Creating the business case for platform engineering, Kerry Schaffer

Episode 259 · Mon, 10 Apr 2023 07:30:00 +0200 · 59:33 · SRT · archive.org · all Tanzu Talk

Well, uh, I, I saw you, uh, giving a talk at like an internal conference, if we, if you will, that we had recently. And, and it was, it was great hearing you go over, uh, there, there's a phrase that we don't, I, we don't hear much in the technology, uh, the exciting world of technology and cloud native, and that is business case. And, uh, I, I thought that, you know, like looking, you know, at the, the, the kind of organizations that, uh, that, that you work at. And then I talk with all the time. It is, uh, for as thrilling as a technology, as a technology can be, oftentimes there's a lot of effort put into just getting it there and, and getting it set up. And so, uh, I thought it'd be great to have you on here to talk about that more. And, but before that, you want to introduce yourself? Sure. Um, my name is Carrie Schaefer. Um, I am senior directory, senior director of technology and, um, partnerships at One Magnify. Uh, that's, I manage basically all of our infrastructure teams, including the platform teams for, uh, TAS. Um, One Magnify is a marketing company and we, uh, basically provide specialized services to our customers in the area of marketing technology and analytics. We're really trying to drive their results and amplify their business, you know, their business value of their marketing efforts. And so a lot of the work that we do, I find is different than a lot of the other, um, potentially Tanzu customers because they do a lot of internal work for themselves. We do a lot of work for our clients and, you know, we only do the work that's necessary for ourselves because, you know, we're very client focused. We're, uh, you know, looking to make a huge impact for our clients. So, um, business cases are incredibly important to our company, um, as, you know, being in the, in the space that we're in. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I like, uh, uh, I like the idea of, of doing the minimal for ourselves.

That's something I need to consider for my own life. Just, uh, seeing, seeing, I need, uh, I need to do the business case on me doing less. Yeah. That would be great. Yeah. You know, I mean, I, I know some of the, the, the customers that you have are like pretty, you know, large, big name customers that need a, a good scale for the type of marketing that they do. So, you know, it's, it is, uh, it's, it's one of those businesses where technology is and software and like cloud stuff is obviously necessary, incredibly important. Um, so yeah, so, so let, let's talk about like, uh, like, so, so, you know, you get this feeling that you need, uh, like you're saying, you, you write, you run the, the, the platform teams where you manage them and you need a new sort of, uh, kind of big platform technology. And, uh, like, well, like, where do you start after that? I mean, you have so many choices, you've got a bunch of people involved, like what's, what happens before the business case where you've selected something and you're kind of justifying doing it and getting budget for it. So typically a business need is what drives any big changes we make. I would love to say we get things out. So, and there are times where we do POCs with, uh, with software, but when we go to actually make a big acquisition of software, there has to be a business case that's driving it. So we'll go out and look at all the different, uh, you know, options in the market that could solve that problem. And we'll actually do first, we're just doing a fit analysis. So we're looking at the problem that we have and then what's the fit, where is it going to run? How much is it going to cost? And so you're doing those high level, you know, you're, you're, I would say high to medium level, you know, um, uh, investigations into figuring out which product we're actually going to fit your, uh, your business case the best. And so we tend to go through that first and we go through all

the different options and we actually have to write out the reasons why some software fits and some software doesn't because we will be asked about that when we actually go to make our final justification, because, you know, one of the things we're going to get asked is what else did you look at? Did you look at anything else or is this the only thing you're bringing? And so, you know, we like, we always try to find our top three and at least look at like three different software options or three different, you know, platform options. Um, and then before we go into, you know, the, um, the actual, you know, all your ROI documents and looking at, you know, acquisition and, you know, going through and looking at the business cases for why you're doing it too, you're also looking at the people you have. So it's a completely brand new technology and I have to train the whole staff that doesn't align with anything that they already know. So you got to have, you know, so you're looking for fit within the organization as well. So if it's a Linux, Linux based program or a Java based program, I think, okay, I got people in the house that could quickly learn this. If it's something completely new, then, you know, it's, um, it's something that's harder for our teams to learn. Like, so for example, you know, Kubernetes, we brought that in and some of that, you know, runs in, you know, environments that we already know, but you know, the setting up the environments using like, you know, YAML and building out your pipelines and things like that. And it's an all new language. We know that that's going to add an extra overhead. So that all goes into the consideration. And then once we, we come up with the software that we want, we start working on, you know, uh, we start working on the rationalization for that purchase and start deep diving into all the business case, uh, components that, you know, are going to be required. Cause we, we acquire software at one magnifier. When I, you know, we're pitching that to our upper management, there's going to be a lot of questions asked. So you're, you need to have your business

case solid. And then you've also got to have your financials pretty much bulletproof. Cause you're going to get, you're going to have to walk through that with the CEO and the CFO, and they're going to be asking a million questions. Yeah. It seems like the, the, the leadership y'all have is pretty technical if, if I remember right. Hence, hence the, the, the questions about like fitness and fit and things like that. So it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, as you're saying, you have two things you have to put off with the, the, the business case. And also like, does it work case? And yeah, I'm, and I'm curious, like hearing you go through that, about that, that kind of second group of things, like it's, I feel, I feel like it can be difficult to sort of do the case for it works. Right. And like, like it's, it's the right fit for what we want. And then especially somehow, somehow I, I was going to say measuring, but I'll instead say representing or somehow describing like, well, we don't really know how this works. Right. And that's, you know, like we were anticipating it'll be difficult for us to figure this out. Cause as you were saying, like, we haven't done this before. Right. And, and on and on and on. Right. And so like, I've seen people over the years, like, like to put it another way, everyone wants good developer productivity. Right. And, and it's, it's kind of, there's not exactly like a, a like number you can put in a spreadsheet. That's like, this one is a six, right? Like, like it's, it's, uh, going in, we know that developer productivity is a six or whatever, or all of these kinds of other things that are around it. So I'll get around to a question eventually, but like, how, how do you, how do you represent the, like, this fits what we need and want? Like, how, how do you go over that? So a lot of that comes from looking at like case studies or in white papers and like researching all the documentation that, that is actually a big part

