1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,840 Well, here we are at the, as I learned, the Gartner Apps Conference, hashtag Gartner Apps, 2 00:00:06,220 --> 00:00:10,920 APPS, or the Gartner, what was it, Application Solution Summit Strategy? 3 00:00:11,400 --> 00:00:11,960 North American. 4 00:00:12,120 --> 00:00:12,520 Syllogism. 5 00:00:12,760 --> 00:00:13,020 Right. 6 00:00:13,200 --> 00:00:13,480 Yes. 7 00:00:13,640 --> 00:00:18,220 Anyways, so we just sat through a talk that you gave, and by sat through, I don't mean 8 00:00:18,220 --> 00:00:22,240 that it was a chore, but we just saw the talk that you gave, Richard and I, but why don't 9 00:00:22,240 --> 00:00:22,940 you introduce yourself? 10 00:00:23,700 --> 00:00:24,140 Yep. 11 00:00:24,140 --> 00:00:29,740 My name's Tony McCulley, I'm manager at Home Depot, and my team oversees all the Pivotal 12 00:00:29,740 --> 00:00:30,520 Cloud Foundry stuff. 13 00:00:30,860 --> 00:00:34,920 So the talk you gave was what I would call, like, I don't know, an experience report? 14 00:00:35,640 --> 00:00:40,820 Here's like a case of us trying to do software in a new way and improve stuff, and I mean, 15 00:00:40,900 --> 00:00:44,380 obviously for us, it's sort of like, and we use Pivotal Cloud Foundry, which is nice, but 16 00:00:44,380 --> 00:00:46,220 that was just a very small part of it. 17 00:00:46,900 --> 00:00:52,440 But to that end, can you give us, like, first of all, give us a brief background of you, like 18 00:00:52,440 --> 00:00:54,760 what, I mean, you're the certified Scrum Master. 19 00:00:54,940 --> 00:00:55,160 Wow. 20 00:00:55,220 --> 00:00:56,880 Is that the beginning and end of everything? 21 00:00:57,060 --> 00:00:57,680 No, actually. 22 00:00:57,740 --> 00:00:58,340 Who are you? 23 00:00:58,340 --> 00:01:03,820 Yeah, I went to school late, so out of high school, I actually got involved in IT doing 24 00:01:03,820 --> 00:01:04,840 some video game stuff. 25 00:01:05,120 --> 00:01:06,740 Oh, as so many people do. 26 00:01:06,920 --> 00:01:07,160 Yep. 27 00:01:07,380 --> 00:01:10,600 I had to hook up my Quake servers and all of that good jazz. 28 00:01:10,700 --> 00:01:11,180 LAN party. 29 00:01:11,280 --> 00:01:12,120 Yeah, LAN parties. 30 00:01:12,740 --> 00:01:18,860 So that turned into a gig at GameStop, where I started doing that at malls, and then that's 31 00:01:18,860 --> 00:01:24,920 turned into, you know, hardcore IT stuff, exchange servers, you know, all the A-plus certifications 32 00:01:24,920 --> 00:01:26,240 and Cisco and good jazz. 33 00:01:26,240 --> 00:01:29,760 I can see that's a natural progression, LAN party, exchange servers. 34 00:01:29,820 --> 00:01:30,440 Just think of that. 35 00:01:31,300 --> 00:01:32,680 It's a different type of gaming. 36 00:01:32,700 --> 00:01:35,500 Crawling through ceilings, wiring, network cables. 37 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:37,020 We'll have agility on both. 38 00:01:37,160 --> 00:01:37,640 That's great. 39 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:41,660 Yeah, so, you know, what I quickly saw was that wasn't going anywhere, right? 40 00:01:41,700 --> 00:01:42,960 Like, we're doing remote support. 41 00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:48,460 I was a creative person, so I got involved in a startup that was sort of game-related and 42 00:01:48,460 --> 00:01:53,340 IT-related, sold my way out of that, paid off all my debt, and it's like, all right, I'm 43 00:01:53,340 --> 00:01:57,260 going to start over, and I went into software to learn to make video games. 44 00:01:57,560 --> 00:01:57,700 Yeah. 45 00:01:57,700 --> 00:02:03,200 So I did computer science, and then I've never made a video game, and then I got into software, 46 00:02:03,660 --> 00:02:08,080 worked for GE, worked for Comcast, Booz Allen, and now I'm at Home Depot. 47 00:02:08,560 --> 00:02:14,780 So I have a background in user experience, user research, so I've done a lot of that in 48 00:02:14,780 --> 00:02:19,260 my career as well, and then while at GE, extensive, you know, agile coaching and training and stuff 49 00:02:19,260 --> 00:02:19,940 like that, so. 50 00:02:20,100 --> 00:02:20,360 Right. 51 00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:23,260 And then, so, when did you join Home Depot? 52 00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:24,640 Was it like two or three years ago? 53 00:02:24,660 --> 00:02:25,220 2014. 54 00:02:25,900 --> 00:02:26,140 Okay. 55 00:02:26,380 --> 00:02:27,240 Let's see if I can do math. 56 00:02:27,480 --> 00:02:27,600 Yeah. 57 00:02:27,900 --> 00:02:28,200 Three years. 58 00:02:28,260 --> 00:02:29,000 I've been there three years. 59 00:02:29,480 --> 00:02:35,360 And so what, like, so when you got there, what were you, not so much, like, what were 60 00:02:35,360 --> 00:02:40,400 you hired on to do, but, like, the sphere you were working in, like, what was going on? 61 00:02:40,440 --> 00:02:43,420 What was, like, the baseline when you got there, and then what was the mission? 62 00:02:43,640 --> 00:02:50,260 Yeah, so the baseline was everyone was trying to be agile, and it was this very disjointed, 63 00:02:50,580 --> 00:02:52,340 fragmented sort of approach to it. 64 00:02:52,700 --> 00:02:57,360 The particular app team that I was joining was at our pricing space, and they sort of hired 65 00:02:57,360 --> 00:03:00,840 me to, you know, to come on and be like, hey, you know, you're going to, you are a lead 66 00:03:00,840 --> 00:03:05,020 developer, right, but really what we want you to do is put PowerPoints together and train 67 00:03:05,020 --> 00:03:10,300 us on how to do Scrum and Kanban and lean and, you know, teach us about UX, right? 68 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:11,640 But it's a small group. 69 00:03:12,240 --> 00:03:16,000 And then once it got time to be like, you know, I can't do this on my own, like, we need funding, 70 00:03:16,120 --> 00:03:21,260 let's bring in some people, you know, it got a little frustrated that it wasn't taken 71 00:03:21,260 --> 00:03:23,360 as seriously sort of at a higher level. 72 00:03:24,580 --> 00:03:29,100 And I sort of had, I don't know if anyone at Home Depot knows, sort of like one foot 73 00:03:29,100 --> 00:03:31,220 out the door, about eight months into that. 74 00:03:31,460 --> 00:03:35,480 Yeah, I like how every time you talk publicly, basically you're like, HR people, please do 75 00:03:35,480 --> 00:03:35,980 not listen. 76 00:03:36,180 --> 00:03:37,980 Pause podcast here, fast forward. 77 00:03:38,160 --> 00:03:40,960 I think in every talk I've seen you give, that line comes up. 78 00:03:40,960 --> 00:03:42,320 Yeah, it's, you know, it's true. 79 00:03:42,420 --> 00:03:46,720 Like, this is a new thing for Home Depot, and, you know, it's in jest, but there's a lot 80 00:03:46,720 --> 00:03:47,740 of truth said in jest, right? 81 00:03:47,880 --> 00:03:48,080 Sure. 82 00:03:48,620 --> 00:03:51,160 But about that time is when Paul came in, and... 83 00:03:51,160 --> 00:03:51,920 This is Paul Gaffney. 84 00:03:51,940 --> 00:03:52,780 Paul Gaffney, right. 85 00:03:53,340 --> 00:03:57,360 He came in just a couple months later, and, you know, he's like, hey, I'm going to bring 86 00:03:57,360 --> 00:04:00,480 a UX department, and I'm all about XP and Agile. 87 00:04:00,560 --> 00:04:03,660 And I was like, holy smokes, like, okay, I should probably stick around for a little bit. 88 00:04:03,660 --> 00:04:03,860 Yeah. 89 00:04:04,100 --> 00:04:10,200 Yeah, you know, what's interesting about that part of this story is, to rephrase it in my 90 00:04:10,200 --> 00:04:17,320 own way, like, a lot of doing Agile started as a bottoms-up initiative at Home Depot, which 91 00:04:17,320 --> 00:04:22,260 is almost like, it's almost a funny case of, like, a hundred different successes are a lot 92 00:04:22,260 --> 00:04:24,400 more of a trouble than, like, one big success. 93 00:04:24,400 --> 00:04:24,580 Oh. 94 00:04:24,680 --> 00:04:25,640 Like, in this instance. 95 00:04:25,780 --> 00:04:31,620 And so, the way you were talking about it in the talk is, we had a bunch of, what'd you 96 00:04:31,620 --> 00:04:35,960 call them, scrum police, and a bunch of different interpretations of it until, and again, in my 97 00:04:35,960 --> 00:04:40,880 phrasing, until we had a tops-down application of it, we couldn't really scale it, and we 98 00:04:40,880 --> 00:04:43,100 couldn't have the one plus one equals five. 99 00:04:43,240 --> 00:04:43,460 Yeah. 100 00:04:43,460 --> 00:04:44,900 So, we weren't getting the results you expected. 101 00:04:45,140 --> 00:04:45,760 No, absolutely. 102 00:04:46,200 --> 00:04:50,240 And, you know, I joke that we, you know, we had 40 scrum teams, and we were doing it 25 103 00:04:50,240 --> 00:04:51,080 different ways. 104 00:04:51,920 --> 00:04:52,280 Right. 105 00:04:52,720 --> 00:04:56,740 You know, I think, but I think what Paul brought wasn't, it wasn't, he was very conscious about 106 00:04:56,740 --> 00:04:58,940 not being prescriptive. 