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well uh today it's a little warmer down here how is it up there in dallas what temperature do you

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got oh it's 66 degrees today oh see so what i'm looking at my watch 64 so this this is the first

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day in a long time i put some shorts on now i got the whole long sleeve hoodie shirt thing on top

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shorts on bottom so i'm trying to warm up the blood to go down to the legs to cool off like a

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car but but i'm i'm excited i'm wearing shorts so i just wanted to announce that significant event

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that's the title of this episode

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how about up there how about up there in in uh in seattle richard i think it's a high of 50 i was in

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los angeles last weekend where it was too hot it was like 80 like i can't handle that anymore i need

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winters to be like winter so i'm glad to be home have you been to those uh those plant pods they

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have downtown yet no i saw that between the plant pods and the uh cashier less grocery stores i don't

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know what's going on in seattle right now but i need to to check those out next thing you know you're

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going to be going to amazon to uh renew your driver's license now i get my insurance there

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now apparently so they're they're a one-stop shop that's right well uh you know why don't you

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introduce yourself briefly guest hi i'm emily tate a product manager here with pivotal labs

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and uh i we wanted to have you as actually as always richard's idea uh to have you on he has

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all the good ideas and uh you gave a talk at uh SpringOne platform the most awesome name conference

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ever recently um i think on a topic that i especially like and uh i i think most of our

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our listeners were which is like enterprises crazy and uh and and more you know more it actually had

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a different title that was my title but i think i think it was interesting about your talk was the uh

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uh as we would say around here there was a large degree of empathy in it still maybe some snickering

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but sort of empathy of like how did these companies get this way and uh how might we solve them

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and then and then peppered with dilbert cartoons i haven't seen dilbert cartoons in a long time so

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that was refreshing i noticed at some point they switched over to wearing badges on lanyards on

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their neck which maybe that dates uh my bookmark in dilbert talk tobia i don't know what to call that

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but anyhow off to a fresh start here

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but before we get to that we'll go we'll go over some news things here uh just some little items

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we've been uh collecting now this just yesterday our our good friends over at red hat it looked like

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they they're uh they're acquiring core os for the uh the fine sum of 250 million american dollars

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which which uh that's that's a you know uh if you're into grandioseness you could also say a

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quarter of a billion dollars which is which is always fun uh but you know that's uh i you know

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correct me if i'm wrong uh richard but core os nowadays uh a lot of what what they're known for

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is having a kubernetes distribution right yeah that's fair they've done some pretty cool things with

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linux they are sort of the open source uh maintainer of things like rocket the other

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that's right container engine versus docker and also etcd and flannel so i mean they've got some

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cool tech some smart people it's probably a smart move by red hat so well done there i think you'll

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probably see more consolidation in this remarkably overheated container space remarkably overheated

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what i would be having if i was wearing pants instead of shorts today that's what i was thinking

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i said that because i was thinking of your your long sleeves and your shorts combo that's stuck

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on my brain now that's right you know there there's there's a uh if winding is still a word there's

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a winding weavy uh story of how one day me talking to core os made me end up having a job at

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pivotal i'll have to save for a fireside chat mysteriously with no fire one day that that would

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be fun but yeah as as you say as you say i think it's it's indicative of the uh the interest in in

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in the kubernetes space and and also i remember you know when i was introduced to them i was looking

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this up i uh apparently wrote the first report at 451 research about about them back in 2014

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and i remember uh alex over there their ceo he had this uh i don't know what you would call it

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sometimes epiphanies come from lateral thinking as de bono would tell you with his uh multiple colored

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hats and whatnot uh but you know he he had this he had this fun epiphany that was like have you ever

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noticed how chromebooks just update on their own and firefox just updates on their own and no one ever

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notices and it's really cool and he was like we should do that for servers and i don't know if

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that necessarily panned out as a major thing they were doing but i think starting from that basis of

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like uh we should stop doing dumb stuff and and do the smarter thing when it comes to patching and

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updating was that was that was a fun start to what they had and i think like a lot of people in this

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space uh they've been driven by the uh the cloud native interest where in this case cloud native means

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kubernetes uh entry i don't know if that's entry one or two in roger's book of technology but it's

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somewhere in there they did some good things with updating linux and some of the patterns they

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introduced so it'll be interesting to see how red hat incorporates them you know does that change

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any of their own back-end components when they launch their own kubernetes pieces i mean it's all

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the container stuff's fascinating it almost feels like as we deal with containers it's kind of skating

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where the puck is and serverless is where the puck is going so you have to keep an eye on the next

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thing while you also satisfy the current thing so that's where this whole market's fascinating because

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we're all now starting to get a wandering eye to different patterns of functions and things like

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that while hey containers are just becoming mainstream so how do you kind of balance all

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those pivotals trying red hat tries microsoft tries amazon google but if you're a uh a customer

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i was going back to to probably what we'll talk about with emily boy how do you balance all this

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and make sure you just don't overwhelm tech teams with all this tech changes it's uh it's tricky

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indeed that's the hockey one if i remember that's the that's the uh gretzky sort of quote yeah i gotta

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bring sports every now and then mullet strategy well uh as here's one of those exciting items that i

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haven't read about but i probably should have so you can inform me so also there's uh the general