of my job, especially when it comes to acquiring new software or justifying software increases. And, uh, and, you know, if we have other similar products that have done similar things, like, let's say we have this group of work that now we're trying to modernize, but it needs a specialized platform, which, you know, some, you, it would be nice to say all your different software products that you're delivering for your customers could fit on one platform, but that's not really true. So you're going to have multiple. So when you're looking at that, part of it is you're looking at the enablement that, you know, the other similar products that we've developed, like that is a big business case for us. You know, I'm going to, that's a better number for me to quote than something I've just read in a white paper from a different kind of a company, you know? Right, right. So, so I'm looking for those referenceable items and then I have to actually turn that into dollars. Right. So like I was just looking at like something for TKG and it said it increases developer productivity by 37%. I got to find a weird calculus number and, and one that I can justify and actually back into, well, if it's going to increase their productivity by 37%, that means we're going to get 30% more billable work out of them. And how many people is it going to actually take those numbers and multiply it out and have, you know, it's funny because I do a lot of the coding for the company as well. So I never was a math person. I kind of always hated math in school and everything to get out of it, but it's, it's such a huge part of my job in a leadership role is, is, is having that math and understanding that financial acumen and the business acumen, you got to kind of, you have to actually combine both of those together. And I'm actually better oddly, and I don't really like this, but I'm better with the financial acumen than I am with the business acumen. I'm more comfortable in that space because math is math than it's like very, you know, if you're doing it right, you're only going to get one answer.

It's not very cool. It's not, it's, it's very opinionated and like, you know, Yeah. And, and also like the scenarios you were just describing, there's, um, like what, once you've built up kind of, as you were saying, like we have, there's other instances where we've put this platform or this technology in place or done this kind of calculation. Like one, you kind of build up an experience of, of models you can use, like ways you can think about what's happening. And then, and then also like math, it can be nice because like you said, it's just like deterministic. It's just like, as long as we agree on, like, we have these five numbers, we put them in the formula and there's the answer. Whereas like, you know, business strategy stuff is like, well, we'll see what happens. Like, will people like this or not? Yeah. And employee satisfaction, like, because that's factor two. So you're looking at two different things, right? You're looking at the cost benefit analysis. So like all your ROI, um, you're looking at that and that is easier. I think in many cases that like when you're making the business justification and I say, okay, you know, developer productivity, less frustration at word, what does that equal? And then you basically equal that out to employee happiness. Well, that's a sliding scale based on each person. So you gotta, you, you know, you're, you're benchmarking that, but you also, it's based on testimonial, which is much more subjective and harder. Like if, you know, if you're in, if you're in trying to justify that software and I say, okay, well, you know, the developers, like when we did this before for this other product, developers are happier, they have less frustration, but then, you know, maybe there's that one person who had like a gripe and, you know, you're, well, what about what happened with this and this person? It's like, okay, you know, it, it, it's much more subjective than. Yeah. That's the financial side. So, you know, really in that case, you have to either say, well, you know, this person was unhappy because

of these reasons, but then, you know, six of their colleagues were happier because of these other reasons. Yeah. You know, you get a six to one. And so in an organization like ours, like we're one of the best places to work. And part of that is because we care about our employees and what they want. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to not think about that person who had a bad experience in a similar product. We, you know, just because the other six liked it, but, you know, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, that could end up being something where we have to do a bunch of meetings and go back to the drawing table and figure out how we can make, make it so that person isn't unhappy again. Yeah. That's, that's reminding me of a conversation I just this morning with my, uh, my daughter, her, uh, her, she bikes to school and her bike chain was broken. So I had to take her in this big bucket bike or buck feet, as they say here in the Netherlands. And, uh, she, she, every time I have her in there, she reminds me of like the two times that the bike fell over and she's very good at telling the stories. And so this morning I, she's, so she's kind of like you're one out of six developers. And this morning I was, I was asking her like, well, do you remember all the times we didn't fall over, which is like, you know, every day. And of course her answer was no. What do you say that humans, and this is, you know, I mean, this goes across the board with a lot of things. We are more wired to think about like the, the negative things. And it kind of comes from, you know, like when we were cavemen, right? We saw a saber tooth tiger and you either ran or you were saber tooth tiger lunch. Well, you either ran or fought, but if you didn't either and you sat there. So you have those negative, those negative experiences, they say in our brain, because I've, you know, I'm not a psychologist, but I've read a lot of studies. They say that those stick with us stronger than a positive memory does. Yeah, for sure. So it's definitely a factor because,