107 00:04:59,060 --> 00:04:59,260 Yeah. 108 00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:02,620 It was more about, sort of, like, hey, you know, you're struggling. 109 00:05:02,840 --> 00:05:07,860 I think I can help lead you, sort of, to a way of, kind of, discovering a right way to 110 00:05:07,860 --> 00:05:08,980 do this on your own, so. 111 00:05:09,220 --> 00:05:09,460 Yeah. 112 00:05:09,660 --> 00:05:09,840 Yeah. 113 00:05:09,920 --> 00:05:12,720 And it's a hard, I think that's one of the hardest things as a leader, is walking that 114 00:05:12,720 --> 00:05:16,740 fine line between, you know, being prescriptive and then, sort of, leading you, right? 115 00:05:17,100 --> 00:05:17,400 Yeah. 116 00:05:17,400 --> 00:05:18,260 Those are tough decisions. 117 00:05:18,260 --> 00:05:18,560 Yeah. 118 00:05:18,740 --> 00:05:23,580 I zeroed in on that, or keyed in on it, because that's a common pattern I see over and over 119 00:05:23,580 --> 00:05:29,180 again at the large companies we work with, is that to scale Agile, it has to be tops down, 120 00:05:29,280 --> 00:05:29,620 basically. 121 00:05:29,820 --> 00:05:33,540 And it's very hard to have it organically percolate upward. 122 00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:34,120 Right. 123 00:05:34,400 --> 00:05:40,020 And have it be, as Richard was rephrasing, have it reach the ends that you want. 124 00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:40,280 Right. 125 00:05:40,340 --> 00:05:42,900 At scale, which seems to happen a lot. 126 00:05:42,900 --> 00:05:45,820 I mean, before you got there, I mean, you mentioned you kind of came in and was this 127 00:05:45,820 --> 00:05:49,600 focus, and you made a statement early on in your presentation that Home Depot mission 128 00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:50,840 would be a great software company. 129 00:05:51,040 --> 00:05:51,200 Right. 130 00:05:51,260 --> 00:05:54,820 Which might seem mind-blowing to somebody who goes, well, I thought your mission was to 131 00:05:54,820 --> 00:05:55,540 sell me lumber. 132 00:05:55,820 --> 00:05:56,040 Yeah. 133 00:05:56,180 --> 00:05:56,880 And do it really well. 134 00:05:57,000 --> 00:05:58,320 Which, of course, it is to some extent. 135 00:05:58,360 --> 00:05:58,480 Right. 136 00:05:58,940 --> 00:06:00,000 But did that precede? 137 00:06:00,080 --> 00:06:03,320 I mean, all of this Agile probably popped up for other reasons, but was there a transformation 138 00:06:03,320 --> 00:06:05,180 saying, we've got to get better at software? 139 00:06:05,540 --> 00:06:05,600 Yeah. 140 00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:08,600 And then it was just kind of madness for a while, and then finally top down. 141 00:06:08,680 --> 00:06:11,340 I was like, all right, we're going to be good at software, but let's be good at software 142 00:06:11,340 --> 00:06:11,580 on purpose. 143 00:06:11,580 --> 00:06:15,560 Yeah, I think before Paul showed up, you know, like I said, we were there, and all the 144 00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:21,020 motivation was sort of from a developer morale, and, you know, like, hey, like, this Agile 145 00:06:21,020 --> 00:06:22,400 thing is really great for developers. 146 00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:24,540 We would love to do it. 147 00:06:25,140 --> 00:06:27,120 And then we would try to find ways to force it in. 148 00:06:27,160 --> 00:06:30,080 Like, our business partners were like, I don't care that you write user stories. 149 00:06:30,120 --> 00:06:31,360 I have this really big document. 150 00:06:31,900 --> 00:06:34,880 And so we would just take it on ourselves to be like, all right, well, I'm going to decompose 151 00:06:34,880 --> 00:06:38,860 your document into user stories and report to you in whatever format you need. 152 00:06:38,940 --> 00:06:39,100 Right. 153 00:06:39,100 --> 00:06:43,060 So we were kind of, you know, trying to fit, you know, square pegs in the round holes. 154 00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:46,660 What Paul brought was sort of exactly that. 155 00:06:46,700 --> 00:06:52,700 It was like this, it's more of a guidance around, but it was sort of value driven. 156 00:06:52,840 --> 00:06:54,980 It wasn't like, hey, we're going to do it this way. 157 00:06:55,380 --> 00:06:58,860 It was like, I want you to be, you know, I want you to have hypothesis and think about 158 00:06:58,860 --> 00:06:59,460 the value. 159 00:06:59,620 --> 00:07:01,140 I don't care about tracking progress. 160 00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:06,940 And so we kind of started honing in on those types of things versus, you know, Gantt charts 161 00:07:06,940 --> 00:07:07,360 and stuff. 162 00:07:07,500 --> 00:07:11,860 Yeah, there's a kind of a funny instance of that in your talk where someone asked, you're 163 00:07:11,860 --> 00:07:17,820 going over how you, so the part of the organization you work in supports developers to grossly oversimplify 164 00:07:17,820 --> 00:07:21,320 it by providing the services and the platforms and everything that they need. 165 00:07:22,780 --> 00:07:26,520 And you're talking about how you support them basically in a Slack channel. 166 00:07:26,520 --> 00:07:28,900 And it's very, it looks very informal essentially. 167 00:07:29,480 --> 00:07:33,240 And someone in the audience asked, well, how about tickets and tracking things? 168 00:07:33,500 --> 00:07:37,660 And so you should play through the answer that you gave because it was, I think it was a 169 00:07:37,660 --> 00:07:42,420 good instance of, is, is we only do activities that are valuable, right? 170 00:07:42,420 --> 00:07:44,560 Like we don't, we don't dress other stuff around it. 171 00:07:44,700 --> 00:07:44,940 Yeah. 172 00:07:45,160 --> 00:07:52,080 So, you know, so we basically, we don't have any tickets and we used to have a little bit 173 00:07:52,080 --> 00:07:53,980 of email and we try hard to get rid of that. 174 00:07:54,580 --> 00:07:56,920 And so really for us, it's about waiting, right? 175 00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:01,000 It's about, you know, again, like if you want help with a product and you call Home Depot, 176 00:08:01,220 --> 00:08:01,440 right? 177 00:08:01,520 --> 00:08:04,300 Or Sam's, whoever the company is, right? 178 00:08:04,300 --> 00:08:07,000 You have an issue with something, like you want a real person to answer. 179 00:08:07,360 --> 00:08:09,460 You want to have some sort of engagement, right? 180 00:08:09,460 --> 00:08:11,360 You want to have them understand what's going on. 181 00:08:11,360 --> 00:08:14,760 And I just don't think you can convey those things necessarily through tickets. 182 00:08:15,860 --> 00:08:16,180 Yeah. 183 00:08:16,260 --> 00:08:18,200 So no tickets for us, no waiting, no email. 184 00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:19,960 We just try to have a conversation. 185 00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:20,620 Yeah. 186 00:08:20,740 --> 00:08:22,240 And for these developer support scenarios. 187 00:08:22,240 --> 00:08:26,260 So again, when a developer needs help and this isn't, again, I think the other surprise 188 00:08:26,260 --> 00:08:28,340 is this isn't like 10 rogue devs. 189 00:08:28,580 --> 00:08:30,320 This is like 1,700. 190 00:08:30,720 --> 00:08:32,100 I mean, this is a lot of people. 191 00:08:32,220 --> 00:08:36,140 You're not messing around here with just a tiny pool of people who randomly crash apps. 192 00:08:36,340 --> 00:08:36,560 Yeah. 193 00:08:36,680 --> 00:08:43,840 And to build up my cheesy characterization of what your group does, tell us kind of like 194 00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:48,440 the scale of number of apps and users and stuff that you guys are supporting with the platform. 195 00:08:48,440 --> 00:08:48,760 Yeah. 196 00:08:48,880 --> 00:08:56,880 So it's about, you know, we try to equate an app team to like an org, which is a good general 197 00:08:56,880 --> 00:08:58,860 measure for us with the way we're structured. 198 00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:03,940 So it's about anywhere from 120, maybe 140 teams, I'm guessing. 199 00:09:04,120 --> 00:09:05,360 It's probably a little less than that. 200 00:09:05,620 --> 00:09:10,220 But, and then from there we have, so that's about how many applications. 201 00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:15,480 So I would say there's, there's probably, let me rephrase, about 80 or 90 teams, there's 202 00:09:15,480 --> 00:09:18,080 probably 120 or 130 big apps. 203 00:09:18,280 --> 00:09:18,520 Right. 204 00:09:18,960 --> 00:09:26,060 From there it's like, you know, 800, 900 services, I think 1,700 instances, seven foundations. 205 00:09:26,600 --> 00:09:26,800 Yeah. 206 00:09:26,840 --> 00:09:29,380 And there's 1,800 Cloud Foundry users. 