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availability of azure event grid so what is that richard yeah they announced this a few months ago

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is like a preview and what this is is a kind of a managed event processing service or routing service

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it sits there underneath your azure account and listens in on things like hey vm change events and

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storage things and so all the services in azure for example throw off information hey i you know did

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this did that and this gives you that one sort of bus to subscribe to and you can write your own

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events into that so really just kind of you know spin up functions whenever someone creates a vm it

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just really helps event-driven architecture it's something that for some reason is novel like other

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clouds don't have this idea of a single place to subscribe to sort of system events and and things

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like that so it's really cool tech i'm you know i know the team that made it and it was they did some

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really good work on here that was pretty interesting stuff so i think you'll see some people copy it

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because it is a good idea and if you're an azure customer it's a cool way to to start building

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event-driven apps you know that reminds me uh i should put a link to this i was uh i was catching up on

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just news in general and there's a uh you know i use instapaper a lot and so whenever anything's over

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like four minutes long i consider it long but there's this according to instapaper 17 minute

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uh little little write-up that datadog did about uh how to monitor rabbit mq and of course being a

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monitoring company they're like obviously step one datadog but what's interesting about it is uh it goes

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over like how rabbit mq works and the different different things that would happen in any event

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system and therefore what you would want to monitor uh with it including storage and things like that

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but it was it was a fun overview of like uh you know when we talk about like day two operations and

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and you know that the uh the implicit user story is always software should work it's it's a good it's a

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good peek into that so uh if people like you know monitoring or if you want to call it observability

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whatever you want to do uh you should check that out so then also uh there was a uh in the

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economist they took a break from talking about how facebook is destroying civilization uh and and

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wrote about the the trend of i we might need to go update our marketing material richard because i think

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we're supposed to say edge instead of iot now but they had a pretty good overview of uh the rise of

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of edge or iot sort of like computing from consumer to industrial stuff and um you know their headline was a

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little um headliney i think the register needs to call up who wrote that headline for him and just

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teach them about alliteration they have a new headline writer but it was the error of the clouds total

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dominance is drawing to a close now i suppose if you as they used to say parse that what what it hinges

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on is total dominance uh but it is a good overview of uh off of the public cloud here are a bunch of

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things going on that uh will probably drive some it usage you know sort of like the uh the new pc that

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you would be targeting versus just all in whatever the cloud is yeah i mean it's interesting i mean

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i'll do i guess what people on twitter do which is comment without reading the article uh so in this

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case based on the title uh i mean all the public clouds continue to expand like crazy so this idea also

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that hey i'm going to use more localized things but i get the point that more things move to the edge

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you do more processing even in the client like how much stuff is happening in javascript i was

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on the plane without a connection the other day and i was still able to do stuff on a couple of

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websites i didn't expect so there's always things that are happening more in distributed spots but

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this idea that the back end of those won't be the cloud probably not the case the cloud keeps moving

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to more locations moves to more edges look cloud flare has a platform now so all of these sort of

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technology companies continue to add functionality i don't again not zero sum it's not going to be

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amazon or edge clearly amazon has a great edge story as well as does pivotal as does azure as do others

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so yeah i think it just means we keep feathering it federating out where stuff runs you're probably

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not going to be using a single provider or a single way to deliver compute that's right federating and

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feathering two things that go great together that's that's what i'm thinking and then and then finally

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just as a pointer so i've i've been sitting on this uh write-up that i had for a while of like some

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uh i always think of these as proof points but just sort of overview of uh government uh people

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u.s government people who've done whatever you want to call it digital transformation or cloud

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native or devops or or as i you know at the end of the day call it you know figuring out how to

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compute or better with their custom written software and uh it just kind of picks from a lot of public

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sources about what the irs has done in the uh the air force u.s air force and even contractors

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too often the uh the perceived baddie of government work but uh there's there's a lot going on in there

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kind of surprisingly for people's uh bad attitude about government about how they're improving

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software so so i'll put a link into there but it's uh as always i think uh i think i think when you

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look at sort of like the the process that they they uh adapt adopt they adapt to their whatever they

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start using and then the uh the outcomes that they end up getting and i think interestingly especially

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in the case of the air force you can see how a few initial projects of doing things on an agile basis

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where you you're more or less textbook like uh even extreme programming but textbook like user-centric

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design and agile where you're you're actually talking to the users this is a novel idea for any

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sort of software project uh but you're talking to them and you're actually shipping on a weekly basis

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and adjusting it helps them expand out into other things not just that one uh initial project that

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they have so uh anyhow i'll put a link to that in there just it's it's uh well i think it's good stuff

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i guess i do too it was a good write-up i read it yesterday that was good job that's right uh so on that

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note speaking of talking to actual users i have to say uh emily i don't know what i have to say means

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but one of the one of the funnier things that i remember uh in your talk which which we'll go back

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to summarizing was uh and and also sort of like incisive things was like every time you want to talk

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to an end user everyone wants to get in your way and actually prevent you from talking to an end user

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and and i think i think you listened listed the familiar cadre of people that uh would much rather

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talk to you about than actual end users but i think i think that one point to broaden it back up was

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uh one of many points you were making about how uh let's say doing good software and taking kind of