you know, everybody, everybody who's involved and everybody who's a stakeholder in whatever it is that we're, that we're bringing in, they, you know, we are going to consider their opinion. And so if it's, if it's not the opinion that you want, you still have to listen to it. You still have to accommodate for it. It's a, it's definitely a tricky thing about bringing in new software products because they're, you know, you think that you think on the surface that that is a cut and dry, like a financial decision, but there's a lot of emotion involved too. People worry about like, is it going to, is it going to automate me out of my job? You know, is it going to be something that, you know, sends too many alerts and is it configured right? And all of a sudden I have to work extra hours, you know, there's all these considerations that are very emotional. And, uh, and so when you're talking with, you know, acquisition of software, you do have to be ready to handle, you know, when you're building out your cases, you have to be, you know, ready to handle all the personalities and all the different personas of your stakeholders. And, and, you know, just be mentally ready because there will be people who are going to be unhappy about it. So, so to ask, well, what, what sounds like it, what sounds like to, to y'all's daily life there, what would be an odd question? Like, let's assume for whatever reason, you know, you're, you, uh, you get, you get hired to go work at a new place that, that isn't as great, uh, as, as, uh, what magnify is who knows why. Uh, and, um, and they're basically like, they're, they're, they're executives are like, we love how stuff was run over there. Can you like, we don't really do that here. Can you like set it up here? Right. And, and then, you know, as let's say it's a, a gigantic company, right. So as often happens, the, uh, the executives at the top are like, this stuff is great. It needs to happen. And then they kind of like, you know, you get in your little boat to go to the rest of the bureaucracy and they give you a smiling, you know, push off

into it. And then you got to go talk with everyone else. And so like, like given, you know, given the situation you were saying, like, how would you, again, this will sound weird, but like, how would you convince people that like having happy developers is a good idea? I, so it's interesting because we're doing a little bit consulting work with, uh, with a customer that brought us in on one of their platforms because they're, they're having a hard time with adoption. And, uh, so we're kind of living this right now. Um, it, so the first thing you really have to do is listen. So you have actively listen, like as humans, especially for, you know, for, if, if I worked on this proposal and, or whatever it is and getting this, the software implemented, I kind of have already probably coming at it from a naturally defensive, like I need to defend my case. Right. Oh yeah. Spend your self-interest, which is hard. I mean, I'm telling you, that's probably the hardest thing because like, especially with a person like me, like when they say something that, you know, doesn't crack with, you know, what I know statistically is like an accurate statement. My first instinct is, you know, I want to debate them, but you, you have to actually stop first. You listen, you write down all their concerns. You need to be able to speak it back to them in a way that they know, at least they're being heard because a lot of, for a lot of people that really helps them. Yeah. Then from there you start, you know, you don't just like take them down and then wash them under the rug and feel dead. Like, okay, well, I pat myself on the back and listen to that person. Uh-huh. It's not a checklist. Yeah. So you actually have to go back and start talking to them, having discussions about, well, here's what, here's what the, you know, all the documentation said, here's what I would have, like, let's say for example, for me, for my prior experience at another company. And you need to actually go through and unpack those worries because what they're presenting, you know, the old iceberg

idea, what they're presenting, what they're showing you as their, um, the tip of the iceberg, what they're actually talking to you about. There's a lot of other things that are underneath. So you have to go in and it takes time and patience. And, you know, it really is, and it really is important for a proper adoption because you want everybody, you're only going to get the results that you're preaching you're going to get if people buy in and actually start using software. And so, or, or the platform or whatever it is. Right. So you have to like actually start unpacking and working with that person and figure out what's under, you know, what's under the surface there and figure out like, how are we going to make it? So this person feels comfortable, especially if they're a stakeholder. Yeah. Or there are a lot of people who are not necessarily a stakeholder, but they've got the stakeholder fear. Right. Right. I mean, that's a good point is the, uh, I don't know, the, the kind of, uh, the P I always imagine they're the people who are like, uh, sitting in the chairs along the wall of the conference room who, who have a, who have a, uh, sometimes even well, frequently even a more powerful, like part of the process than the people at the table, because around the edges, they, they're the ones who get delegated to work oftentimes. So, so they're the ones who have direct control over like what, what the thinking is and how, how it meshes with everything. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it seems like also like one of the things I think about and talk about with people a lot is, I mean, you, you, you said it exactly is, well, once you get this technology in place, if your developers or your, your operations people or whoever, if they don't like it, they're like, not going to do a good job. Like they're, they're not going to be, you know, intrinsically motivated to like understand the tool and figure out how to use it best. And like, you know, maybe wait five more minutes before they go to lunch to, to, to put up with it or whatever. Right. Like, and so it is like, it's really important

that you get them enthusiastic about it because it's, I think, I think, as you said, well, right, like the, the business assumptions you're making about how that tool is going to work and make things better, like really rely on the people using it to do a good job. Like you probably don't make a business case that starts with assume people are terrible. Yes. No, but it, and I don't know that the, that terrible is really the word, but like the people, people have an incredible impact on, on the output. Like, so if, if you're going to get your, you know, if you're going to get the usage that you want out of a platform or a tool, the people like you were, like we were saying, they have to be invested. And so like, one of the things we did was, you know, um, I think back to like when we implemented TAS, which is, you know, back then it was PCF. And so we implemented it with a smaller team. So we had a smaller team and like some of the ways we got there, there were teams that at first were not even interested. They were like, you know, sounds like a bunch of, you know, gibberish and it's not going to be exciting. We're not going to get all this. So what we basically did was we, you know, we kind of set up this cross-functional team that actually managed the platform and it, it included like the development teams, the, the platform teams, you know, like cybersecurity. So all these different people from all these different areas were actually like coming together and working on it. And one of the psychology things that I did was I put that meeting right in the middle of our collaborative collaboration area around like all, where all the other developers were, because it was a fun project and we had a good time. And, and, and, you know, when we were sitting there and the developers were talking about the great things that had happened and their successes, you know, other people were hearing it. And so once they started hearing about like, you know, person A is doing this very cool thing and they had this great result and oh my gosh, they love it. And they're having so much fun. The other teams are

