The People Side of Building the Path to Production

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Here is a secret: tools are incredibly important to improving how your organisation develops software. There are plenty of tech tools that can improve how you build, deploy, and run software: containers, cloud, microservices, automated security scanning, whatever serverless is, and on and on. The tools people struggle with are tools of the mind, "thought technologies." If you need to improve how your organisation builds and delivers software, you're in for a fun ride learning and installing new cloud native technologies, but also learning and installing many new thought technologies. In this second part of our Path to Production webinar series, we'll cover the new processes and ways of thinking that you'll be "installing" when you're transforming how your organisation does software. We've all read the same books and threads that describe what the ideal end state looks like, but we haven't read enough practical descriptions of how new processes work and why they're a good fit for cloud native technologies. We'll cover: - Creating the strategy, vision, and business case for change, as learned from organizations that have done it successfully…and not so successfully. - Using techniques like OGSM and path to production mapping to pinpoint and plan for changes. - How development and operations needs to change to take advantage of cloud native platforms.

Transcript

1. © VMware, Inc. The People Side of Building the Path to Production Building a Path to Production: A Guide for Managers and Leaders in Platform Engineering, Episode 02 Bryan Ross & Coté Fall, 2023
2. © VMware, Inc. 2 Software implements strategy for breakfast Sources: “The Learning Never Stops at Liberty Mutual,” Jeffy Kelly; Monolithic Transformation, Coté; "Transformation Digitale de la Direction Enterprise France," Philippe Benaben, Gan Zifroni, Nicolas Gilot, Orange France, July 2018.
3. © VMware, Inc. 3 https://newsletter.cote.io Coté Bryan Ross https://bryanross.me
4. © VMware, Inc. 4 We believe that we need to reimagine banking to make banking simple, seamless, as well as invisible to allow our customers to live more bank less.” Siew Choo Soh, DBS Bank “
5. © VMware, Inc. 5 Sources: “Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey,” Gergely Orosz & Kent Beck, August, 2023. Every 1 to 4 weeks
6. © VMware, Inc. 6 Sources: various, including Changing Mindsets, Coté, 2021.
7. © VMware, Inc. 7 Lean Governance Chaos Command & Control “I hope the thing I’m building helps the company, is useful to customers, etc.” No accountability. Team autonomy with alignment. Fast and verified decision making. Commitments. “What we built is no longer important.”
8. © VMware, Inc. 8 Strategies The things you need to do to achieve the Objective 2 Objectives, Goals, Strategies & Metrics OGSM Framework Objective Strategy Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Objective The vision of what you want to achieve (outcome or impact) Goals The numerical articulation of the Objective Metrics Leading indicators to tell you whether your strategies are working
9. © VMware, Inc. 9 2 Larger market share means more revenue, usually increases share price Objective: Grow market share Strategy Goal: additional $50m in sales by 2022 Metric: Revenue from sales Strategy: Increase transaction volume. Strategies The things you need to do to achieve the Objective Objective The vision of what you want to achieve Goals The numerical articulation of the Objective Metrics Leading indicators to tell you whether your strategies are working
10. © VMware, Inc. 10 2 Get more revenue by getting customers to buy more stuff Objective: Increase transaction volume. Strategy Goal: $30m in sales in 2021. Metric: Conversion rate. Strategy: Reduce friction in the sales experience. Strategies The things you need to do to achieve the Objective Objective The vision of what you want to achieve Goals The numerical articulation of the Objective Metrics Leading indicators to tell you whether your strategies are working
11. © VMware, Inc. 11 2 Theory: customers will buy more if it’s easier to check-out Objective: Reduce friction in the sales experience. Strategy Goal: Increase conversion by 10% in 3 months. Metric: Reduce shopping cart abandonment rate. Strategy: Optimize the check-out flow. Strategies The things you need to do to achieve the Objective Objective The vision of what you want to achieve Goals The numerical articulation of the Objective Metrics Leading indicators to tell you whether your strategies are working
12. © VMware, Inc. 12 Objective Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Objective St ra te gy Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Objective St ra te gy Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Objective St ra te gy Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Objective St ra te gy Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Workstream Level Program Level Business Level Corporate Level Objective Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Objective Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Objective Goals Metric Strategy Metric Strategy Don’t Forget • Name WHO is responsible • Delegate the HOW • Quarterly review • Use software to discover and validate WHAT to do • Change & adapt based on validated feedback
13. © VMware, Inc. 13 Source: “Scaling Success with Growth Boards,” Amy Herzog, 2019.
14. © VMware, Inc. Code at a consistent speed and quality in the face of changing requirements. PRACTICES • Pair Programming • TDD • Short iterations • CI / CD Understand the user and their needs and problems. Solve for them. PRACTICES • User Interviews • Ethnographic studies • Persona definition • Prototype creation Avoid building the wrong thing. Easily change direction if needed. PRACTICES • MVP definition • Lean experiments • Test assumptions • Data driven decisions Product Development Practices Extreme Programming User Centered Design Lean Product Management Understand how the system wants to behave. Architect for constant iteration. PRACTICES • Event Storming • Boris • SNAP • Patterns Enterprise Architecture
15. ©2022 VMware, Inc. 15 Platform-as-a-Product Changing the perception of your team from operational cost to become part of the value chain. Project mindset with bespoke design, specification and execution Rich portfolio of cloud platforms with regular updated feature set Complex orchestration of tickets performed manually by silo teams Automated, self-service platforms with well defined products Slow and cumbersome support requiring knowledge of org Modern, omni-channel, customer-centric experience Project Mindset Platform Mindset Cost Reduction Value Creation Platform-as-a-Product Source: “Platform-as-a-Superpower,” Bryan Ross, 2023.
16. © VMware, Inc. 16 Tanzu Application Service Tanzu Application Platform Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations Tanzu Labs
17. © VMware, Inc. 17