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like an agile approach to software and product management in uh enterprises and by enterprises

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i sort of mean large companies is uh it has its own challenges and is difficult but you know

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on on on that context like give it give us a a summary of the premise of of this talk that you did

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yeah it's funny the the talk actually came out of that section of of the of the talk uh i did a

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lightning talk at a meetup talking about getting to your actual users and and all the challenges

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pushing through and as i talked to people afterwards um the conversation naturally shifted into other

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challenges to building good software and using modern design thinking and product management

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practices and tech practices in these big companies um and and just continued develop developing it from

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there uh really the the talk that i gave was just describing the most common things that i see when

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i talk to people in big companies my experiences working in big companies that keep us from doing the

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things that everyone knows is right um and the way that we look at products the way we look look at what

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success looks like in a company uh is very different when you're talking about a big enterprise where

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frankly just checking the box that you got something done on time and on budget is considered success

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whether or not it actually does anything for the end users or whether or not it makes a dime of money

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as long as you met your commitment delivered on time and on budget it's considered a success yeah i'll have

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to see if i can find this uh clip art i think it was in a book somewhere but i remember uh i remember

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back in the early 2000s when i was trying to be all agile hipster and in a genuine way one of my favorite

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like pieces of clip art were these two people with kind of like the the hairied uh loosened tie and one of

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them was holding up this big like gantt chart and he was like we have the plan the plan will save us

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and they were they were very excited about this plan that they had but it was representative to me of

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what you're saying of like yeah the plan's great but uh like the other 99 of greatness is actual

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running code that does something useful and so don't get too obsessed with that so i wonder like

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i know this is like a thankless impossible task but sort of like briefly can you kind of like lay out a

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baseline of what everyone knows you should be doing like like what does it mean to have like a good

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product mindset like uh in contrast to an enterprise if we were like in some functional small team of

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people of awesomeness or whatever mythical thing that actually doesn't exist out there

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like what what's the what's the good baseline we're shooting towards

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yeah you know you hear a lot in the industry of actually solving problems and and focusing on

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outcomes um you know making sure that you're you're starting from the user perspective and

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understanding what the user needs and being able to decide okay we want to make a user's life better

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in this way and then figuring out how you're going to do it and building working on it iteratively

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releasing uh you know what's kind of become the curse word in the industry the mvp um or something

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that you can like get out to users quickly um that's what we all are striving to do but when you get

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into these big corporations uh like you said you have to get the plan of record the amount of time i've

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spent uh in my career updating plans of record is unbelievable um right and you you build a

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a roadmap a year out or two years out or you know god forbid 10 years out um thinking that you know

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what's actually going to happen in a year's time uh and that you know what the problems you need to

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solve are a year ahead ahead of time um it it just doesn't leave room and then when you're building

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those plans you have to say exactly what you're going to build i i'm going to build this feature i'm

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going to fix this bug and i'm going to fix it sitting here in you know february of 2018 i'm

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going to fix this bug in october of 2018 well how do you know that that's still going to be the

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most important thing to do in october of 2018 um so it's you know how do we take the things that

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we hear about when we go to conferences and when we go to meetups and we read all of the articles and

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we we read lean startup and and we want to go and do these experiments and try to understand

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what metrics we should be uh building to how do we actually do that in a big enterprise

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yeah i mean one one thing you i think about as you explain that i was reading some forester

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survey the other day that that talked about budgeting practices and funding and you mentioned

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this as well as i mean is that sometimes the trigger for this i mean why are we stuck on plan

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of records is it because there's an annual funding cycle and therefore i have to prove what i'm

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going to spend my money on like what do you think is that upstream driver that that steers us into this

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hyper planning model versus let's be responsive to customer need let's be a little more adaptable

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to what's going on what do you think that trigger is yeah i think i do think the funding model is the

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trigger to a lot of it and the funding model comes out of a desire for control um you know when you've

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got big companies that have hundreds of products they're managing big portfolios um at some point

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someone's looking to say how can we make sure that we're spending our money the most effectively um and

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it's it's easier it it's it's much more it's much easier to grasp for leadership to say we're going to have

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everybody submit all of the projects that they want to do and then we're going to decide which of those

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projects deserves funding and then we're going to fund the project based off of a scope that people have told us

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up front um and and then we're going to measure on if people delivered on that scope so you end up with

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these processes where you're having to to request down to the line item exactly what you want to build

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really far in advance whereas when you look at uh kind of what's generally accepted as better practices

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is to build something small and iterate on that and continue to uh try to decide kind of what comes

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next based on market feedback so the the funding model doesn't really allow for responsiveness to

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change or uh responsiveness to kind of getting feedback from your users or from the market and if

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you want to change you have to go back through request processes and go make justifications and and a lot

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of companies they even kind of say you know hey uh if you if if you decide that what you want to build is

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not the right thing we're not necessarily going to give your product the additional funding we might

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move that to a different product so it incentivizes teams to kind of be very protective of their budget

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and even if they see it's the wrong thing and they want to change or they want to shift directions

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they kind of are forced to keep going forward on the path that they're on because that is how they keep

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their funding um so you know i think if if you're able to actually fund products differently and fund the

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product instead of the project um it allows the product managers the product owners the people who

