. Uh, there's a certain amount 317 00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:05,340 of overhead that you don't have to carry for a contractor. I mean, I would think that the, 318 00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:09,180 in this situation we're talking about, the risk overhead that you carry with them is, 319 00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:14,200 would cancel it out, but whatever there's, uh, sometimes what's that? 320 00:26:14,220 --> 00:26:19,080 You're describing staff augmentation. Yes, exactly. Right. Versus like I have 400 people 321 00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:23,220 who do X for me, which is the more traditional. Exactly. So that's why I was saying it's kind 322 00:26:23,220 --> 00:26:28,380 of a way to weasel out of the answer. Now I think the second thing is, and this is hard 323 00:26:28,380 --> 00:26:32,140 to like express. Cause it's sort of like, there's a whole bunch of stuff that comes before that. But 324 00:26:32,140 --> 00:26:38,380 if you're running in kind of a cloud native way and you have, uh, I'm going to try to avoid using 325 00:26:38,380 --> 00:26:45,040 the word microservices, but you have a very services component driven system, right? Where each of the 326 00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:50,920 different services and component are independent and staffed independently. In theory, it would be 327 00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:56,160 fine to outsource some of those things in the same way that we encourage people to outsource their 328 00:26:56,160 --> 00:27:00,060 platform. Like you should use pivotal cloud foundry instead of building that on your own, 329 00:27:00,060 --> 00:27:05,240 or in the same way that you would outsource your database as a service or your mobile backend as a 330 00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:10,520 service. So you could imagine situations like I always like to use airlines where airlines have 331 00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:16,420 reservation booking systems and they probably have a way of dealing of paying the people who come and 332 00:27:16,420 --> 00:27:21,880 clean up the airplane. Like you can break down the business and all these components. And similarly, 333 00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:28,380 you might have just APIs that you would call to do things. Now, somehow you have to incent the people 334 00:27:28,380 --> 00:27:32,460 you're outsourcing it to, to care about the craftsmanship and the quality of all that. But 335 00:27:32,460 --> 00:27:38,440 technologically, there is the option that you could sort of outsource those things in the same way that 336 00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:44,240 you outsource it to a vendor to do it. So again, all the danger in all of this stuff is how you line up 337 00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:51,320 the incentives of, uh, I just get paid versus having a certain amount of like what I would call like 338 00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:57,900 pride in your craftsmanship and making, making any individual and team perform above their compensation, 339 00:27:57,900 --> 00:28:03,280 if you will, and do things that are above like just a straight up transactional relationship, which is, 340 00:28:03,460 --> 00:28:08,780 which is a weird area. But I could see that you could totally architect things out so that you could, 341 00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:14,040 uh, you could kind of safely outsource functions like that. And then again, this isn't like a, 342 00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:18,620 an architectural thing, but I was using the example earlier, like you, I mean, the same way that you 343 00:28:18,620 --> 00:28:22,840 could run your infrastructure on public cloud, that's a type of outsourcing. Like you could, 344 00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:27,500 you could also outsource out your, uh, your, uh, your infrastructure at the bottom. And as you're 345 00:28:27,500 --> 00:28:32,640 alluding to, you know, when you add in various like brokerage services, you could outsource things out 346 00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:37,360 like that. So there's like kind of clean areas you could cut things. And I would, I would imagine that 347 00:28:37,360 --> 00:28:44,560 the lesson that we learn over and over again, uh, and whether or not we execute on it is that, 348 00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:50,680 um, you always, whenever you outsource something, you have to keep a very close eye on it, 349 00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:56,560 that it's as good as it would be if you insourced it. And I just wonder if, right. The metric goes from 350 00:28:56,560 --> 00:29:02,400 how much money did I save to, am I moving with the same velocity? Like, I think that's what matters 351 00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:07,560 more like, Hey, all of a sudden I'm paying $15 a head versus 85 for loaded costs. Like that. I don't 352 00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:11,180 know if that's the thing that we care. I hopefully most of these companies don't care about it. 353 00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:16,280 Did I outsource this, but now am I shipping less or my customer experience worse? And it's not that 354 00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:21,700 it would inherently be worse or slower, but if you haven't built in, as you say, the incentives or 355 00:29:21,700 --> 00:29:26,900 either the kind of the isolation. So this team can build and ship their things and everybody's not 356 00:29:26,900 --> 00:29:31,220 interconnected in weird ways, but you have to actually, I think, design for this, not just 357 00:29:31,220 --> 00:29:35,680 architecturally, but organizational. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and it, yeah. I mean, if, 358 00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:41,600 if, if all you use is like money as the lever and incentive, then people optimize around that. I mean, 359 00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:48,340 like, like as, as what seems like a wacky example, I often think about, uh, like, do we, uh, is the 360 00:29:48,340 --> 00:29:54,380 incentive structure we give salespeople, not, not we pivotal, but just we as in humanity, like, 361 00:29:54,620 --> 00:30:00,200 is that good. Right. Cause it obviously it incents salespeople to close deals sooner rather than 362 00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:05,400 later. And to make the deal as big as possible. I mean, it's, it, you're, you're giving people 363 00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:11,660 short-term incentives to, to close deals. Um, and that's why the cloud screwed so many people up. 364 00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:16,360 All of a sudden you were selling a subscription service. So you actually had to make your customer 365 00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:21,260 happy every month. Exactly. They could ditch it tomorrow. And so, you know, you can, you can build in 366 00:30:21,260 --> 00:30:25,920 things that say like, uh, that sort of like meter out the same way that options are given to employees. 367 00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:29,660 You don't get all the options on day one. You've got to like, usually stick around for like three 368 00:30:29,660 --> 00:30:34,720 years and, and, and then the way you grant them in blocks or portioned out by a month, like all those 369 00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:40,400 sorts of incentive things. And so I think similarly, you have to look at the mechanics of how you're 370 00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:47,720 incenting your outsourcer, because I would suspect that the core incentives of an insourced that is a 371 00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:53,920 full-time person are one, I'd like a job, right? Like I would like to stay employed until I choose 372 00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:59,100 to leave, right? Like it's incredibly disruptive if, if you're suddenly your cashflow, uh, you know, 373 00:30:59,100 --> 00:31:03,780 you get laid off or fired. So you want to maintain your job, which is a good long-term incentive, 374 00:31:03,780 --> 00:31:09,140 right? So you're incented for the long-term health of the company. And then two, you also would like to 375 00:31:09,140 --> 00:31:15,180 get paid, right? So like, so like good pay is good and good benefits and all of that. Um, and then, 376 00:31:15,180 --> 00:31:19,400 and then I think third, there's probably again, this going back to it, this pride in craftsmanship, 377 00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:24,540 you would like, given that you've achieved the Maslow's hierarchy of employment, which is I am 378 00:31:24,540 --> 00:31:29,500 employed, I am getting paid. The next one down is probably like, I would like to be happy in what 379 00:31:29,500 --> 00:31:35,140 I do. Right. So, so those are some good, but whereas incentives or outsourcers are basically just 380 00:31:35,140 --> 00:31:40,540 like pay, right? I mean, that seems to be the main incentive. I'm going down a deep rat hole here, 381 00:31:40,540 --> 00:31:46,260 but, uh, anyways, so getting back to getting back to the rat hole. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I mean, 382 00:31:46,260 --> 00:31:50,280 I think this, we'll, uh, we'll skip our third news item cause I want to jump into some of your stuff, 383 00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:55,400 but you were breaking down in the, as we were just talking some of the, you know, these teams and we 384 00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:59,280 think of balanced teams and we think about, you know, what, what does this modern team look like? 385 00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:03,880 You have a big section on product roles in your toolkit. You talk about the core roles and the 386 00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:08,560 roles that aren't core. So I don't know for, for the sake here, you want to let's, let's start with 387 00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:14,380 the ones you think are not as