207 00:09:30,080 --> 00:09:30,600 Right, right. 208 00:09:30,860 --> 00:09:32,660 And then, so, so what are these kinds of apps? 209 00:09:32,660 --> 00:09:37,420 Like one you've mentioned a little bit was like pricing, which obviously in retail is a 210 00:09:37,420 --> 00:09:37,760 big deal. 211 00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:38,140 Yeah. 212 00:09:38,620 --> 00:09:41,520 But give us a sense of what these, the other apps are in there. 213 00:09:41,620 --> 00:09:43,620 So I've sort of lost track of all the apps. 214 00:09:43,840 --> 00:09:49,360 But I know some of the big ones that we tend to sort of use as examples, our payment services, 215 00:09:49,560 --> 00:09:50,260 our payment gateway. 216 00:09:50,960 --> 00:09:55,100 We're sort of chipping away at portions of that and breaking out certain services. 217 00:09:55,100 --> 00:10:00,260 So of that overall workflow, we're trying to slowly move more and more of that to PCF. 218 00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:02,120 And then what is a payment service? 219 00:10:02,300 --> 00:10:02,500 Yeah. 220 00:10:02,680 --> 00:10:06,600 So like, you know, credit card transactions, what's happening, approvals, you know. 221 00:10:06,680 --> 00:10:06,960 Okay. 222 00:10:07,100 --> 00:10:07,320 Yeah. 223 00:10:07,420 --> 00:10:08,640 Just like the POS system. 224 00:10:08,740 --> 00:10:09,120 Exactly. 225 00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:09,280 Yeah. 226 00:10:09,280 --> 00:10:09,720 Okay, okay. 227 00:10:09,720 --> 00:10:09,900 Yeah. 228 00:10:10,020 --> 00:10:12,060 So the cash registers and check it, check out. 229 00:10:12,180 --> 00:10:14,040 Gift cards, credit cards, debit cards. 230 00:10:14,640 --> 00:10:19,280 So there's some aspects of that overall workflow that is now all going through PCF. 231 00:10:19,800 --> 00:10:23,520 And we have separate PCI foundations for that type of work. 232 00:10:24,260 --> 00:10:27,000 One of the big ones is a lot of our supply chain and logistics. 233 00:10:27,460 --> 00:10:33,220 So order management, you know, sending out stuff for vendors and filling those orders and 234 00:10:33,220 --> 00:10:34,400 where they get delivered. 235 00:10:34,580 --> 00:10:35,900 There's a lot of work in that area. 236 00:10:36,740 --> 00:10:41,680 And then, you know, tool rental and the stores, they're one of our early adopters. 237 00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:46,400 And they're about to go out to, I think, all 2,000 of our stores this year. 238 00:10:46,520 --> 00:10:46,820 Okay. 239 00:10:46,940 --> 00:10:47,800 All on PCF. 240 00:10:48,380 --> 00:10:48,580 Yeah. 241 00:10:48,700 --> 00:10:52,700 In one of your talks, you told a good story about pro-rental where you're kind of like, 242 00:10:52,740 --> 00:10:56,800 well, you know, you would think if the tool was late, you would charge those fees. 243 00:10:57,100 --> 00:10:57,720 Yeah, exactly. 244 00:10:58,100 --> 00:10:58,260 Yeah. 245 00:10:58,260 --> 00:11:01,400 There used to be a joke that if you ever wanted a new tool, you'd just go and rent it 246 00:11:01,400 --> 00:11:02,460 and you'd keep it forever. 247 00:11:03,100 --> 00:11:03,780 Yeah, yeah. 248 00:11:04,300 --> 00:11:08,400 And then, I mean, I was saying, you know, I need to verify a bunch of stories I tell. 249 00:11:08,440 --> 00:11:12,760 I have another story I tell about, like, your paint desk where you're improving the way 250 00:11:12,760 --> 00:11:13,800 that paint is done there. 251 00:11:13,980 --> 00:11:14,220 Yeah. 252 00:11:15,120 --> 00:11:19,580 I know, I don't know the whole story, but you know what's interesting is I don't think 253 00:11:19,580 --> 00:11:24,520 we ever had a thing where we saved, like, the formula for a color. 254 00:11:24,520 --> 00:11:27,040 Like, as crazy as that sounds, right? 255 00:11:27,140 --> 00:11:27,320 Yeah. 256 00:11:27,500 --> 00:11:30,720 Like, you go and you buy paint, and then six months later you want to paint another room 257 00:11:30,720 --> 00:11:31,360 the same color. 258 00:11:31,540 --> 00:11:35,080 It's like, you can't, that color isn't saved anywhere. 259 00:11:35,240 --> 00:11:38,520 It's like you have to recreate it from scratch with all the color matching and stuff. 260 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:42,280 So now I think, you know, there's a lot of work being interesting and very valuable. 261 00:11:42,760 --> 00:11:47,820 Yeah, and, you know, the reason I, well, not the, one of the, my personal reasons for 262 00:11:47,820 --> 00:11:49,300 asking about apps is I think it's fascinating. 263 00:11:49,400 --> 00:11:53,280 You look at a company like Home Depot, and you list all the applications, you realize, like, 264 00:11:53,320 --> 00:11:58,240 how many different applications there are and the variety that they are, right? 265 00:11:58,240 --> 00:12:00,980 Like, it's, it's one thing to think, like, well, we have to handle payments. 266 00:12:01,140 --> 00:12:01,620 I mean, sure. 267 00:12:01,860 --> 00:12:02,000 Right. 268 00:12:02,100 --> 00:12:06,160 And then, and then it's even somewhat simpler to be like, well, we, we buy, we buy the flashlights 269 00:12:06,160 --> 00:12:08,980 and the flashlights have to ship from here, and then we have to determine where they go. 270 00:12:09,080 --> 00:12:09,200 Yeah. 271 00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:09,460 And like, sure. 272 00:12:09,960 --> 00:12:13,380 But then you start thinking, like, well, there's also software for the tool rental, there's 273 00:12:13,380 --> 00:12:14,540 software for the paint mixer. 274 00:12:14,760 --> 00:12:14,940 Yep. 275 00:12:14,940 --> 00:12:18,160 There's probably even some software at the key making place, like, and like all these 276 00:12:18,160 --> 00:12:24,220 places have like, and it can't really be off the shelf software, or even probably just 277 00:12:24,220 --> 00:12:26,840 like ERP stuff that you customize a little bit. 278 00:12:26,960 --> 00:12:30,360 Like, you end up wanting it to be like full on custom software. 279 00:12:30,620 --> 00:12:35,380 And then at that point, at least my mind kind of in a delightful way kind of boggles at 280 00:12:35,380 --> 00:12:37,340 the amount of applications that are out there. 281 00:12:37,340 --> 00:12:42,040 And you realize, multiplied across every company out there in the world, there's just like 282 00:12:42,040 --> 00:12:43,400 endless software, right? 283 00:12:43,620 --> 00:12:44,380 Yeah, absolutely. 284 00:12:44,960 --> 00:12:49,800 And like I said, I, you know, with the self-service nature, it's sort of taken on a mind of its 285 00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:49,960 own. 286 00:12:50,020 --> 00:12:54,400 Like, we're, we're not, I'm personally, I'm not fully aware anymore of all the stuff that's 287 00:12:54,400 --> 00:12:54,740 on there. 288 00:12:54,740 --> 00:12:55,200 Right, right. 289 00:12:55,200 --> 00:12:58,740 I mean, it's, you know, we're, we're constantly learning about new things that people are doing. 290 00:12:58,920 --> 00:12:59,460 That's good. 291 00:12:59,620 --> 00:13:03,880 Because I mean, I mean, this idea that you're not deploying just one monolithic, like, store 292 00:13:03,880 --> 00:13:07,560 app twice a year, it just does everything that you need to do with a store, right? 293 00:13:07,560 --> 00:13:11,780 Which might be the old way of doing it, like, ERP style, just makes keys and does 294 00:13:11,780 --> 00:13:12,120 check out. 295 00:13:12,120 --> 00:13:15,420 As we know, this is how all pet shops in the 2000s ran, right? 296 00:13:15,420 --> 00:13:15,560 That's true. 297 00:13:15,720 --> 00:13:17,920 They had the one app that you just got out of the box. 298 00:13:18,140 --> 00:13:21,520 So, I mean, I think that when you showed the number, you know, doing 17,000 deploys, whatever, 299 00:13:21,740 --> 00:13:25,940 you know, your numbers, like, I liked, and I was facing you, so I didn't get to look at 300 00:13:25,940 --> 00:13:26,240 the crowd. 301 00:13:26,300 --> 00:13:29,400 But you could tell from some of the questions that some people were like, wait, wait a second. 302 00:13:29,400 --> 00:13:33,500 Oh, I saw, I saw a bunch of people like that, yeah, a lot of people kind of stood 303 00:13:33,500 --> 00:13:34,380 up and was like, what? 304 00:13:34,380 --> 00:13:38,800 So I think you were, you know, as you talk about your more social form of support and 305 00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:42,060 the number of deployments you're doing, and you're getting questions on how the heck do 306 00:13:42,060 --> 00:13:44,120 you test and what about change records? 