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are actually on the ground and closest to the customers to be able to to know and be able to act on

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what they see um within their data what they see in interviews um but that's uncomfortable for

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executives to do because it requires a lot of trust uh to give the teams the autonomy they need to do

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that yeah i mean you're you're making me sad when you you say those things because it's all it's all

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super i mean i've lived that before and in my experience what you just said i think as you think of

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funding products versus projects so yeah so help someone chip away at that so if somebody's nodding

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their head sadly as they listen to you say that and say yep that sounds exactly like how i have to plan

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my 2019 stuff already it's 2018 like there's this this giant cycle how do i tangibly start chipping

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away is it to say look let's find a couple of key mission critical products and make sure we build

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balanced teams around those and fund that team in independent of releases and projects and things

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like that how does big company x kind of start really incorporating this not just lip service

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yeah that what you just said is actually exactly where i would start i would you know kind of start

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with with one team and and prove the model out of being able to do things differently and even within

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that team so um i did this at uh at the last company i was at prior to coming to pivotal um we actually had a team

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um we still listed our i would say quote unquote projects but it was really more buckets of funding

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around some themes and so i was able to say okay uh you know i want to improve the traveler experience

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uh i want to you know form partnerships with additional third parties or you know kind of some different

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general categories um we built up the amount of funding we were asking for based on some

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hypothetical projects so we think we might improve the in-transit experience through these types of

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of projects and it kind of came up with a target number but then got agreement from leadership that

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okay i'm going to go forward with these themes and these strategies um the actual the actual

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projects and the line items within the that bucket of hours may change as the years as the year goes on

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and we're going to keep an updated roadmap we're going to continue to refine what the next right thing

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is to build um but we're going to spend this much money on this product um and you know being able to frame

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it a little bit more as a test or kind of as you know as the exception um let it let it be palatable

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um but i think what it started to show is that you know when we were able to give examples where something that we

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didn't even know was going to be on the radar at the beginning of the year suddenly became really

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important and we were able to turn on a dime and and exploit some opportunities that came our way

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that in the old model we wouldn't have been able to do it would have been way too much red tape

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it started to prove that yeah this is a viable way of of running a product is that a metric you would

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show like if you were measuring that at the end of the year it can't be touchy-feely right there's got to be a

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reason that giving this team seven million dollars to run as a product yielded benefit so yeah what are

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those kpis yeah so we as a product kind of set out what our metrics were so we in general had three

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big ones you know we had an acquisition metric and engagement metric and a revenue target and so we

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kind of from those targets came out with what we thought we could do to impact them

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and then um you know basically the company agreed to here's how much investment we think these targets

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are worth um and we really got put on the hook for those targets a little more than other products

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were because um you know historically again as long as you met your on time on budget uh it was those

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were usually built out of some business plans but no one ever actually went back to the business plan

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to see if they did what they said they were going to do as long as you got the features out that you

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said you were going to get out um we were held a little bit more accountable to the actual numbers and

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the outcomes of what we built um which is what we should be anyway like if a product is getting things

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out on time and on budget but they're building the wrong things then maybe that product's not what's

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needed in the market so that's how that's kind of how we managed it within within one large company

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so i i've noticed in uh i don't know my my uh paying attention or trying to figure out change

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management that as as part of what you're saying a lot of it gets down to uh uh to use hollywood-y

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terms you got to have this one uh let's call it a little break not a big break where where someone

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says oh you should just try that in the new way like like you just at some point you have to get

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a small enough project where uh you can see if it works out and sort of prove to yourself that that

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it pans out and i don't know sometimes like a skunk works kind of thing uh works out which has its

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own risks like if you fail at it then you'll probably get fired or uh you know be assigned to uh

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write the new supply chain management system for pencils and post-it notes or stickies as i think

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uh but it it it does kind of get to uh getting someone to say that and and even the way i'm

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wording it is a little weird give permission for it it gets to another point that you raised up that

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was fun and it's like there there's always this mysterious entity called uh they that that you

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know they won't let you do this or sometimes i think they turns into a we like we don't do things

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that way but there's there's this uh sort of like headless uh sort of body of authority that people

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keep uh referencing as as a reason you can't do that and so so what you know how would you describe

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who this this sort of they is and then and then how you sort of like tactically deal with almost like

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the uh is if falsity is a word almost like the myth of who they is so you can get beyond it the

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concept of of the figure that i like to call the mysterious day is is i think a big challenge in

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big companies um it's it's really the thing that gets thrown out as a conversation ender um and

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becomes a way to deflect responsibility from the things that you just either don't want to deal with

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or from your own opinion uh so an example i gave in in the talk and really where this concept came

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from you know we had an an outage one time that caused them to you know caused our enterprise

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architecture team to lock down the data center no changes could go in nothing could happen unless you

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could prove you know you're going to be losing two hundred thousand dollars of revenue a day or or some

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insane metric um for my product we were completely unrelated to the system that had the outage

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we weren't touching anything that could even come close to taking it down but they wouldn't let me put

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uh do a change that my customers needed and that was really important to my market and so i started

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talking to one of the ops guys and and just say well you know who do i need to talk to in order to make

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this happen and he said well there's just no way they're going to let you do that and i said well