cool. Well, well, first of all, first of all, I all, but straight 388 00:32:14,380 --> 00:32:19,640 up cut and pasted that from some pivotal labs documentation. I of course went through and added 389 00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:24,200 my own view and my little commentary, but a lot of that, a lot of what you, one would read in that 390 00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:30,560 section. Um, not all of it, but, but the, the, the product team section is a lot of labs theory, 391 00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:36,480 if you will, which, which having all but cut and paste it, I would say I agree with it's, 392 00:32:36,480 --> 00:32:43,980 it's a good representation of that. Um, but, and, and especially if you go talk with, um, uh, you 393 00:32:43,980 --> 00:32:48,920 go look up some of the talks that a lot of, a lot of pivotal labs, cognoscente and, and, uh, 394 00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:54,760 thought lords and ladies do, um, they have this idea of a balanced team, which is, um, it's, 395 00:32:54,820 --> 00:32:58,660 it's basically more detail on a two pizza team, right? I mean, a two pizza team being, 396 00:32:58,660 --> 00:33:05,180 you should have a small team that given a, uh, Pacific Northwest size pizza, which I think 397 00:33:05,180 --> 00:33:08,560 is the same size pizza you get in the rest of the world. Little Caesars sizes kind of 398 00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:13,920 screw up your math here, but let's assume a regular sized round pizza. And I'm assuming 399 00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:18,740 you can verify this in the Pacific Northwest, pretty much standard pizza sizes, right? There's 400 00:33:18,740 --> 00:33:21,900 not like crazy, small or crazy big pizza sizes up there. 401 00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:29,240 There are, yeah, I mean, it's not like crazy, super deep dish. I think we throw some fish 402 00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:30,940 on there here and there, but yeah, normal size pizza. 403 00:33:31,100 --> 00:33:35,560 All right. All right. So you should only have as many people as you can feed that I guess 404 00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:41,180 don't have a gluten intolerance and are eating carbs, uh, with, with two pizzas. Long story 405 00:33:41,180 --> 00:33:46,080 was something that I made into a very long joke short. It's basically like eight to 12 to 15 406 00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:50,420 people, right? So you want that many people on your team. Now, why do you care about the 407 00:33:50,420 --> 00:33:54,980 people size so much? Well, we just talked about this alignment stuff way back. The more people 408 00:33:54,980 --> 00:33:59,920 you have, you X, I think it's exponential, but it's, it's some dangerous amount of communication 409 00:33:59,920 --> 00:34:04,160 paths you have. And sooner or later, you're going to be spending all your time just syncing 410 00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:09,520 up and aligning people, which is terrible. So you have a small team. So on that team, uh, 411 00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:14,000 then what's the scope of responsibility you give them? Well, you give them, some people would 412 00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:20,080 say one service, one microservice thing, or one application, but you kind of chunk up from 413 00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:25,380 an end user perspective, one thing that they might do. So I would imagine like a mortgage 414 00:34:25,380 --> 00:34:30,440 loan application would be one thing. Now underneath that, you might have other teams for like fraud 415 00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:34,840 detection and credit checks, and those might be other services. And how you decompose all this 416 00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:39,260 stuff is like easy to parlor trick out, but like it's, it all, it's all dependent, but you 417 00:34:39,260 --> 00:34:44,140 have them focused on this one thing. Now the next important layer is so as, as you were getting 418 00:34:44,140 --> 00:34:50,100 to, uh, what roles do you have? Well, you're going to need some developers so we can start 419 00:34:50,100 --> 00:34:57,360 with that. And, and I think, I think developers maybe constitute, let's say 40 to 50% of the 420 00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:02,260 team. Like it, it, it varies to some degree, but the next most important role that you have, 421 00:35:02,340 --> 00:35:08,500 uh, is the, the, what, what we in pivotal world called the product owner or, or the PO, which has 422 00:35:08,500 --> 00:35:12,900 all sorts of puns you can make off of it, I guess in, in, in the software vendor world, they would call 423 00:35:12,900 --> 00:35:17,940 this the product manager. I think that, but, but we, uh, we like PO terms. So the product owner, 424 00:35:17,940 --> 00:35:22,980 and I was talking with one of these people at one of our customers last week. Um, I mean, 425 00:35:22,980 --> 00:35:27,980 I would liken them to a combination of three