start to like, you know, even, even I, you know, you have some people are technology curmudgeon. They, you know, they know what they know and that's what they know and that's what they want to know. And that's how they've been doing it for years. And, you know, they can't imagine it being better, but even those people, when they start hearing about cool things, other people are doing, it, you kind of stoke up this natural jealousy. Yeah. Like, why do they get to do that? And I can't. And I'm like, you care. Just go in the, join the, join the, join the fun, right? Join the team. And so it was almost like, it was odd because we started with a very small, like POC kind of team. Yeah. Like within like a month and a half or so they had, you know, it had swept across the organization and the other teams that couldn't use it because of technical reasons were getting very frustrated too. Like, I want to go do that cool stuff, but like my app is architected in such a way. It's not like in this case cloud native. And so it was interesting. And, you know, people, people came and got on the bandwagon. We didn't have to actually force anybody. And that's your best case scenario, which is not always going to be the reality of potentially what happens. Yeah. You want, uh, you want pull for your, your, your, uh, your platform instead of push, right? Yes, exactly. That's a, that's a clever technique to like, uh, do your initial stuff and ongoing, like in the middle of a space, like where, where there's, there's so to speak, high foot traffic. Yeah. And what do you do? Like, uh, you know, what do you do ongoing? Like I see a lot of people having conference, like internal conferences and things like that, but how do you, how do you like drive awareness and interest in adoption? Like, I don't know, over the next 12 months or whatever, like once, once you've set things up. I, I, it, now it is absolutely very different in the past. You know, we, we had those weekly sessions where you could come in and we would help you. If you had a problem, you could,

you'd have somebody, you could, you know, there's always somebody you could put in a ticket and talk to, um, and we'll help you with your problem. But, you know, those were like open, basically like open office hours and they were several times a week. I think we were doing them three times a week. And so, you know, there are times when it's hard for certain key members, because they want to figure things out on their own. And sometimes they're a little intimidated to go ask for help. But there's often office hours there, open office hours where they can come and they feel like they'll get an answer and somebody is going to work with them. And, you know, there's no fear of like ridicule or fear of like failure, you know, you know, in that kind of scenario for a person, people will actually come and continue to have those types of conversations and feel comfortable. And especially once, you know, they've, they've done it once or twice, right. The first time is probably a little scarier, but you know, the second, third time it's, you know, they realized like, this person's here to help me and, you know, and, and help work through this. And so when you, when you have new, you know, new people who are adopting technology, probably feel a little bit behind the others, or even like people are working on the technology and you want to keep that cadence and, and happiness going, having that kind of interpersonal relationships and in conversations is, is very important in the technique. You know, since we did a lot of that pre COVID, so we did it in person. And so post COVID, we've tended to do the same type of meetings, um, and the same type of office hours. And it does help because people will come to those and they, you know, they might say, okay, well, you know, you know, when you first get there, I, you know, whatever, I don't, I don't have any topics for today, but then like when you're sitting there and you're kind of bantering and all of a sudden it's like, well, I have been working on this thing and you know, what do you think of this? And so you, you still can get, you can still get a lot of that type of interactions. The thing that you, you're definitely going to miss is, it is the

actual like excitement you can build by just having people overhear things, but still rumors go through this company pretty quick. So if they're over, if developer A is on that platform team and they're having a great time and they're having a good experience, they're, they're talking to the other people in the organization and it's still going to spread. It's, it's, it won't be as quick though. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a topic I'm, I'm always interested in is I was thinking of this a few weeks ago that, uh, essentially if you're introducing, uh, like, like a platform for developers to use and a new way of working, all, all this stuff that pretty early on, you need to establish like a word of mouth campaign for, for marketing, right? Like, I mean, you have to do marketing and taking consideration, all the marketing stuff, uh, kind of implied internally. Right. And, and like, uh, it's, it's both intimidating and also comforting because like, I don't know, in it marketing, isn't like a core strength or a core strength in the sense of something anyone cares to do. Right. Like it's not, it's not something that you do. However, also like marketing is pretty well understood. Like there's, you're not like reinventing things. Like, it's just like, there might be a lot of possible ways to do marketing, but all of them are, uh, pretty easy, like, like, and proven out. So like, do you, do you sort of like, what's the, what's the word? Like consciously or strategically, like, are you kind of on the lookout for like, ah, this, these three people, if we could just go get them to talk to those people, that would be great. Like, are you trying to like set the board up that way so that people talk with each other? Yes. So, so we, I do it two different ways. So we just, you know, we're right now rolling out another platform. And, uh, the first thing I did was I actually had, uh, we do these events. So thankfully I kind of have an advantage because I am on the team that runs the IT events for the

company. Um, and so, uh, so the first thing I did was said, okay, I'm going to do like a one-on-one. I'm going to answer all your questions. I'm going to show you how to do it. I'm going to show you how to register for it. And let's just do a quick half an hour meeting and get people like understanding what it is, how to use it, how to navigate and all that. And so we had a meeting on it and that was pretty successful, but then, you know, you get 60, 60 people. We probably have what, like 150, 175 developers that will magnify. You still don't have everybody. And so like, after that, you strategically have to start talking to people like, have you told your team about, you know, this, you, you, you do, you kind of have to touch point with them and say, you know, you know, you did, you did so great here. You know, it'd be, it'd be great if you shared that with the rest of your team so they could have the same experience. And not everybody thinks to do that. There's a lot of people, you know, it's funny because like, um, there's a lot of different personalities in IT. And I think there's, you know, the stereotypical one we all think about, which is not necessarily an extrovert, but you do have some good extroverts and they'll go in and have that discussion pretty easily. So, and then you have other people, I'm sorry, at least here actually fertilized in my yard. That's fine. It has to grow. Yeah. Especially in Michigan. Okay. So, so yeah. And then, and then once they think about that, they go, okay, you know, some people aren't going to do it, right? Some people are introverts to the point where they're, where they're not going to do it. So maybe you have to reach out. You have to kind of know, know people and their personalities. It's harder in big organizations. You know, when I joined one magnify, we were a very small company, probably about 50 people. And now we're like over 650 people. So it's not as easy because, you know, it's hard to know everybody in a company size, especially when you get up into these huge companies. But if you can do that organically through the people, you know, and maybe get that spreading, then you, you know, that's the best way to do it because I, you know, even myself,