307 00:13:44,400 --> 00:13:49,800 So, I mean, when you, what's the most common thing you hear from other people who go, that 308 00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:53,660 sounds crazy, but I'm also used to hearing weird startups tell me this, how is the Home 309 00:13:53,660 --> 00:13:54,460 Depot doing this? 310 00:13:54,600 --> 00:13:54,760 Yeah. 311 00:13:54,880 --> 00:13:56,060 How do you, what do you hear the most? 312 00:13:56,100 --> 00:14:01,060 A big one that comes up is compliance and change records and how do you get, you know, security 313 00:14:01,060 --> 00:14:04,840 and networking and everyone else on board to make all of that possible? 314 00:14:05,700 --> 00:14:08,580 And to be honest, like, I don't think there's an easy answer to that. 315 00:14:08,640 --> 00:14:11,120 And I think that's the cultural issue. 316 00:14:12,080 --> 00:14:17,700 So, you know, my job rec says one thing, but I probably spend, you know, 70, 80% of my 317 00:14:17,700 --> 00:14:23,600 time just doing that, which is, you know, rallying people across our company, having the hard 318 00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:24,540 discussion, right? 319 00:14:24,540 --> 00:14:26,760 And then, you know, being empathetic. 320 00:14:26,860 --> 00:14:30,440 I mean, they, they, they want to do the right thing and then there's, you know, stakeholder 321 00:14:30,440 --> 00:14:33,400 reasons for that and compliance reasons for that and security reasons for that. 322 00:14:33,560 --> 00:14:34,940 It's valuable stuff. 323 00:14:35,340 --> 00:14:39,020 But how do you do it in such a way that, you know, is easy and frictionless? 324 00:14:39,080 --> 00:14:40,840 And I think that's the, that's the hard thing. 325 00:14:41,040 --> 00:14:45,280 I think your chip away metaphor is probably the right one because you explained how, hey, like 326 00:14:45,280 --> 00:14:46,580 you don't cut these teams out. 327 00:14:46,960 --> 00:14:50,560 But instead it's like, hey, here's an API to actually create a ticket or a change record. 328 00:14:50,700 --> 00:14:54,160 Like we're actually trying to give the, put interfaces on these relationships so that 329 00:14:54,160 --> 00:14:55,440 you still do good stuff. 330 00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:57,500 But as you say, make it easy to do the right thing. 331 00:14:57,800 --> 00:14:58,620 And they love it. 332 00:14:58,640 --> 00:15:03,280 The quality of stuff that's being audited and looked at is way better and more honest 333 00:15:03,280 --> 00:15:05,180 and more accurate than what it was before. 334 00:15:05,520 --> 00:15:05,680 Yeah. 335 00:15:05,680 --> 00:15:09,760 That's like, I think it was, it's like, uh, Mark at, uh, Liberty. 336 00:15:09,880 --> 00:15:11,880 I think it's Liberty Mutual instead of HCSC. 337 00:15:12,040 --> 00:15:12,260 I get him. 338 00:15:12,320 --> 00:15:14,280 I get these two talks mixed up, but he had a good point. 339 00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:17,840 He was like, when it comes to audit, like you can put whatever you want in a word doc. 340 00:15:18,020 --> 00:15:18,320 Yeah. 341 00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:18,720 Right. 342 00:15:18,780 --> 00:15:24,280 Like, like, so don't think that your current way of doing compliance and auditing is actually 343 00:15:24,280 --> 00:15:25,660 better. 344 00:15:25,800 --> 00:15:26,120 Right. 345 00:15:26,180 --> 00:15:30,980 Like, like it's, it's, it goes from checking a box to like providing something substantive 346 00:15:30,980 --> 00:15:32,560 as context in a history. 347 00:15:32,560 --> 00:15:32,960 Yeah. 348 00:15:32,960 --> 00:15:36,100 And, and, and, and you, you went over two tactics that I think are interesting. 349 00:15:36,260 --> 00:15:41,540 One of them was the way I remembered it, uh, or filed it in my mind is, so you work with 350 00:15:41,540 --> 00:15:44,880 whether it's auditor security people, we'll just call the, all these, these people, the 351 00:15:44,880 --> 00:15:45,280 auditors. 352 00:15:45,280 --> 00:15:50,120 And one of the things you said, and it was kind of a response to a question you were alluding 353 00:15:50,120 --> 00:15:54,580 to Richard is, um, so how do you get their permission to do all of this? 354 00:15:54,580 --> 00:15:57,960 And then your answer was like, well, we kind of sort of didn't do that. 355 00:15:58,160 --> 00:16:02,740 And then, but then I think the tactic that was interesting that, and I, and I wanted to 356 00:16:02,740 --> 00:16:06,200 go over it because I think it's one that can be reused by other people is once you have 357 00:16:06,200 --> 00:16:12,060 it in place, it's almost like it's some sort of psychological trick, but you're, you motivate 358 00:16:12,060 --> 00:16:15,900 the auditors to figure out how to say yes, instead of going to their default no. 359 00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:16,200 Right. 360 00:16:16,260 --> 00:16:16,460 Right. 361 00:16:16,520 --> 00:16:20,380 And, and it's a little risky, like it's a little bit of a gambit that you're playing 362 00:16:20,380 --> 00:16:20,620 there. 363 00:16:20,760 --> 00:16:21,440 There is, absolutely. 364 00:16:21,600 --> 00:16:25,000 But that seems like kind of what the only thing to do. 365 00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:28,380 Well, I, I mean, I think that's what good leaders do, right? 366 00:16:28,440 --> 00:16:33,320 I think that's really the, um, you know, and it's sort of some of that we've learned, you 367 00:16:33,320 --> 00:16:37,760 know, from pivotal, like the mantra of the ask for forgiveness, not necessarily permission. 368 00:16:37,760 --> 00:16:38,080 Right. 369 00:16:38,140 --> 00:16:39,980 And, um, you know, it's the same thing. 370 00:16:39,980 --> 00:16:44,820 Like, you know, it's, there's a lot of mythos and, you know, legend around what happens if 371 00:16:44,820 --> 00:16:49,680 you don't follow certain processes or if a developer pushes something to production directly 372 00:16:49,680 --> 00:16:54,380 and, and, you know, nothing burns down and no one goes to jail and, you know, it just 373 00:16:54,380 --> 00:16:55,220 doesn't happen. 374 00:16:55,540 --> 00:16:55,620 Right. 375 00:16:55,840 --> 00:16:56,800 The lumber still ships. 376 00:16:56,960 --> 00:16:57,140 Yeah. 377 00:16:57,160 --> 00:17:00,840 I mean, as you're dealing with PCI, again, I think everyone's, it can't be irresponsible, 378 00:17:01,180 --> 00:17:01,300 right? 379 00:17:01,300 --> 00:17:04,960 Like we're not going to accidentally throw a data set online and for fun and like, I will 380 00:17:04,960 --> 00:17:05,960 ask for forgiveness later. 381 00:17:06,020 --> 00:17:10,820 So I'm sure there's this sort of line where you go, this feels like I could do this, but 382 00:17:10,820 --> 00:17:14,480 maybe I check first versus like, this is, we're in the spirit of compliance. 383 00:17:14,480 --> 00:17:15,800 We're in the spirit of support. 384 00:17:16,040 --> 00:17:19,060 Let's get this out and then let's modernize whatever our practices were. 385 00:17:19,060 --> 00:17:21,440 I mean, do you have that fine line or is it just a judgment call? 386 00:17:22,040 --> 00:17:26,860 You know, a lot of it's a judgment call and, you know, a lot of it's education on my part. 387 00:17:27,760 --> 00:17:31,340 You know, when we get into the compliance, I didn't know anything about compliance until 388 00:17:31,340 --> 00:17:32,980 three months ago or four months ago. 389 00:17:33,040 --> 00:17:33,220 Right. 390 00:17:33,260 --> 00:17:35,260 And it's like, you know, the best. 391 00:17:35,500 --> 00:17:35,680 Yeah. 392 00:17:36,020 --> 00:17:38,780 You know, I just think, you know, we, but we've talked to other companies that have sort 393 00:17:38,780 --> 00:17:39,880 of done it the other way. 394 00:17:39,880 --> 00:17:40,160 Right. 395 00:17:40,180 --> 00:17:43,100 It's like, Hey, we have a platform, we're going to get compliance and security. 396 00:17:43,100 --> 00:17:43,500 Right. 397 00:17:43,500 --> 00:17:46,960 And it, you know, and they stand it up and they have all those things in place. 398 00:17:46,960 --> 00:17:49,500 And then it just takes so long to get the adoption. 399 00:17:50,180 --> 00:17:54,000 And I think another thing that's lucky for us is that when you have 2000 stores, we have 400 00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:55,960 a culture of trying a thing. 401 00:17:56,120 --> 00:17:56,520 Right. 402 00:17:56,560 --> 00:17:59,960 And so it's very easy for us to pick a store or a team that we trust. 403 00:17:59,960 --> 00:18:00,240 Right. 404 00:18:00,240 --> 00:18:01,520 And just play with something. 405 00:18:01,660 --> 00:18:03,520 And so we have a lot of trust in that. 406 00:18:03,520 --> 00:18:07,860 And, and I've been blessed with good leaders who, who really trust my judgment and have 407 00:18:07,860 --> 00:18:10,520 backed me and kind of stuck their necks out. 408 00:18:10,760 --> 00:18:11,560 And yeah, that's interesting. 409 00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:14,260 You already have a structure and culture of canary testing, basically. 