things. What's traditionally called a business 426 00:35:27,980 --> 00:35:33,680 analyst, which is understanding what the business is and what the customers are and how that kind 427 00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:38,920 of decomposes into technology stuff. And then also that product manager role. And the product manager 428 00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:44,740 role is basically like, what is it, what features are the developers going to work on? I mean, there's, 429 00:35:44,820 --> 00:35:47,760 there's other stuff that goes in there, but that's kind of the salient thing there and, 430 00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:52,700 and how you get to that decision process and how you prioritize that and everything is a lot of what 431 00:35:52,700 --> 00:35:56,740 a product manager does. But then I think another part, I'll have to go see if I wrote about this, but I 432 00:35:56,740 --> 00:36:04,520 think they are effectively like a general manager of that product. Like when you push, you push down 433 00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:09,540 so much authority to the team that the product owner is sort of like the de facto GM, right? Like 434 00:36:09,540 --> 00:36:14,760 like the mini CEO is how I used to describe it when I ran a team of product. Totally. Exactly. That's a, 435 00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:22,180 that's a phrase that one of my, my past bosses used and such a situation. But yeah. And so the product 436 00:36:22,180 --> 00:36:27,800 owner is basically the one who has, and phrases like this are like annoyingly authoritarian, but 437 00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:34,460 whatever, they have the final say on things. Now, conversely to the judgy and authoritarianness of 438 00:36:34,460 --> 00:36:41,560 the final say, they also are responsible for holding back the onslaught of helpful helpfulness that the 439 00:36:41,560 --> 00:36:47,160 rest of the organization wants to give this small team. So, so like this, this, this, this, uh, this 440 00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:52,800 product owner I was talking with last week was saying, yeah, we're in a large organization and, uh, there's 441 00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:59,340 always lots of people who want to come help. And so my job is to schedule a meeting with them and make sure 442 00:36:59,340 --> 00:37:07,540 they never actually get down to my team, which you could take a cynical, but it's the, the, the, the other part of 443 00:37:07,540 --> 00:37:13,280 that is, and my job as a product owner is also to educate them and help them understand why we're 444 00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:17,620 keeping a small team, right? Like I need to walk them through that process and make them understand 445 00:37:17,620 --> 00:37:23,980 why, uh, why I'm holding them back instead of letting them cut flood in here and, uh, and help us out so 446 00:37:23,980 --> 00:37:29,040 much. Yeah. I mean, I used to tell the team, look, a product owner is the voice of the customer inbound 447 00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:34,260 and the voice of the engineers outbound. And to some extent, you know, I would measure the success of a 448 00:37:34,260 --> 00:37:37,920 product owner by how much time the dev spent coding. Cause if they spent all their time in meetings, 449 00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:42,760 you have a pretty lousy product owner who's not helping prioritize well or randomizing them. So 450 00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:46,560 I, what I want to ask you though, is, are you really seeing this pop up more and more 451 00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:50,640 in an, in an enterprise environment? Because I know I've read a lot of pieces around, Hey, 452 00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:54,620 enterprises really could use product managers implying that, Hey, they don't really have them. 453 00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:57,160 So are you starting to see more and more of that take shape? 454 00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:03,400 I mean, I, I, I'll be the first to admit that I have a sort of halo effect in that. I mostly just 455 00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:08,100 talk with people doing, you know, who are pivotal customers and doing things. But when I do go out 456 00:38:08,100 --> 00:38:12,760 and talk with other people and, and, uh, and, you know, read analyst reports and also just talk with 457 00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:18,340 non-pivotal customers. I mean, they are, I think the role of the product owner is the hardest one to 458 00:38:18,340 --> 00:38:22,880 get in place. Like I was even stumbling through like, you know, mini CEO and stuff like that. Cause you 459 00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:30,860 are basically saying, Hey, executive management, how about I steal some power from you? So like, 460 00:38:30,900 --> 00:38:35,320 that's, that's the most difficult thing to put in place. But I think, I think I do hear many, 