I don't have the time to go talk to all those developers one-on-one. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it seems like, well, I think it is, it doesn't seem like it is the case of someone like yourself and then other people who are trying to introduce like, you know, the, the platform out there that they need to have, I don't know, you know, enjoy socializing with people and, and enjoy, or I guess you don't have to enjoy it. You need the ability to do it and to do it, which it sure is nice to enjoy things you have to do. It is true. But, but it is like a, a major component that, you know, I, I talk with a lot of like infrastructure teams who have, for example, like built out their Kubernetes clusters and their infrastructure. And they, they're always, they'll either explicitly say it, or you can kind of tell they're always a little bit like confused or upset that it doesn't get used more. Right. And, and oftentimes what's missing is what you were just going over is like, well, you got to go out and like tell people about it, not only tell them about it, but when there's success, like get them to help you like market it and go, you know, like it's a, it's a very, like you have to put a lot of effort, especially initially into just getting people interested in using it and using it and then spreading the word for you. Yeah. Yeah. That, that is a huge thing. And, uh, I know, like I was talking earlier about this consulting engagement we're doing. Um, that's kind of the problem that they had, you know, it was built specifically for one thing and, you know, their, their developers don't really know about it. And it, you know, it, and so in some cases in a lot of big organizations, what you see is they'll start building another platform that's similar. Like they'll ask for another platform, maybe they'll, or their business case. And it'll be very similar in like all of a sudden as an organization, you're paying for two different platforms that are specifically providing the same services because your development teams aren't talking. Um, and so, you know, getting, getting that word of mouth out and, and really talking to people and making sure that everybody's

aware of it. So, you know, it isn't, it is incredibly important. And so whatever that, you know, there's two different ways, there's that high level communication, like at our company, we have, you know, company communications or like town halls, you know, and sometimes, you know, you walk somebody through like newest platform we were launching. I just did a, you know, some information on it in the town hall. That's a good way to make everybody kind aware of it, but you also have to understand those, um, informal business, uh, you know, practices and informal business. Like, I guess I would say leaders for each of the groups and you can actually, you know, and so it may not be like going for me, you know, I could go to my peer who manages all development, but I don't really know that he's going to have time to go down or talk to all those developers, but if I know who are his informal leads, his formal and informal leads underneath of that, and even in some cases, the people who have the great personality, like I can tell you, I know who in the organization has a great personality who I can say, take this message out and they're going to go talk to 30 people because they like talking to 30 people. So understand those avenues, um, you're going to get a better adoption than just relying on, you know, the information going out in company emails or the information being done in a town hall. It seems like that, that raises awareness and it'll work a little, but that the informal communications that, you know, in internally within the teams, especially if you have a team member who can say, I did this and it was really cool and here's why, and they're willing to go talk to people about that, you know, that, that is actually probably going to be your best, your best chance of bringing new users to that platform. Yeah. And, and, and you, you also like, like you mentioned something that, uh, in there a little while back that made me think of like one way of expressing the business case of happiness,

like, which is, you know, if they're not happy, they're going to make their own thing or, or, you know, we're going to have more than one or, you know, depending on the size of the organization, we're going to have more than two or three, like we're going to have too many, uh, ways of people solving this problem. And that is a lot more, a lot more quantifiable as far as like, and now we're paying for all of this stuff. Right. And then, you know, and, and then just to pick one thing, I mean, you have, you have, uh, a security background and then, so that also means that like, and now we have to pay for another like set of security, like controls and audits and stuff, like for all these additional things. So if we can reduce down and then there's all the other things, right? Like if we can, if our, if our theory, which as you're saying has been proven out several times is that, that the, the more we socialize or make happy, make happy, have, have happy developers, then we actually can have a really direct, like, you know, spreadsheetable number here that over, over the long-term we have just one place that things are done. And, and I would imagine often, I mean, many of the organizations I talk with that's, they're starting with too many platforms. Right. So, so you almost don't have to convince them of that being the case. They're like, yes, that's, that's our problem is like people went off and did all their own stuff. So now they will understand a lot more that like, you need to do all of this marketing and, and socializing of it and just target happiness. Otherwise, whatever business case and ROI you had is not going to work out very well. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it sounds very cliche and people have been saying it for years, but, but productivity, giving developers, giving them the ability to be easily productive with less frustrations, you get more work put through because like, I can tell you before PCF, like we had some automation in place, but it wasn't, it wasn't what we have now. And the developers used to have to put