410 00:18:14,260 --> 00:18:14,960 A little bit. 411 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:15,200 Yeah. 412 00:18:15,380 --> 00:18:15,780 Yeah. 413 00:18:15,780 --> 00:18:17,320 And we learned that the hard way. 414 00:18:17,360 --> 00:18:19,560 There's a lot of operational scarring behind that. 415 00:18:19,560 --> 00:18:19,900 Yeah. 416 00:18:19,900 --> 00:18:20,160 Yeah. 417 00:18:20,160 --> 00:18:20,560 Yeah. 418 00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:25,220 So, yeah, I mean, there, there's, there's another topic, this whole, like a phrase you 419 00:18:25,220 --> 00:18:28,780 kept using is like trust, but verify, like, I think maybe my favorite Reagan doctrine. 420 00:18:29,060 --> 00:18:33,340 I'm sure there's a handful of them, uh, anyways, but, uh, like that's kind of related. 421 00:18:33,420 --> 00:18:36,380 And I wanted you to tell a story of, it's also related to audit. 422 00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:42,640 And I'm using that as the all encompassing thing of how you basically like automated security 423 00:18:42,640 --> 00:18:43,640 audits, right. 424 00:18:43,640 --> 00:18:47,360 And, and it involved, it even involves like service now, but like that, it seems like a 425 00:18:47,360 --> 00:18:53,320 good example of, it's not, it's, it's not so much like try something and ask for forgiveness 426 00:18:53,320 --> 00:18:53,680 later. 427 00:18:53,680 --> 00:18:56,680 It's more like try something and automate audit auditing. 428 00:18:56,680 --> 00:18:57,260 Yeah, absolutely. 429 00:18:57,540 --> 00:18:59,160 Like I said, there's value in what they do. 430 00:18:59,160 --> 00:19:02,160 And I think the trick is to do that frictionless, right. 431 00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:02,360 Right. 432 00:19:02,360 --> 00:19:03,820 And the easiest way possible. 433 00:19:03,820 --> 00:19:07,120 And I think people gravitate towards the path of least resistance. 434 00:19:07,120 --> 00:19:12,600 And that's why there is shadow IT and there's, you know, there's, uh, you know, rogue code 435 00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:15,280 repository somewhere on someone's system or in the cloud. 436 00:19:15,280 --> 00:19:16,960 I always used to misspell that as Roge. 437 00:19:17,280 --> 00:19:17,680 Roge. 438 00:19:17,860 --> 00:19:18,300 Roge. 439 00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:18,760 Roge. 440 00:19:18,900 --> 00:19:19,260 There you go. 441 00:19:19,380 --> 00:19:23,280 I don't know how to pronounce anything, but I mean, tell us the story of how the, the 442 00:19:23,280 --> 00:19:26,300 sort of security audits were automated or some of them. 443 00:19:26,300 --> 00:19:27,640 Yeah, we're working on that now. 444 00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:31,200 And, and that effort is being done by a bunch of volunteers in our company. 445 00:19:31,200 --> 00:19:36,060 Um, and you know, what they're, what they're essentially doing is that we've worked with 446 00:19:36,060 --> 00:19:42,680 our ops team who owns, um, service now, um, which is supposed to be our, our repository of 447 00:19:42,680 --> 00:19:44,020 all of our changes for audit. 448 00:19:44,020 --> 00:19:49,680 Um, but you know, if there was a way, but that's locked away by another team, right? 449 00:19:49,680 --> 00:19:54,360 So if I want to make changes there, I have to kind of go through someone else or only certain 450 00:19:54,360 --> 00:19:57,920 people have access and there's licensing and that's not frictionless, right? 451 00:19:57,920 --> 00:20:03,140 So, um, and so the quality of stuff that goes in there tends to be a big copy paste or, you 452 00:20:03,140 --> 00:20:03,980 know, it's a checkbox. 453 00:20:03,980 --> 00:20:10,360 So what we've done is, um, worked with that team to create APIs that allows teams to hook 454 00:20:10,360 --> 00:20:11,860 into that from their own pipelines. 455 00:20:12,140 --> 00:20:17,500 So, you know, our, our enterprise monitoring folks, um, we have someone there, um, who's 456 00:20:17,500 --> 00:20:19,720 super talented, uh, Marcos Mendez. 457 00:20:19,720 --> 00:20:24,680 And he's done a lot of work working with operations to kind of create APIs for that so that teams 458 00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:30,280 can, you know, basically commit their changes and create change records and, and, you know, 459 00:20:30,360 --> 00:20:34,620 parse GitHub commits and stuff to put, you know, really good information in there. 460 00:20:34,980 --> 00:20:38,920 Um, and so then a part of that also is working with security who's interested in doing, you 461 00:20:38,920 --> 00:20:41,680 know, static, you know, security scans of things, right? 462 00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:46,900 And so we work with them to create, you know, APIs for doing that and, um, and then getting 463 00:20:46,900 --> 00:20:50,360 the return results and then attaching those as documents and so forth. 464 00:20:50,360 --> 00:20:56,900 So in doing these as APIs, I mean, did these become mandatory or do you feel like because 465 00:20:56,900 --> 00:20:58,920 it's easy, a dev's happy to do them now? 466 00:20:58,980 --> 00:21:01,560 I mean, just adding an API on service now, they might go, it's cool. 467 00:21:01,740 --> 00:21:02,620 I'm still not doing it. 468 00:21:02,660 --> 00:21:04,800 Or does it become a like, I know I'd like to use this. 469 00:21:04,840 --> 00:21:05,900 It actually makes my app better. 470 00:21:05,900 --> 00:21:07,480 It's way better than the alternative. 471 00:21:07,900 --> 00:21:12,260 Like I said, like most teams have like, there used to be a culture of like change captains, 472 00:21:12,300 --> 00:21:12,420 right? 473 00:21:12,420 --> 00:21:15,300 Like only coordinators can create things in service now. 474 00:21:15,300 --> 00:21:19,360 And it's like, I don't like, why would you, you know, I know why we did it, right? 475 00:21:19,700 --> 00:21:20,100 Right. 476 00:21:20,580 --> 00:21:23,580 Financial reasons or, you know, trust reasons or whatever that is. 477 00:21:23,680 --> 00:21:28,580 But, um, you know, now that it's, you know, everyone would do it the other way. 478 00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:31,540 Everyone who's done it this way can't imagine doing it another way. 479 00:21:31,760 --> 00:21:32,720 It's simple. 480 00:21:33,060 --> 00:21:33,200 Yeah. 481 00:21:33,260 --> 00:21:37,180 That's, that's, that's a, uh, a pattern I hear over and over again. 482 00:21:37,300 --> 00:21:39,360 Well, first of all, culture of change captains. 483 00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:40,220 That's a good phrase. 484 00:21:40,340 --> 00:21:44,640 It sounds like, it sounds, sounds like a book, but, uh, but the pattern I hear over 485 00:21:44,640 --> 00:21:48,220 and over again is the, uh, I think the first time I heard it was someone said that they 486 00:21:48,220 --> 00:21:51,420 wrote a chef script to open a service now ticket, right? 487 00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:55,320 That, that, you know, there's, there's a bit, if you do sort of like an end to end, I hesitate 488 00:21:55,320 --> 00:21:57,240 to call it a value stream map, but a pipeline. 489 00:21:57,780 --> 00:22:00,520 And there's certain moments where it's sort of like, got to have a ticket. 490 00:22:00,520 --> 00:22:05,600 And like, so, so people have discovered over the past few years that like, well, with an 491 00:22:05,600 --> 00:22:08,360 API, uh, I could just automate that. 492 00:22:08,540 --> 00:22:10,960 And, and that's a slightly disingenuous. 493 00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:13,940 It's kind of like open ticket and forget to use the fire and forget thing. 494 00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:17,520 But I think what I liked about what you guys are doing is it's more like, not only do we 495 00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:22,460 open a ticket for this other party, but we actually make their life better by like arranging all 496 00:22:22,460 --> 00:22:23,620 the stuff and attaching it. 497 00:22:23,620 --> 00:22:27,640 And like, because it's driven by automation, it's a lot less error prone than a person doing 498 00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:27,820 it. 499 00:22:27,820 --> 00:22:31,620 And in theory, the auditor on the other end, they can open this ticket and like, everything's 500 00:22:31,620 --> 00:22:31,840 there. 501 00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:35,180 Everything's there with way more detail than they can probably even get into. 502 00:22:35,340 --> 00:22:35,540 Right. 503 00:22:35,620 --> 00:22:39,820 And it's just a lot more efficient than like we have the, uh, the, the twice month, like 504 00:22:39,820 --> 00:22:45,240 cab meeting scheduled where we've got to put together slides and like it, people talking 505 00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:47,720 to each other is, I guess Bezos would say is failure. 