461 00:38:35,420 --> 00:38:41,560 many anecdotes and tales of, we went with a small team and that seemed to work out better. Right. And, 462 00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:46,760 uh, and, and it's almost like that's not to get too abstract, but that's a general pattern that I 463 00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:51,460 see over and over again is if you're in a large organization trying to figure out how to do custom 464 00:38:51,460 --> 00:38:57,720 written software better. The one word that you should repeat over and over again is small. Like it's, 465 00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:01,980 the answer is not always, yes, we should make it more small, but in every single situation, 466 00:39:01,980 --> 00:39:07,240 you should say, can we do this smaller? And of course that's not grammatically correct or whatever, 467 00:39:07,240 --> 00:39:12,620 but like, can, can we take a smaller approach than we're currently doing? And in general, 468 00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:17,360 whether it's a smaller scope, a smaller release, a smaller team, a smaller, whatever, 469 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:23,740 usually in many cases, doing something smaller will result in bigger success at the end to be all 470 00:39:23,740 --> 00:39:28,520 Hallmark greeting card about it. Uh, but like, that's, that's kind of the pattern that I see over and 471 00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:33,900 over again, whether or not you're putting all of these different, uh, things into place. Um, so, 472 00:39:33,980 --> 00:39:38,520 so then the other role. Yeah, no, sorry. I mean, and that goes with your general small batches 473 00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:43,440 mantra. Exactly. Just small everywhere and do the least amount possible, but not too little. I mean, 474 00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:46,840 whatever the Einstein quote is, there's, there's a quote in there around, like, look, you don't want 475 00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:51,340 to have anarchy, but there's also do the least possible because that's going to help you move 476 00:39:51,340 --> 00:39:55,520 faster. And then, and then, and then also to self-congratulate myself with my cleverness more, 477 00:39:55,520 --> 00:40:00,300 right? Like you can, uh, if you're one of these management layer people, you can also take a small 478 00:40:00,300 --> 00:40:04,940 batch approach to how you change your organization, right? So you can say, uh, well, 479 00:40:04,940 --> 00:40:12,060 let's try this for a month. I have a theory that if we, if we, uh, my theory is that if we have a 480 00:40:12,060 --> 00:40:18,580 small team that's fully dedicated to doing their product and they don't do anything else, let's try 481 00:40:18,580 --> 00:40:23,420 that out and see what happens. And if it doesn't work, then we'll stop doing that. And if it does 482 00:40:23,420 --> 00:40:28,380 work, we'll do some more of it. Right. And, and we'll, we'll limit ourselves to doing it for a month 483 00:40:28,380 --> 00:40:32,520 or whatever. And that's, you know, there's another section on getting started, which I think I published 484 00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:37,760 also in medium or somewhere else as an excerpt, but like, that's another approach is you try just a 485 00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:41,900 series of small projects and you ramp up as it works or doesn't work. So again, it's an example 486 00:40:41,900 --> 00:40:47,240 of like, always think about how you can do a, a, a sort of small batch approach. So getting back the 487 00:40:47,240 --> 00:40:54,020 other roles, like, so on a labs, people recommend, uh, having a designer, uh, you know, design, design 488 00:40:54,020 --> 00:41:00,660 skills on because a lot of the, um, it's not always the case, but I think most of the time 489 00:41:00,660 --> 00:41:05,840 you're going to have a UI and, and it's good to have a designer to, to study user interaction and 490 00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:10,340 how users are doing things. And the designer does more than just, you know, uh, graphic design and 491 00:41:10,340 --> 00:41:14,000 stuff. They're all, they're the ones who do the user studies and figure out like how things are 492 00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:21,140 being used. So if you were doing a purely backend API driven thing, uh, the designer role might be 493 00:41:21,140 --> 00:41:25,780 something more that you would expect a, uh, that you would expect to see from the spring framework 494 00:41:25,780 --> 00:41:31,740 people or from people like Joshua block way back when in the Java day, which is if you're designing 495 00:41:31,740 --> 00:41:37,060 an API, I mean, I've already used the word design, but when you're putting together an API, it's worth 496 00:41:37,060 --> 00:41:41,580 thinking about what the users are doing and how you make them more productive and more effective in the 497 00:41:41,580 --> 00:41:45,540 same way that you would do that with the UI base thing. And I think a lot of what you see in, in, um, 498 00:41:45,940 --> 