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who's they and he kind of paused for a second and said what do you mean i was like well is that the the

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you know cto is that our is that our chief technology officer i can go talk to her i'm more than happy to

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have that conversation he's like well no that's not she doesn't make that call and i just walked down

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the org chart until he finally admitted that like there was no they that was really stopping this he just

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didn't want to go ask the question or he assumed that the uh he assumed he already knew the answer

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and and at the end of the day no one really had the authority to say yes but a bunch of people had

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the authority to say no um and so you know i i just it became a a phrase that i i may say i became famous

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or or infamous for of you know okay who is they who's the mysterious they i want to talk to they

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and have a conversation about why we need to do things differently um so and frankly the biggest

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the biggest way i have found to push through that is to just push back and to just be the person to

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constantly you know just say who is they tell me who i need to talk to who's the person who can make

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the decision um you know people want to appear like they've made thoughtful decisions about these

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things and that they that these are like actual policies that are grounded in reason and procedure

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and a lot of times it's not a lot of times it's just i don't want to ask the question or i assume

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the answer is going to be no yeah you know that that that makes me uh kind of coalesce uh uh a few

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things uh you know i i'm i'm i'm always uh well it's always good when you're talking to a room full

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of people to start uh bagging on managers first people find that delightful uh but but more genuinely

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uh i guess i say that speaking to two managers effectively but uh uh uh you know it it doesn't

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make me think that one of the responsibilities in in computering better as i was joking about earlier

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that managers have is to almost like unday themselves in the sense of um it's easy for

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for let's say staff and teams to kind of imagine and presume what what managers would say and what

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their reaction would be to things kind of based on yesterday's policy so to speak or just the status

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quo you know use uh the old uh larman's law or whatever but you know it's it's been my own

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experience in in uh suggesting change and doing things that oftentimes you go to like a decision

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maker or whatever uh and you kind of propose new things to them and they're usually pretty open to

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it like oh yeah that sounds great we should do that and i get the feeling that a lot of people in

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the types of large organizations i talk to they don't really think of managers as very accessible

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as as someone that they could uh talk with and instead they're kind of in their uh

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executive tower so i don't know it seems like that's part of what you would want managers to do is

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to you know i probably no one should ever use that open door policy again but to somehow communicate

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that they'd actually like them to ask things on the other hand i think you had a dilbert cartoon

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illustrating that point of wow it's terrible well i mean that's why i want to almost flip that

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into a question emily and say i mean again going back to that same forester thing i just

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read two days ago was that many of the respondents like 30 said lack of executive leadership on agile

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was kind of just a barrier in general to adapting new mindset so to Coté's kind of point in what you

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mentioned like how does a management team start to change whether that's a middle manager or an

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executive like is it about finding the edges of your authority and sometimes pushing up against

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that so you can actually make decisions is it kind of encouraging a different level of empowerment

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like what is that change that has to happen in management so it doesn't become this they it

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becomes yep let's make the call and i'll justify it later or hey there's a smaller pool of people

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who make decisions and we can just move kind of how do you find that and how do you coach a manager

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that to get better yeah the first thing is empowerment uh you you have to empower your teams to make

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decisions and you have to give them the room to make some mistakes and do some things that don't work

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a lot of times you know nobody gets fired for not trying things you know it's generally people people

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get fired for trying something that doesn't go well but that's actually who we should be encouraging and

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who we should be investing in are the people who are willing to try different things and and challenge

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the status quo um so you have to be able to show examples of when you've given someone empowerment

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and not just when it's gone well but when it hasn't gone well and they didn't get the hammer dropped on

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them you know they didn't get all of their funding pool they didn't get fired they didn't get demoted

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um that that they actually got elevated for trying an experiment that didn't work and maybe saving us

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a bunch of money or at least you know testing out a theory that that had never been tested before

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um the other aspect i think is also letting people test some of those theories i guess that's really

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goes back to the empowerment as well um you know especially in in big companies and i found myself you

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know i managed a team of of people in in my last company that um you know i would get a

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new person on my team who would come in with ideas and i could immediately see where some of these

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things were probably not going to work because we tried similar things in the past or we had thought

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through or someone had told me that that wouldn't work because they had tried it in the past and it

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was really tempting to just kind of say no to everything and and like oh there's just no way that that would

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work um you know let let people try things let people you know at a minimum let them take the time to

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do with a thought experiment on how would i test this out how would i go about these things without

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immediately shutting down uh you know oh there's just no way that that would work uh is you have to

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have to give people the room to to grow yeah how do you see this then reconcile with you know this move

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i guess call it devops whatever but this idea of these teams that are balanced teams or whatever the

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right team makeup is where you don't have to ask for so much outside approval right because if you're running it as a product you have more

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say in what happens and maybe i don't have to open tickets to get infrastructure because look we're

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using a platform where i don't need to request infrastructure i just push code so where do you

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see the team makeup first of all having to come into play is this co-located teams and balanced teams

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or can you work with separate pmos and dev teams and finance teams what have you and then kind of how

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do you try to maybe increase the scope of what you're responsible for so i don't have to find a

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they the they is us so we can just make our own decisions yeah ideally uh ideally a team should be

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completely autonomous and and have everything they need and able to uh and able to create software and