506 00:22:48,100 --> 00:22:50,500 With the change notes of fixed bug and yeah. 507 00:22:50,500 --> 00:22:51,380 Yeah, yeah, exactly. 508 00:22:51,500 --> 00:22:51,600 No. 509 00:22:51,640 --> 00:22:56,620 So, and, and so that gets to the thing I was alluding to earlier is it seems like, um, I 510 00:22:56,620 --> 00:22:57,740 don't, I mean, you talked about this. 511 00:22:57,820 --> 00:23:00,640 Is the main point, but I think one of the main things running to the way you guys are 512 00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:05,020 doing stuff at over there at home Depot is this trust, but verify thing where there is 513 00:23:05,020 --> 00:23:06,980 this, it almost starts. 514 00:23:06,980 --> 00:23:11,080 And this is where the, the, the, the rainbows and sandals culture stuff comes in, but it 515 00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:14,960 starts with this idea of like, we're paying these people a lot of money. 516 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:17,320 We should trust them to do a good job. 517 00:23:17,420 --> 00:23:17,520 Yeah. 518 00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:21,280 But then we have audits in place to make sure they're like, Hey, we'll just make sure you 519 00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:21,800 go off the rails. 520 00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:26,100 It's, it's, it's more, it's more about like, like safety nets rather than like bureaucratic 521 00:23:26,100 --> 00:23:27,840 mazes that people have to run through. 522 00:23:27,960 --> 00:23:28,100 Yeah. 523 00:23:28,140 --> 00:23:28,720 It's a good point. 524 00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:32,440 I mean, it was something I wanted to include in the talk, but I didn't, but one of the things 525 00:23:32,440 --> 00:23:36,640 we had early conversations about was a sort of, how do you make guardrails? 526 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,160 There are a couple of things you want to be absolute about, right? 527 00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:40,460 Yeah. 528 00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:44,560 And set some constraints and, but how loose do you make those, right? 529 00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:51,460 How do you make teams have just enough power and influence while still being bounded somewhat 530 00:23:51,460 --> 00:23:53,780 by these constraints and guardrails? 531 00:23:54,040 --> 00:23:56,080 And so one of those guardrails, for example, is GitHub. 532 00:23:56,260 --> 00:23:57,560 Like your code has to be in GitHub. 533 00:23:58,060 --> 00:23:58,220 Right. 534 00:23:58,340 --> 00:24:03,480 But if we made GitHub, you know, require an approval process and make it super difficult to use. 535 00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:07,260 And if it wasn't anything like the experience of GitHub out on the cloud, they're not going 536 00:24:07,260 --> 00:24:07,740 to use it. 537 00:24:08,020 --> 00:24:11,900 So you have, you sort of have to live up to that, that responsibility. 538 00:24:12,260 --> 00:24:12,380 Right. 539 00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:15,580 You've, I mean, I think when I first met you and you, one of the first things you were talking 540 00:24:15,580 --> 00:24:18,500 about was developer experience and opening those floodgates. 541 00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:19,900 And I don't know. 542 00:24:19,900 --> 00:24:22,660 I mean, I'm sure that makes people want to be a little more compliant when they don't feel 543 00:24:22,660 --> 00:24:23,640 like you're just nagging them. 544 00:24:23,740 --> 00:24:27,300 Like if you're giving them the tools to do things and they can assemble those things and 545 00:24:27,300 --> 00:24:28,400 they feel like you're trusting them. 546 00:24:28,660 --> 00:24:28,800 Yeah. 547 00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:29,660 That's such a different story. 548 00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:31,180 And that's why you've seen such crazy adoption. 549 00:24:31,180 --> 00:24:35,380 I'm sure is that you said at the beginning, it was just, here you go, like go do good 550 00:24:35,380 --> 00:24:38,140 stuff here and hopefully it helps the company and you're responsible. 551 00:24:38,360 --> 00:24:41,860 And I think it's interesting, like when people start landing on a couple of those guardrails 552 00:24:41,860 --> 00:24:45,760 and we don't mandate Pivotal Tracker, but it's quickly been adopted. 553 00:24:45,980 --> 00:24:49,880 And, you know, I would argue most of our teams are on Pivotal Tracker now, but when you do 554 00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:53,300 have those guardrails, like you get to pull out, that's what makes it possible to have 555 00:24:53,300 --> 00:24:57,220 all that really rich metadata and monitoring and alerting and logs, right? 556 00:24:57,260 --> 00:25:01,400 Like you have so much data about what your community is doing, it makes it really interesting 557 00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:03,520 to put pictures together and see patterns. 558 00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:09,520 And, you know, we're starting to look at that on PCF as well, like much prior to the chagrin 559 00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:12,560 of you guys, but like, what does it cost to do Spring Boot versus Go, right? 560 00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:17,760 From an infrastructure and capacity, does Spring make sense for all teams, right? 561 00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:17,960 Sure. 562 00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:19,400 Or, you know, are there other alternatives? 563 00:25:19,780 --> 00:25:22,140 I just like that you've got this sort of meta feedback loop. 564 00:25:22,220 --> 00:25:25,340 Like there's the feedback loop of building good apps, but there's this feedback loop of 565 00:25:25,340 --> 00:25:27,100 how am I helping people build good apps? 566 00:25:27,220 --> 00:25:30,520 And you're talking about that, that, you know, hey, if Tracker doesn't work for you, you'll 567 00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:33,000 switch to something else or you'll learn about the guardrails. 568 00:25:33,040 --> 00:25:36,360 And if everyone keeps hitting this guardrail over and over again, then maybe we have to 569 00:25:36,360 --> 00:25:37,200 do something better. 570 00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:37,560 Yeah, exactly. 571 00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:38,780 Because that's really being obnoxious. 572 00:25:38,820 --> 00:25:39,640 I like to hear that. 573 00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:39,820 Yeah. 574 00:25:39,940 --> 00:25:43,320 The point is that you want those guardrails to be in place, but they shouldn't feel like 575 00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:43,920 they're in place. 576 00:25:44,220 --> 00:25:44,540 Right. 577 00:25:44,620 --> 00:25:48,700 You know, it's like there's limits, but you don't want the developers to ever feel like they're 578 00:25:48,700 --> 00:25:49,240 being limited. 579 00:25:49,500 --> 00:25:54,020 Like it should be presented as the easy choice for them. 580 00:25:54,020 --> 00:25:57,400 So if you don't mind a completely self-serving pivotal question. 581 00:25:57,540 --> 00:25:57,720 Yeah. 582 00:25:57,940 --> 00:26:01,580 How did you guys think through, like you guys started off with your own platform that you 583 00:26:01,580 --> 00:26:01,980 had built. 584 00:26:02,120 --> 00:26:02,300 Yep. 585 00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:04,680 And then you ended up using Pivotal Cloud Foundry. 586 00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:04,920 Yeah. 587 00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:11,180 Can you kind of tell the story of that and how you ended up deciding on Pivotal Cloud Foundry 588 00:26:11,180 --> 00:26:12,100 instead of your own platform? 589 00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:12,700 Yeah. 590 00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:17,920 I mean, the platform we had built from scratch and it was, you know, over the course of five 591 00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:19,700 years before I even got on the team. 592 00:26:19,700 --> 00:26:24,340 And, you know, it worked pretty well, but it missed a lot of features that I think in 593 00:26:24,340 --> 00:26:29,080 retrospect, you know, we should have probably built in and that Cloud Foundry has. 594 00:26:29,300 --> 00:26:35,100 And so, for example, the concept of kind of organizing teams and delegating responsibilities and without 595 00:26:35,100 --> 00:26:39,880 that, like you have to have a bottleneck group that kind of acts on users' behalves, right? 