00:41:51,040 going all the way back to, uh, to, to bobbleheaded Rod Johnson. Do you ever get that statue of the 499 00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:54,140 bobbleheaded Rod Johnson? I've got that in a box somewhere. I should find that. 500 00:41:54,140 --> 00:41:58,820 I did. I didn't. No, that sounds great. It was good times. Uh, but, uh, you know, there, 501 00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:03,340 there was a lot of care put into thinking about the user interaction of those APIs. 502 00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:09,680 And if you go read your effective Java, that whole book is basically about the usability of APIs. Um, 503 00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:13,700 so you've got the designer on there. Now there's a few other roles, uh, that are on there, 504 00:42:13,820 --> 00:42:19,180 you know, as, as you might expect, there are probably ops people on there and this, this is where 505 00:42:19,180 --> 00:42:24,460 things start to get squishy now at the start. And so far I've seen this pan out. You generally have 506 00:42:24,460 --> 00:42:31,840 like a, a, um, a traditional ops person, like someone who really does no ops and through peer 507 00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:36,240 pairing, which is another thing that goes on that I'm not really talking about here, but like all 508 00:42:36,240 --> 00:42:39,620 throughout this, you're doing pairing, which essentially when you have rotating pairing, 509 00:42:39,620 --> 00:42:44,880 it spreads knowledge and it kind of levels out in a good way, all the knowledge. So over the course 510 00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:50,080 of probably a couple of years and, and when the first year you have your operations pair people 511 00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:54,240 pairing with people. And so they spread that knowledge out. And I don't know if everyone 512 00:42:54,240 --> 00:42:58,620 would agree with this, but I think the goal is basically like, it's not so much that there 513 00:42:58,620 --> 00:43:03,740 aren't ops people. It's that there are people who know development and ops. And so that, that 514 00:43:03,740 --> 00:43:08,700 knowledge gets spread out amongst everyone. Right. And you see a similar effect with, uh, testing. 515 00:43:08,900 --> 00:43:14,660 And this is where things get really controversial for all number of reasons. Um, generally like 516 00:43:14,660 --> 00:43:19,620 if you ask labs people about testing, they'll tell you that like the developers do most of 517 00:43:19,620 --> 00:43:22,860 the testing, the develop, I should say the product teams do most of the testing on their 518 00:43:22,860 --> 00:43:27,140 own. So that might imply that you have actual full-time QA people there, but I think more 519 00:43:27,140 --> 00:43:30,900 of what it implies, this is goes back to what we were talking about is like the technology 520 00:43:30,900 --> 00:43:36,320 works, uh, the technology works to automate so much stuff that you spend a lot less time on 521 00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:40,840 just like scripted testing and manual testing. And a lot of the function of testinality is 522 00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:45,140 just like very high value testing, like the old, I guess this is exploratory testing where 523 00:43:45,140 --> 00:43:48,500 you're just like, I'm going to put a book on the keyboard and leave for the day and see 524 00:43:48,500 --> 00:43:52,380 what happens when I come back. Like just that kind of stuff. So, you know, you might have 525 00:43:52,380 --> 00:43:56,200 QA roles and then there's a bunch of optional stuff. Like sometimes you need security people 526 00:43:56,200 --> 00:44:00,320 on their full-time and auditors and all that kind of stuff that could probably rotate in 527 00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:04,140 there, uh, more than anything else. And then I think supporting that, this is where a lot 528 00:44:04,140 --> 00:44:07,640 of the safe talk comes in. You might have enterprise architects and other people who are coordinating 529 00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:13,020 stuff. And that's, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's highly experimental stuff at this point 530 00:44:13,020 --> 00:44:18,400 as, as these teams fan out to larger stuff. But, you know, that's generally the, uh, the sort 531 00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:24,340 of team structure. And then just to be quick about it, so we can wrap up here. Uh, there are, 532 00:44:24,340 --> 00:44:28,800 there are different teams that actually run your platform that like run pivotal cloud foundry 533 00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:33,720 for you, but the goal, the reason that you have pivotal cloud foundry in place is so that 534 00:44:33,720 --> 00:44:38,280 your product teams don't really have to worry about that. Just like, just like they don't 535 00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:41,920 really have to worry about the roads that they use to drive in or the tracks that they use 536 00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:46,280 to come in to work. That stuff is just all taken care of and they can just focus on writing 537 00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:51,960 software. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that was a, I liked you calling that out and even on testing 538 00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:54,940 again, it'd be easy to think of testing as just, Hey, these are people who point and click 539 00:44:54,940 --> 00:44:59,800 and run a 90 page test plan. But you know, QA nowadays is definitely more, as you mentioned, 540 00:44:59,920 --> 00:45:05,040 it's user testing, it's understand relationships, experience. Did you break things? But some 541 00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:09,280 of that skills in the team and to your latter point with the platforms, I think that gets 542 00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:13,700 pretty exciting when you actually have platform ops that run things and you kind of change this 543 00:45:13,700 --> 00:45:18,120 relationship from maybe not needing full stack devs who are actually, you know, configuring 544 00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:22,920 load balancer and firewall rules. Instead, they're, they're still app focused and any ops 545 00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:29,180 type people in that balanced team are focused on building continuous delivery pipelines and helping 546 00:45:29,180 --> 00:45:33,580 you set up maybe cross site things, but not actually going down to the metal. Yeah. I think 547 00:45:33,580 --> 00:45:39,200 that's a pretty exciting transition. Yeah. And I don't know if this is really a helpful way to think 548 00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:46,220 about it or if it's true, but one theory I might have is that, uh, any technical specialization you 549 00:45:46,220 --> 00:45:53,900 have needs to be protected and hidden behind an API somewhere, which, which is to say, if, if it can't 550 00:45:53,900 --> 00:46:00,060 be, something's probably something bad will happen, right? Like, like if, if, and it's for example, 551 00:46:00,220 --> 00:46:05,880 right? Like you're, you're, you're, uh, your network engineer and your database administrators, 552 00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:12,380 like just who are infamous sources of slowing down progress for, for all good reasons. Right. 553 00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:17,680 But it, and it's because there's not, there's usually not APIs around that. Like you have to 554 00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:22,300 go deal with people and educate them and do all this stuff. So it's fine to have that specialization, 555 00:46:22,300 --> 00:46:27,280 but somehow they need to make it accessible, uh, and, and make it so that people don't, don't 556 00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:32,180 bottleneck and worry about it. So, uh, I mean, those kinds of things are where the challenges 557 00:46:32,180 --> 00:46:37,400 really start occurring is, is balancing out when we do need specialization and checks and balances 558 00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:41,860 and, and auditors and all that. How, how we make sure that they're an enabling function. I think 559 00:46:41,860 --> 00:46:47,220 as, as a last comment, I think, I think, I forget who said it. I think it was an HCSC person, 560 00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:52,440 a Blue Cross Blue Shield company who said, or Liberty Mutual, who said, we want to make sure that 561 00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:57,140 it's easiest to do the right thing, not hard to do the right thing. And I think that's the approach 562 00:46:57,140 --> 00:47:00,660 that they want to move, that you should move towards when it comes to these specializations and 563 00:47:00,660 --> 00:47:07,020 external auditing functions. But with that, we, we got, we got to wrap up here. Uh, this has been 564 00:47:07,020 --> 00:47:12,960 Pivotal Conversations as always. You can go, uh, to our not so secret backend at soundcloud.com 565 00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:18,600 slash Pivotal Conversations. You can subscribe there, peruse our past episodes. If you liked this 566 00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:24,720 episode, it would be great. If you, uh, one, you can just, uh, say you like it in Twitter and send a 567 00:47:24,720 --> 00:47:28,980 link. That's actually one of the more effective ways of doing stuff or just tell other people about it. 568 00:47:28,980 --> 00:47:32,440 You can tell us you like it, or you could go leave a rating or a view in iTunes. 569 00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:36,820 I don't think anyone's really done that, at least for the, uh, U S version. So you could be the first. 570 00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:41,720 That would be wonderful. And as always, uh, you know, thanks for listening. And you can go to, 571 00:47:41,720 --> 00:47:46,620 uh, pivotal.io slash Pivotal Conversations with the hyphen in there to find the full show notes 572 00:47:46,620 --> 00:47:48,260 and we'll see everyone next time.