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put it out into the market so everything from being able to you know ideate on the ideas come up with the

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strategy um as making sure that it ties into the company strategy and it's pushing forward company

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goals um but once you get into the actual what we're building you should have a team that has product

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management design engineering um all the way through to devops um you know as much as you can to where

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a team could potentially come up with a feature build it test it out put it into production you know on

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their own within a week um that that allows the team to be able to try more things to maneuver within

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the space that they have um and and actually get things to the end users um i see so often you know really

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that last mile like you you'll you'll have the the autonomous team within product management design

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and engineering but when it comes to actually deploying it to the end user they kind of get cut

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off at the knees um you know it has to go through 18 rounds of security approvals it's got to have

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you know load testing and we've got to fill out a checklist making sure that we've done all the

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things and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle um it becomes really difficult to release so then the the

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the thought of something going wrong on a release becomes a much bigger deal because releasing is

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hard whereas if you can make releasing really easy if i have a bug in my software and i can fix it and

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get it back out into production within an hour um you know the the just the concept of releasing

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becomes less risky and the concept of things going wrong becomes less risky um so the more process you

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add the the more risky it becomes um so then you become more risk averse and you want to add more

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process to keep the risk from happening um so you know using a platform where you can get uh where

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you can let the teams take back a lot of that control within you know within reason you the reason that

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that platforms like pcf exist is to make it to where you can you can have the controls to where you're not

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introducing risk by letting your developers release into production um right so the more that you can do that

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and the more that you can kind of get get the full stack on one team the better um ideally co-located

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is even better on top of that um the conversations that you'll have when you have co-located teams

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versus even just the same city but in different buildings or on different floors of the same building

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is shocking um you know i at one point i was sitting right in the middle of of my development team as a

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product manager and you know we were able to have these conversations i would overhear things and be

380
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able to answer questions more quickly and they would ask me questions because i was right there rather than

381
00:37:05,260 --> 00:37:10,860
waiting uh we actually ended up moving into a different building where we were even on the same floor in the

382
00:37:10,860 --> 00:37:17,180
same space but instead of sitting right in the middle of the development team i said i'm talking maybe 20

383
00:37:17,180 --> 00:37:24,460
feet away it was not a big change at all and we actually saw our uh our communication cycle and our

384
00:37:24,460 --> 00:37:32,860
rapid communication decrease just with a you know 20 foot walk uh because it just anytime that you put

385
00:37:32,860 --> 00:37:37,180
something in the way of getting an answer or having those conversations it makes you think twice about

386
00:37:37,180 --> 00:37:41,580
well do i want to interrupt them do i want to walk over there is it important enough to ask

387
00:37:41,580 --> 00:37:48,860
um it's you know it just having that co-located team makes that communication happen so much faster

388
00:37:50,780 --> 00:37:56,220
so i have one more question for it i'll let Coté uh bring us home but you know with your experience

389
00:37:56,220 --> 00:38:00,700
talking to large companies and hearing some of these stories i think sometimes it can be this

390
00:38:00,700 --> 00:38:05,180
kind of feeling that we all go like oh these these enterprises like aren't they just all nuts but

391
00:38:05,180 --> 00:38:09,740
but in reality like our all of our lives are impacted greatly by these companies being good at this

392
00:38:09,740 --> 00:38:14,620
stuff like i really desperately want my bank and my grocer and my travel company i mean i want them

393
00:38:14,620 --> 00:38:19,980
to be great so what are the enterprise advantages you see that these companies should actually remember

394
00:38:19,980 --> 00:38:24,860
that they should take advantage of that you know most enterprises have you would think some inherent

395
00:38:24,860 --> 00:38:29,660
advantages that pivotal does try to help them regain them sometimes when software upstarts kind of

396
00:38:29,660 --> 00:38:33,820
disrupt them but what do you see when you come into an enterprise and say gosh you should be

397
00:38:33,820 --> 00:38:39,180
taking advantage of a b c and d this is what you know if you get good at software and capitalize on this

398
00:38:39,180 --> 00:38:45,020
you're gonna you know you're on a rocket ship you're gonna be doing great yeah uh you know people

399
00:38:45,020 --> 00:38:49,740
always talk about startups changing the world and and being the ones to disrupt things and really make

400
00:38:49,740 --> 00:38:55,820
a difference but if you look at the vast amount of resources that these large enterprises have

401
00:38:56,700 --> 00:39:03,420
startups can't even touch it um the amount the amount of money the amount of reach uh the the number of

402
00:39:03,420 --> 00:39:08,700
people that they're already touching on a daily basis uh if if enterprises could really

403
00:39:09,580 --> 00:39:14,700
get in there and be able to do these things in a different way and start to solve real customer

404
00:39:14,700 --> 00:39:20,620
problems they are just in a much better position than most startups to have a real impact in a much

405
00:39:20,620 --> 00:39:26,300
quicker way um you know i was having a conversation with uh some people at microsoft at one point

406
00:39:26,300 --> 00:39:32,220
and they were talking about a baseline product and like oh yeah you know i mean really all that we

407
00:39:32,220 --> 00:39:37,420
need in order to consider this a success is you know if we if we got this out to like a hundred million