596 00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:40,480 So whatever. 597 00:26:40,820 --> 00:26:42,640 But, you know, that's not easy to build, right? 598 00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:43,160 And it's expensive. 599 00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:48,460 So for us, really, like I said, we didn't prescribe Cloud Foundry. 600 00:26:49,260 --> 00:26:53,560 You know, we started off small on some hardware sort of laying around. 601 00:26:53,700 --> 00:26:55,080 We had a couple teams doing it. 602 00:26:55,600 --> 00:27:00,660 What we loved about some of the engagement with labs and stuff were the blog posts and 603 00:27:00,660 --> 00:27:03,120 sort of this diary that developers kept and pair programming. 604 00:27:03,120 --> 00:27:03,660 Yeah, yeah. 605 00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:05,020 I remember stumbling across that. 606 00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:06,640 That was like internal that you guys had. 607 00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:06,940 Yeah. 608 00:27:07,060 --> 00:27:08,620 Or they were password protected somewhere. 609 00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:09,060 Yeah. 610 00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:13,340 But I mean, but we would have, you know, those people come back and we have a, we had already 611 00:27:13,340 --> 00:27:17,720 had a cadence of like doing these monthly sort of get togethers and we started repurposing 612 00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:22,520 those to have these people tell their stories about what's it like to pair programming and what's 613 00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:25,780 it like to use Cloud Foundry and everyone's delighted. 614 00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:26,900 Like it's a great experience. 615 00:27:26,900 --> 00:27:31,940 And so it became a thing where by word of mouth and, you know, like, well, how do I start 616 00:27:31,940 --> 00:27:36,820 doing labs and, you know, what do I need to pair program and can I use Cloud Foundry? 617 00:27:37,120 --> 00:27:43,060 And so, you know, that's sort of where it grew is that it became something that our community 618 00:27:43,060 --> 00:27:44,240 wanted more of. 619 00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:46,740 And so we just kind of gave it to them. 620 00:27:46,860 --> 00:27:48,080 It just became a different way to work. 621 00:27:48,360 --> 00:27:48,540 Yeah. 622 00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,740 And you've explained how many hundreds of people have kind of gone through a training 623 00:27:51,740 --> 00:27:55,900 on, you know, building the good apps, but more importantly, TDD and pairing. 624 00:27:56,020 --> 00:27:59,120 It may not be perfect for everybody, but it seems like it's really changed how you think 625 00:27:59,120 --> 00:28:02,340 about small batches and how you think about shipping software. 626 00:28:02,860 --> 00:28:03,440 I don't know. 627 00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:07,440 I think, I mean, we, in sitting through your talk, this was not a, this product saved us 628 00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:08,060 from ourselves. 629 00:28:08,060 --> 00:28:11,880 It was, we needed to be better at software and this was a piece of it, but it was also, 630 00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:12,740 we need better methods. 631 00:28:12,740 --> 00:28:14,240 We needed to change cultural things. 632 00:28:14,360 --> 00:28:14,660 Absolutely. 633 00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:18,140 And I think that was, I mean, you alluded to it in your talk that that's not always 634 00:28:18,140 --> 00:28:22,080 overarching in some of these sort of conferences where it's just kind of high level platitudes 635 00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:23,240 and like transformation. 636 00:28:23,460 --> 00:28:23,780 Right. 637 00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:27,240 But like transformation's hard and no one product will solve any of it. 638 00:28:27,380 --> 00:28:27,500 Yeah. 639 00:28:27,620 --> 00:28:29,400 I like the idea of a redemption product. 640 00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:31,220 Saves you from yourself. 641 00:28:32,300 --> 00:28:36,140 I guess maybe that's like those, uh, monitor your eating and weight apps on the phone. 642 00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:37,520 They're just like trying to save you. 643 00:28:38,060 --> 00:28:42,080 So, so, I mean, do you think, do you think, uh, closing out the self-serving topic, do you 644 00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:47,000 think like nowadays, if, if you or Home Depot is doing this, like you would want to build 645 00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,660 your own platform or does it just make more sense to get an off the shelf one or like, how would 646 00:28:50,660 --> 00:28:51,420 you evaluate that? 647 00:28:51,420 --> 00:28:51,700 Yeah. 648 00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:52,580 Again, I think. 649 00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:55,020 Cause five, cause five years ago, like who knows, right? 650 00:28:55,060 --> 00:28:59,480 Like, but yeah, like I said, so the team I adopted was the team that built the old platform 651 00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:01,280 and supported it and loved it. 652 00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:05,660 And, you know, we had some cultural issues with, you know, sort of cloud foundry being 653 00:29:05,660 --> 00:29:11,160 thrown in our lap and, you know, there was some very, um, natural sort of lash back to 654 00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:12,120 that and some other things. 655 00:29:12,120 --> 00:29:17,020 And, um, but, you know, if you talk to that team today, I mean, they would tell you the 656 00:29:17,020 --> 00:29:17,460 same thing. 657 00:29:17,460 --> 00:29:19,200 Like, it's like, this is awesome. 658 00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:24,040 You know, it's like I get to focus on things that, um, actually add value to our community 659 00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:28,280 as opposed to, you know, like something simple with air quotes, right? 660 00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:30,580 Like, you know, aggregated logging, right? 661 00:29:30,580 --> 00:29:34,740 Like we spent a lot of time and money building that and it was good, right? 662 00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:38,420 But it was one guy and it's like, and that's a hard problem. 663 00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:39,480 Yeah. 664 00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:43,080 I mean, did, did that make you money or did actually charging for late tools get you money? 665 00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:46,480 And I think the answer is always the latter and you don't want to be bad at the former, 666 00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,180 but do you have to be good at building the former? 667 00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:53,220 And I think it's a, and I think at any company, that's a constant question, right? 668 00:29:53,220 --> 00:29:54,520 It's like, what do you want to build yourself? 669 00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:56,160 Like, you know, what do you want to buy off the shelf? 670 00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:57,320 What do you want to take open source? 671 00:29:57,380 --> 00:29:59,320 I mean, there's, that's a tough question. 672 00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:03,060 And I think, um, you know, I just think there are some things, right? 673 00:30:03,060 --> 00:30:07,140 When you're looking at your guardrails, like they're super important, um, you know, 674 00:30:07,140 --> 00:30:11,740 and it's, it's good to have the, you know, the best, you know, I think, um, so one of 675 00:30:11,740 --> 00:30:16,080 the, I've heard, uh, the, one of the analogies that someone, I forget who, uh, they were talking 676 00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:17,520 to our legal and finance people. 677 00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:21,220 And they're like, if we're being sued, like, what kind of lawyers do you hire? 678 00:30:21,300 --> 00:30:24,220 Do you hire the best lawyers or do you just kind of get okay ones? 679 00:30:24,220 --> 00:30:24,420 Right. 680 00:30:24,420 --> 00:30:27,940 And it's like, like, why are you willing to spend all the money on that? 681 00:30:28,020 --> 00:30:28,160 Right. 