in a series of tickets and that always led to frustration because, you know, then you had all these different people working on it. Like you had a ticket for the DBA team and you had a ticket for the system administration team and you sent you tickets for the security team and then the network team. And you like, all those things have to happen in concert. And if one of those things gets messed up, like, let's say you have 10 tickets to launch a project. If one of those things gets messed up, then, you know, all of a sudden it's all brand new. So you're pointing fingers, you're trying to figure out which part isn't right. And you're, you know, there's a lot of frustration to it. And and we found that that ain't a lot of developers time. And then it also made them very unhappy, which, you know, we all hear about these things, but really we've seen the benefits. Like there's no way there's been programs that we've launched, you know, that, you know, in 2020, we won the CIO 100 award because of work that we, that we did for our customers that was incredibly impactful. But the truth is we had such a tight timeline that on that project, that the developers weren't fully enabled. That would have been a whole different story. I mean, it would have, we probably still would have gotten it done because that's how we are. It will magnify. But, you know, instead of everybody celebrating that as a success and it being like a happy story and like really like a success story, that would have been a success story for the customer. But internally, there's a lot of hard feelings now, you know? Right, right. It would have been the thing where everyone needs like a, some bonus vacation to recuperate and get their mindset. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you, you, uh, you mentioned this a little earlier, earlier, but like how, uh, I mean, it's related, but somewhat of a new topic. Like, I don't know, what, what, what do you think about Kubernetes? How is that fitting into everything? Like, where, where do you see since, since you're, you know, have used PCF and TAS for a while and other things like, how is that fitting into the portfolio that you have? What's, what's it doing for you? What's the, the need?

So Kubernetes, so Kubernetes is a more flexible platform. You can put things on it, like apps on it that you can't put into a very opinionated platform like TAS, like, uh, the Tanzu application service. And, and so, but what we found is that it's not as easy for developers. Like our developers, they push their code and to get, and then there's a series of checks that it goes through and then an approval sign off. And then it goes to production. Right. And like, they have to write these, you know, actually they don't even have to really write the YAML file. So we're trying to build that same thing for Kubernetes, but it's not as opinionated. There's more things that the developers could do with it. And, but at the same time, it's harder for them. It's, it adds an extra layer of complexity to them. And our developers, I don't want to say spoiled because, you know, there's a good reason for them being spoiled. We spoiled them to like, you know, make them super happy and makes them super productive. But Kubernetes, you know, is going to have certain business cases. It, you know, that's, that's what I'm seeing with it so far, because it's not as easy. And if the developers can, in our case, the developers can take the easiest, more, most effective path, you know, they're delivering value to the customer and they're going to do that. You know, the faster that they can do that, the more value that they can deliver. So it's not something they're doing selfishly, but you know, if they're getting to get the same value from using another platform that's faster, they're going to do that. And that's, you know, it's a benefit to the customer as well. So, but Kubernetes is definitely, I mean, we've been working with it and we implemented like, so one of the things is, you know, we've implemented a couple different levers of it, but most recently we've been implementing TKG and we struggled with it at first. Like we, you know, we didn't fully implement it because, you know, before TAP came out because I knew my use cases on that were limited and people

were going to be unhappy with it, but we had started rolling it out and then TAP came out and we quickly adopted that. And that solved a lot of, it solved a good portion of that, you know, the same issues, right? The same worries about, you know, not having to, you know, have everything automated or having these check plate check marks. So we built the whole supply chain there and did it with the development teams. And so we made it an easier to use version of Kubernetes. And so we're trying to get that same level of automation out of Kubernetes that you do in TAS. But I think part of the, part of why TAS is so easy for developers is it's very opinionated. You can't break, you can't break the whole platform. Developer, you know, it's just like, it won't let them do that. In Kubernetes, we've had apps deployed that have broken a cluster. And so it puts more onus back on the developers. And, you know, it, I think it's incredibly important. I think it's the way of the future, but I think the abstraction, I think companies need to keep working on the abstraction layer so that it's a better developer experience than it currently is. And TAP was a huge step forward, but really, you know, across the board, it's still not as easy as, you know, um, whether you think about TAS or whether you think about, um, cloud run and like GCP, like all those types of services, they're easier to use than Kubernetes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I think, I think it's only, I mean, as I'm sure you've, you've witnessed firsthand, right. It's only in the last, I don't know, let's, let's say two years or so. What, I got to check you what year it is. I'm always forgetting, but like, like, like two years or so that there really is like, uh, uh, a lot more attention to that developer layer in, in the Kubernetes world. Right. Like there was just, just getting the, the orchestrator, the, the,

the container as a service layer all set up was many years of work. And, and now, now it's great. There is more attention to, uh, to that layer and hopefully they'll, uh, they'll, they'll be a lot more, but yeah, it's, you know, there's, there's the idea that floats around every now and then that like Kubernetes is, is, you know, meant for building platforms, not an end platform on its own, which I think is, uh, what, what you see a lot of nowadays, but, and then also like, I think, you know, you know, I, I'm always interested in, in, in what people say in response to that question, because there's, there's a weird moment in, in that technology of, as you were just saying, like, there's, there's agreement that it's the way of the future. Right. And then, and then, and then people say, but it's also very difficult to use and we're not like using it for everything yet. And so like, it is, it's, it's an interesting study, speaking of marketing of how this, how, how a technology gets kind of over, as we used to say, the chasm, or it gets to that inevitability that everyone's interested in it. And they like, are willing to basically code develop with the, the, here, the Kubernetes ecosystem, like finishing it out, which is like, it's, it's almost impossible to track down, but, but it's, it's probably, I don't think it's the only way that like a, a technology sort of wins, but it's one of the major ways that it happens, that there's just this inexplainable, like everyone agrees, this is the one, even, even though we're not all using it, like to maximum effect, uh, at the moment. Yeah. It was interesting because we definitely had some people in the organization when we first were implementing TKG. You know, you have people who love like our, I always think of our solution architects that will make, they love playing and tinkering and like learning new things makes them very happy to have it and play with it. But like, it's not a successful platform unless you actually get, get it out to the masses and people are deploying to it.