408
00:39:37,420 --> 00:39:43,900
people we'd be really happy and to them a hundred million people was a small number um whereas like

409
00:39:43,900 --> 00:39:50,220
my product i thought i was doing good when i hit a million users at one point and uh you know for a

410
00:39:50,220 --> 00:40:00,300
for a consumer mobile app and you start to realize just the the scale of impact it um the the enterprises

411
00:40:00,300 --> 00:40:07,500
have the ability to just touch people so much faster um you know if you're looking at a you know fintech

412
00:40:07,500 --> 00:40:13,660
and and financial startups you know ones that are trying to gain their first million users or their

413
00:40:13,660 --> 00:40:20,140
first hundred thousand users compared to you know if capital one was able to do something and hit

414
00:40:20,140 --> 00:40:25,900
however many million people at one time um the impact is just so much greater and then the resources

415
00:40:25,900 --> 00:40:34,300
behind it uh the amount of um you know the amount of funding that big enterprises can put into solving

416
00:40:34,300 --> 00:40:40,060
some of the world's hardest problems um if you had the right way of thinking about them and the right way

417
00:40:40,060 --> 00:40:45,100
of doing um software development and understanding users and understanding what the problems are out

418
00:40:45,100 --> 00:40:49,980
there uh they could they could be solving some of the world's toughest challenges and some of the

419
00:40:49,980 --> 00:40:55,660
really important things much faster than any of the little startups could that are hoping for their

420
00:40:55,660 --> 00:41:01,100
first round of funding no i know that's it's exciting even when everyone panics when amazon enters

421
00:41:01,100 --> 00:41:06,140
an industry yes amazon does great stuff but you know at the same time google tried to become a telco

422
00:41:06,140 --> 00:41:10,140
and dropped out of that because that was hard and other companies have a built-in advantage so

423
00:41:10,140 --> 00:41:14,780
i like when companies respond to somebody encroaching on their market with kind of a game on

424
00:41:14,780 --> 00:41:19,740
mode like okay now's the time for us to step in not to be scared of amazon google microsoft

425
00:41:19,740 --> 00:41:24,460
whomever else but to your points let's let's take advantage of what we've got and and go

426
00:41:24,460 --> 00:41:28,860
win on this market i'm glad we help people with that i hope that these enterprises don't get a

427
00:41:28,860 --> 00:41:34,300
defeatist attitude instead realize their opportunity right i see so many enterprises that will try to

428
00:41:34,300 --> 00:41:40,860
legislate their way out of disruption or um you know like put up more roadblocks to try to keep

429
00:41:40,860 --> 00:41:46,620
the things that keep things the same and protect their business model uh and and it's like if they just

430
00:41:46,620 --> 00:41:52,380
took that challenge instead and said we're just gonna make it better like there's obviously a problem

431
00:41:52,380 --> 00:41:58,940
here there's obviously a gap that we're not solving um you know let's find ways to to win by being better

432
00:41:58,940 --> 00:42:06,140
as opposed to win just by being able to out legislate everyone else so so the last the last question i had

433
00:42:06,140 --> 00:42:13,100
i think i think uh you know uh anyone who's like vaguely read the back of a cereal box about the french

434
00:42:13,100 --> 00:42:19,420
revolution like the concern you might have is like uh so when we get this new way put into place how do we

435
00:42:19,420 --> 00:42:24,780
make sure it doesn't become a new bureaucracy and so i'm curious like as you've observed large

436
00:42:24,780 --> 00:42:31,500
organizations which are very prone to put uh sort of like bureaucracy in place because it can be great

437
00:42:31,500 --> 00:42:38,220
right like that's a huge way that you uh you scale but like how how do you think in putting uh you know

438
00:42:38,220 --> 00:42:44,460
a lot of this thought into place you can also put in a process that ensures you don't equally cement up

439
00:42:44,460 --> 00:42:47,580
around this new thing when new and better things come along

440
00:42:50,940 --> 00:42:57,660
yeah uh the one of the biggest things that that we like to focus on is uh continuous improvement

441
00:42:57,660 --> 00:43:04,780
and continuous feedback um and i think that that's very important in making sure that uh bureaucracies

442
00:43:04,780 --> 00:43:11,100
don't build up that start to get in the way so you know within our xp processes we have retros every

443
00:43:11,100 --> 00:43:17,900
week on a team level we have them at office levels um and whenever you start seeing too many like

444
00:43:18,620 --> 00:43:24,220
checklists and things come in that usually starts to play out in uh you know in our retros and we'll

445
00:43:24,220 --> 00:43:29,580
have conversations about them i think that that companies and executives should be doing that at their

446
00:43:29,580 --> 00:43:38,620
levels as well um and and trying to see where uh you know where they can be continually improving and not and

447
00:43:38,620 --> 00:43:45,100
basically breaking down processes rather than adding new ones um it is a really big risk because the the

448
00:43:45,100 --> 00:43:51,740
more you scale the more uh kind of coordination starts to be needed and people need ways you know to

449
00:43:51,740 --> 00:43:58,780
kind of report on programs and and things like that um but i think it's just important that that

450
00:43:58,780 --> 00:44:06,620
leadership keep in mind that the teams are where the decisions need to be made um and if they and