682 00:30:28,380 --> 00:30:30,480 And I'm telling you, this is the best platform, right? 683 00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:31,000 That's interesting. 684 00:30:31,140 --> 00:30:32,920 That's a good analogy to steal that. 685 00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:34,600 So like, I do so much of your material. 686 00:30:34,760 --> 00:30:37,120 So, so before we wrap up, I had one more question. 687 00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:38,580 You've already identified one of these. 688 00:30:38,580 --> 00:30:43,320 Uh, but like, if, if you were to look at like pivotal and the overall kind of cloud native, 689 00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:47,260 I don't know, cloud foundry community, like what, what's, what's like at least one thing 690 00:30:47,260 --> 00:30:49,300 you think we need to like improve on overall. 691 00:30:49,300 --> 00:30:53,040 And the one you identified, I hear this one a lot is like, it sure takes a lot of resources 692 00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:57,340 to run spring, which, which I think, you know, that that's something to fix, I guess, 693 00:30:57,440 --> 00:30:58,420 but I mean, it depends. 694 00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:03,200 I think, uh, I don't know enough about it, um, but where we are in our maturity level, 695 00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:04,220 it seems like that. 696 00:31:04,300 --> 00:31:06,420 I don't know if we've gotten to the interesting bits of spring. 697 00:31:06,780 --> 00:31:06,820 Sure. 698 00:31:06,820 --> 00:31:06,980 Sure. 699 00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,700 Well, I, I think, I think, I think at the moment, it's sort of like a volume thing that's like 700 00:31:10,700 --> 00:31:13,500 one, once you're doing everything, it's such a small amount that it doesn't matter. 701 00:31:13,500 --> 00:31:18,380 But at first it seems like you mean from a memory consumption, just from pure infrastructure 702 00:31:18,380 --> 00:31:22,400 resources, which again, the smaller your footprint is, the more you notice it and it grows. 703 00:31:22,620 --> 00:31:26,060 So that's, that's, that's, that's one thing, but like, what's another thing that 704 00:31:26,060 --> 00:31:30,660 you think, again, like just the overall kind of like cloud foundry and pivotal cloud foundry 705 00:31:30,660 --> 00:31:33,860 world, like what do you, what do you think is a good thing to tackle as a, I, I, you know, 706 00:31:33,860 --> 00:31:39,700 I think the, uh, the, it's hard to articulate sort of the value of this upfront, right? 707 00:31:39,700 --> 00:31:44,200 Like when you have a company that's focused, when I have company, I should say, uh, but 708 00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:48,300 there's like a culture and you know, the people with the money are so bottom line focused and 709 00:31:48,300 --> 00:31:49,460 budgets and stuff. 710 00:31:49,660 --> 00:31:52,080 Um, it's an investment, it's a, it's a deep investment. 711 00:31:52,300 --> 00:31:58,300 And, um, it, in luckily we, you know, we work with someone who's really talented in sales 712 00:31:58,300 --> 00:32:03,060 like Don Addington and he was very flexible and, um, you know, it's sort of, you know, 713 00:32:03,100 --> 00:32:06,560 there's probably some bending of rules somewhere to like, you know, get our feet. 714 00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:08,300 I think you called that leadership earlier. 715 00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:09,040 Exactly. 716 00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:10,200 Exactly. 717 00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:16,440 Um, but yeah, I think there needs to be a little bit of sort of this, um, uh, there needs to 718 00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:18,640 be a, I think an easier way to lean into it. 719 00:32:18,740 --> 00:32:18,920 Yeah. 720 00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:19,200 Yeah. 721 00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:25,220 Man, I, I'd agree to that a hundred percent doing the business case ROI stuff is up front. 722 00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:30,580 It's hard and I think the reason why people ask for that, and I could be guessing is that 723 00:32:30,580 --> 00:32:35,240 it is so expensive that, you know, um, they want to know that up front and if there was 724 00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:39,220 some way, you know, to lean into it, I think that question starts falling off the radar more 725 00:32:39,220 --> 00:32:39,500 and more. 726 00:32:39,780 --> 00:32:39,940 Right. 727 00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:45,380 So last thing for you is, uh, I'm often a proponent of letting big companies, letting 728 00:32:45,380 --> 00:32:48,440 folks talk at conferences because, Hey, it gets you out there. 729 00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:53,060 Let's, I mean, again, with all sincerity, you ended your talk at my first thought is if I 730 00:32:53,060 --> 00:32:55,260 lived in Atlanta, I'd probably submit an application right now. 731 00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,040 Like, are you hiring, are you hiring engineers at Home Depot right now? 732 00:32:58,320 --> 00:32:58,680 Always. 733 00:32:58,860 --> 00:32:59,080 Yeah. 734 00:32:59,180 --> 00:33:03,600 So I think we're always looking for super talented, collaborative, you know, problem solvers. 735 00:33:03,780 --> 00:33:03,940 Absolutely. 736 00:33:03,940 --> 00:33:07,060 I think there's big problems being solved at a lot of enterprises that are different than 737 00:33:07,060 --> 00:33:07,500 the startup. 738 00:33:07,500 --> 00:33:11,980 And if you have the startup culture in the enterprise, maybe you're, you're actually tackling some 739 00:33:11,980 --> 00:33:14,580 really meaty stuff that you would have shied away from before. 740 00:33:14,580 --> 00:33:18,800 But again, hearing what you all are doing, I think it's hard to, hard to beat. 741 00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:22,040 So I guess if you're in the South and, uh, you're looking for a change of work, hopefully 742 00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:22,860 you're flying at Home Depot. 743 00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:23,420 Yeah, man. 744 00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:24,200 Thanks for the plug. 745 00:33:24,260 --> 00:33:24,640 Absolutely. 746 00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:26,520 Doing lots of good data science. 747 00:33:26,620 --> 00:33:27,600 I do pricing. 748 00:33:27,940 --> 00:33:30,200 There's lots of really cool computer science problems. 749 00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,040 To that end, where, where can people, uh, track you down? 750 00:33:33,100 --> 00:33:33,560 So to speak. 751 00:33:33,620 --> 00:33:38,600 The easiest place is LinkedIn, um, Anthony McCauley, M C C U L L E Y. 752 00:33:38,980 --> 00:33:40,320 And then, and then what's your Twitter handle? 753 00:33:40,380 --> 00:33:41,020 Epic nerd. 754 00:33:41,020 --> 00:33:41,900 That's pretty good. 755 00:33:42,260 --> 00:33:42,420 Yeah. 756 00:33:42,420 --> 00:33:42,760 All right. 757 00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:43,420 All right. 758 00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:44,840 Well, as always, thanks for listening. 759 00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:46,260 This has been Pivotal Conversations. 760 00:33:46,260 --> 00:33:51,120 You can find us, uh, at soundcloud.com slash Pivotal Conversations often. 761 00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:56,640 Uh, also if you go over to, uh, uh, pivotal.io slash podcast, or maybe it's blog.pivotal.io 762 00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:57,580 slash podcast. 763 00:33:58,020 --> 00:33:58,900 We're there somewhere. 764 00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:00,560 We put full show notes there. 765 00:34:00,700 --> 00:34:04,500 Um, and you know, if you liked this episode or if you didn't like it, you should do the following. 766 00:34:04,500 --> 00:34:09,820 You should go into iTunes and give us five stars and or leave a review that talks about how awesome it is. 767 00:34:10,260 --> 00:34:14,380 And if you listen to this in overcast, as so many people do, you should click on the little recommend thing. 768 00:34:14,680 --> 00:34:16,040 One day I'll figure out what that means. 769 00:34:16,240 --> 00:34:17,360 We'll see everyone next time. 770 00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:18,340 Bye-bye. 771 00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:19,100 Thanks.