You're not going to make your money back. You're going to, you're going to miss your ROI factors. Right. Yeah. You're going to need a lot of, uh, yeah. My, my dog gets very excited as well. There's no fertilizer or trains, uh, but I've got this dog. Thankfully, mine are, mine are upstairs, otherwise they'd be barking their heads off too. Yeah, exactly. Uh, yeah. So, so the last thing I was going to ask you about now, uh, you know, we mentioned you, you have a background in security and, uh, you know, when I, when I've, when I have watched you talk a few times, you're very, uh, uh, very interested in getting more, more women involved in technology. Cause I, I remember one, one story you told is that, uh, was it, was it a security conference that you went to or like, like a meeting and you were like, you were like the only woman there. And, and, and, you know, I mean, there's, there's what, what, what I liked about the way you, you talked about doing, you know, how, how you go about this is, is like, it's almost like, I don't understand why more like everyone and more women should want to be in tech. It's great. Right. Like, so, so you're, you're, you know, you spend a fair amount of time, uh, evangelizing for it. So like, what, I mean, like what advice do you give other people who are, who also would want to go kind of evangelize to bring more women in? Like, what are the techniques you use? Like what you're looking out for? Like what's the toolkit, uh, that, that you can give out? So I don't want to stereotype all women because I'm super nerdy and the nerdy stuff gets me super excited. But I think for us to be very successful and bringing more women in it, I think we need to, to openly acknowledge there's all these different roles in it because when I've met so many women, including my own niece, um, um, which I've told the story over and over again about how, you know, she lived with me and she was interning at one magnify. And when I would say to her, you know, when she was in college, going to it, she would act like, you know, I was trying to make her miserable and run her life.

Uh, so long story short, eventually she came into it and she is now a desktop administrator. She's gone through a couple different administration bases, but she really loves the desktop administration. Like, um, and I said to her one day, I said, what are you loving about your job? And she said, I help people all day, every day. And so there's these, all these different stories of different types of jobs that women could, you know, potentially gravitate towards, um, in different personality types. But I think, I think when we talk about it, we only talk about the tech. And so in some cases we're actually missing a lot of, you know, a pretty good demographic because, you know, um, there's a lot of women have brought into IT that don't, they don't want to be an developer. They don't want to be a system admin. They don't want to play with the newest, coolest tech. They want to be able to help people. They want to be able to work in a job where they feel like they can have, you know, they can have an impact, you know, from like all these different aspects, right. From a cultural aspect, from the marketing aspect, from, you know, social aspect. And so there's all these different jobs in IT. And I think we really only talk about two types of jobs when we're really out trying to promote it to people, kind of development and infrastructure jobs. And we know that there's project managers, there's product owners, there's agile managers, there's QA people, quality assurance people that are needed. There's, you know, there's help desk people. There's such a big, big, expansive, um, you know, amount of jobs that are available on IT. And I think that's the thing that we're missing. And then the other thing I think that women don't understand about, um, IT jobs is, you know, for women and for anybody, actually anybody. And I, you know, as much as I advocate specifically for women because of my own experience, um, I actually say the same thing for other underrepresented groups as well, is that it's, it is a field that's growing. You know,

we're not losing people in the field where we're growing with the need of for IT people and even especially cyber security are growing at like a good rate. It's a good pay field, right? So we, there's good salaries. It's, you know, you're able to live very comfortably if you're working in an IT field in most cases. And then, you know, there's a lot of flexibility. So for, for women, that's, that's a key thing because a lot of them, you know, tend to be primary caregivers, um, in, in a lot of cases still with statistic hasn't, you know, I know it's gotten better, but that's still a pretty heavy statistic. And so being able to have that flexibility means like, maybe you can work from home, maybe you could drive your kids to school, maybe you can go pick them up, you know, and you can, you can manage your schedule to make your life easier for yourself. And so I, I think we're not really out promoting all of that when we're talking to women. Um, and then, you know, I just was reading on CNN like a few weeks ago and they said the number of women in IT leadership, like CIO positions has dropped during the pandemic. Really went from like 2% to 1%. So those sell like a big drop, but like, that's like, right, right, right. That's one of the, yeah, yeah. I, it's, it, I like those figures that are like, it's, it's been cut in half, but it is. And then to your point, it was already tiny. So it's even worse. Like, yeah. Yeah. It's important for women to be able to see themselves in those career paths as well. Because, you know, if you come in, like our company is great about hiring women. And I, I don't, I can't actually say we did a concerted effort on it. I think it was more organic. We're a great place to work. We're a great place to work for women. Women told other women. So like we have 40% of our, over 40% of our IT department is women. And so, you know, people are like, how did that happen? And I'm like, cause you know, it's a great place to work for a woman. And so women would tell each other and, you know, it wasn't like we went out and did this specific marketing campaign for it. But

I think companies do need to start making specific marketing campaigns. And like the college programs need to, you know, when, when, when I was in high school, which I know is a million years ago, we all had that thing where we did the compatibility test and get told me like I should be. It was something that I, I don't think I could ever see myself, like maybe like a nurse or something. Cause I know there was blood involved, whatever it was or blood involved. And I like, can't pull you the blood. That's a good filter for a future jobs. Like, no, not interested in blood. Exactly. So, but the, you know, and then the next thing they said was psychology degree and then like all these, you know, things. And it's funny because, you know, I, I love, I love working in IT. I can't imagine being happier. And so even those types of programs and situations, we really do have to push bringing women in IT. And then in IT, you know, I, I got involved with, after I left cybersecurity, I still, I still like that career field. And I probably would have stayed in it, except for that experience that, you know, going to a conference and being the only woman in a room of about a hundred people was a little, very intimidating though. I can't say that was the only factor, but I switched, I switched my focus, but the number of women in cybersecurity is super low too. So how I worked with the women's security alliance, trying to bring more women into cybersecurity. Cause you know, they say that the numbers are like 25%, but those numbers are skewed by big companies from everything we've found. And I bet you the numbers are really closer to about, you know, 10, 15% of the women in cybersecurity. Employees in cybersecurity are women. Yeah. Yeah. I, I like, I like, you know, the, the approach you're going over, which is, uh, it's not, it's not demystifying, but it's just like, and not redefining, but like just going over that the, the jobs are normal.