451
00:44:06,620 --> 00:44:14,220
focus the processes on how to get information out of the teams not disseminate information back into

452
00:44:14,220 --> 00:44:21,260
them i guess if that makes sense oh sure yeah yeah i mean i mean i think for uh you know more or less

453
00:44:21,260 --> 00:44:27,500
us us nerd types the idea of like recursiveness is sort of like a a natural sort of thing to think

454
00:44:27,500 --> 00:44:33,340
about but there's i don't know how the leadership mba set is what their comfort level with recursion is

455
00:44:33,980 --> 00:44:39,100
but uh they seem to like to talk about fractals because that's a lot prettier but anyways when it

456
00:44:39,100 --> 00:44:45,100
comes to like continuous learning and continuous improvement i think i think that recursive nature of

457
00:44:45,100 --> 00:44:49,900
it uh it's sort of how it sort of bends back on itself as a notion and you want to continually be

458
00:44:49,900 --> 00:44:56,860
figuring out if your continuous learning is a good idea so to speak seems to be something that's uh

459
00:44:56,860 --> 00:45:03,260
extremely helpful for those organizations that that do want to improve well uh thanks for being on if

460
00:45:03,260 --> 00:45:08,300
people want to uh i don't know keep up with you on the internet or uh check out other things you have

461
00:45:08,300 --> 00:45:14,380
what's what's a good thing for them to look up yeah i'm on uh twitter and linkedin and basically

462
00:45:14,380 --> 00:45:22,300
everywhere at the daily m em and um yeah that's really where you can find me i love talking product

463
00:45:22,300 --> 00:45:27,900
i love talking tech so reach out yeah yeah and there's there's at least two other talks of yours

464
00:45:27,900 --> 00:45:32,940
recorded one that i saw at the uh the lightning thing about how you should uh turn you should

465
00:45:32,940 --> 00:45:37,340
shouldn't feel bad about turning your hobbies into uh things you're interested in and sort of

466
00:45:37,340 --> 00:45:43,420
confessions of a serial hobbyist i think always always good to have a combination of uh therapy and

467
00:45:43,660 --> 00:45:49,980
advice about how to thrive self-therapy as it were and uh there's another good one i guess is a little

468
00:45:49,980 --> 00:45:55,580
old now but we're where i think you do a good job uh or in my opinion you do a good job of i don't know

469
00:45:55,580 --> 00:46:02,060
demystifying what an mvp is versus how do you characterize it like there's two words that begin with v

470
00:46:02,060 --> 00:46:09,500
v or something right i forget the one slide you have yeah so there's a kind of minimum viable product i i

471
00:46:09,500 --> 00:46:14,620
talked about a different concept of minimum viable release point so when's the first point that i can

472
00:46:14,620 --> 00:46:21,340
release yeah um also heard it referred to as minimum valuable product at that time uh it's had many

473
00:46:21,340 --> 00:46:29,580
iterations since 2015 in the industry but uh but yeah it's uh thoughts around how to get things out to

474
00:46:29,580 --> 00:46:36,940
customers in early stages when you already have a product in market yeah yeah no and and to your

475
00:46:36,940 --> 00:46:42,380
point of it uh evolving under many different names i think i think it's a uh it's it's it's a good

476
00:46:42,380 --> 00:46:47,020
alternative to make hopefully the only statement i ever get remembered for is don't do dumb stuff

477
00:46:47,740 --> 00:46:53,660
in the sense of like if if if you think that like agile or mvps means you're gonna like release some lame

478
00:46:53,660 --> 00:47:00,140
software no that's not what it means right like like obviously it doesn't mean doing dumb stuff

479
00:47:00,780 --> 00:47:05,820
uh but anyways it's it's it's a good overview of that was perhaps the largest uh screen i have ever

480
00:47:05,820 --> 00:47:13,740
seen a presentation put on that that must have been very intimidating to uh i i think that was a lot

481
00:47:13,740 --> 00:47:18,620
of fun that's that that was the product management festival in zurich switzerland they still hold it at that

482
00:47:18,620 --> 00:47:25,020
same location so every year uh it's the the biggest screen ever that you'll present in front of yeah i

483
00:47:25,020 --> 00:47:31,420
think if you were to imagine like one of those little uh check boxes on a on an app or or a web page i

484
00:47:31,420 --> 00:47:37,500
think they were taller than you on on that screen this is massive uh well anyways as always thanks for

485
00:47:37,500 --> 00:47:42,460
listening this has been another Pivotal Conversations if you want to get the latest episodes and quickly

486
00:47:42,460 --> 00:47:47,580
browse all the fascinating back catalog including many conversations like this talking about pivotal

487
00:47:47,580 --> 00:47:55,180
cloud foundry and also uh conversations we have with actual uh users and managers and people who are

488
00:47:55,180 --> 00:48:01,820
not just uh us vendors trying to peddle stuff you can go to soundcloud.com slash Pivotal Conversations

489
00:48:01,820 --> 00:48:07,420
and usually about every thursday if i remember to do my work that you can go see the full show notes

490
00:48:07,420 --> 00:48:12,860
including links to things we've talked about here at pivotal.io slash blog and with that we'll see

491
00:48:12,860 --> 00:48:14,700
everyone next time bye bye