Like it's, it's not some weird, like, like, uh, you know, strange expertise, like weirdos over there with, with, with a, with a strange lifestyle and like, you know, whatever it's not super, I guess, as you, as you said, it's not that it's super nerdy stuff, right. Which, which is, you know, it's, it's, it's similar to, uh, and then there's also just the aspect of like doing more marketing, like with the platform stuff we were talking about, right. Just kind of walking people through like, Hey, this is pretty good. Right. Like here, you know, like it, it makes your, uh, your day, the, the platform here makes your day-to-day life work out better. And similarly, like, I don't know, a job in it, like you were saying, it's satisfying, right. Like whether you're doing desktop administration or programming or whatever, like it's a, it's a good job, which, yeah, I think it is hard to like, imagine that like you could, one can be qualified to do an IT job. We spent so many like decades making it seem like it's really difficult. Yeah. Which, which is great for salary negotiations, but like it becomes very limiting when, uh, when, when you need to, uh, get more and more people involved in it. So that's, that's nice to kind of redefine that. Yeah. The other, the other thing I always stress is, you know, if you're building products, right. So like we're building marketing products for our customers. And if you have all men like it, if you have all men developing those products, in some cases, you're not considering like how different personalities think, right. There's right. And so I always use this example of this box that, that we got, we went and we got these earbuds and they were like super cool. And I was super excited to see them. I don't know why they were earbuds, you know, but so you get something new, you want to see it. And so driving back and, you know, my husband's an engineer at a box engineer, but he's an engineer, but, and so,

and I work at it. So we're both kind of really analytical people. And so this box, you know, it looks like on the ends that you open up the end of a box, right. You get a box, you open up one end, and then you go, this thing, I was trying to figure that out, but it was like the funneling me. And then my husband grabbed it and he stuck his finger and it basically was a box that like had a little box. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I was like, who'd sign this? Like, you know, this didn't even like cross my mind is that's the way that that would work. And so when you're building products, if you're missing key segments of the demographic, like women or like other underrepresented minorities, you're not building your best product. And, and, and, and, you know, and so companies should have, you know, that alone is a very strong reason that companies and universities and, you know, even high school should get involved and say, okay, you know, we're going to make this world a better place and more easy for everybody, but more on the top at the corporate level. If you don't have people representing all your potential customers involved, you're, you, you potentially are losing some of those customers because you know, I had a bad experience with that box. I still love those headphones, but you know, people, if they're, if it's an app and they have a bad experience with it because they can't navigate, they're going to go find something else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, most, most businesses want to work with as many people as possible and have, have as wide an appeal. So it's, it's, uh, it's good to have as many different people as possible in your organization to reflect that. And I think I, I, I know the kind of boxes you're talking about. I think I've been flummoxed by those myself. Like that. Yeah, that is true. Like just don't be clever with boxes. Right. People, people have a lot going on in their life. Yeah. Yeah. They don't, they don't need a puzzle. Yeah. That was kind of like a puzzle for me. Yeah. I said, cause they want to tear it apart, you know, but I'm like, I don't know how to get this box

open without tearing it apart. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Well, great. Well, well, well, thanks for, uh, going all over that, all over that, uh, with me. I think, I'm, I mean, I'm always really interested in, in, in how, uh, people are getting platform usage and, and getting them in place there. Cause you know, as you're going over, once you get something that is nice, that, that, that is automated enough and like self-service, like all of the great things that you want from a platform, it just lets you get on to the, the actual work, but it can be difficult to justify doing all this new stuff. And then as we've discussed at length, like marketing it, so people know about it and, and get the enthusiasm to not only use it, but like, like learn how to use it and, and go through that time. So, so that was great. Do you have, uh, do you have anything, uh, you want to point people towards if they're interested in more or like, I know you're in the vanguards and you mentioned the, uh, the organization that you work with, but, uh, what, what would you point people towards to, to look at more if they wanted to? Yeah. So, uh, the vanguards is actually, I'm glad you brought that up because that's a great. So if you have any of the Tansy products, having somebody in the vanguards gives you a leg up because you learn more about the products, you get like some insight into the products before they're released. You sometimes get input into the products before they're released. So that's a great resource for companies that want to build platform automation, especially in the Tansy space. Um, it's also a great, you meet a lot of great people in that. Um, I was just out in North Carolina and so I got to spend some time with the leaders of that, of that group and, uh, they're fantastic people. And I've met really people that are just fantastic and built really good networking relationships with people at other companies that, you know, sometimes they can help you fix problems faster too. And then on the personal side, um, definitely look into the women's security alliance. It's WOMSA.org. W O M S A.org. Um, it's a great place. Uh, if you have daughters and, you know, and, or, you know,

nieces or anybody who is looking for a good career option, you know, there's a ton of jobs available in cybersecurity. We're trying to fill those positions and increase the number of women. Um, yeah, I think that's, otherwise they can find me on LinkedIn. Yeah, well, that's great. Well, uh, I'll put links to all that stuff in the, uh, the show notes we have, which, which you can, you could find it too, if you wanted to, but you, the listener, uh, can just go to, uh, tonsutalk.com and, uh, search for this episode and find it. Well, uh, that, that was great. And, uh, we'll see everyone next time. Bye-bye.

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