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2020-10-13
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HI, @scott.prugh and @ken.kennedy! Looking forward to your session in about an hour!!! So delighted you’re sharing your story!!!
Yeah. The streaming dropped and forced me to log back in...
@ken.kennedy @scott.prugh Can't wait to hear from you! Looking forward to your talk.
Are you on your 3G @john.cutler?
Is it as high as 4G in places over there now?
Hello! I’m here while my introductory remarks are playing — happy to answer any questions!!! 🙂
PS: holy cow, the difference in this launch vs. our first conference in June is like night and day. (For starters, pieces of the airplane aren’t falling off during the take-off run. 🙂
Morning! Question: any of the unicorns of 2014 behaving like horses now?
Great question! Off the top of my head, I’m thinking about 30% have “regressed,” usually due to a change at the top of the tech org. 😭 😭 😭
One of the unicors has a funny 1984 like story @ffion and I were told a year ago fit for maybe virtual happy hour. Must be in the 30%
Is it regressing or remaining? I saw agile flushed by new management and there are no two pieces intact in that puzzle after that. However flushing the CD from version control is a bold move rarely seen.
We have come a long way at CSG!! https://techbeacon.com/devops/10-companies-killing-it-devops-2020
Are you saying some horses got to it at better times and overran them? @ferrix
that is very cool indeed @scott.prugh
I am saying that culture is demolished but some of the assets remaining will erode.
Also, it takes more to be a unicorn than it used to :unicorn_face:
Funny thought: The "bottom" complains that the "top" need to be more and more involved. But the "top" often complain that they cannot get anything done with out participation from the "bottom".
^^^ Some amazing insight on this phenomenon from the CrossLead team (@david627 and @jessica.reif) later today, and @steve773 tomorrow!
Thanks for sharing that “Experience Report” format Gene. I can reuse that for a webinar I’m doing next week.
Would be a good little blog post to publish that format and explain why you use it.
“…then took advantage of a crisis that presented itself, leading to a rebellion of their own.” The theme of “never waste a crisis” shows up so many times in talks this year!!!
For those looking for the “full screen” option on the video player, refresh the page and you should have that option in the lower right of the player now.
![thankyou](https://emoji.slack-edge.com/TASMB716H/thankyou/562b88f98298b28b.gif)
oh so that’s where “scenius” comes from. Makes more sense for those Idealcast episodes 😄
Our scenius seems very much like a “community of needs”: https://theitriskmanager.com/2015/04/19/communities-of-need-community-of-solutions/
Genius created by scenius... that is great. Seems like blameless post mortems would be a big part of success there.
(Holy crap. I just learned that @alex and @patrick.debois256 just pushed an HTML change just now for the Watch page to enable full screen video. 🤯🤯🤯 Thanks to that, you can now watch video in full screen!!!)
haha... tested in production. it works.
@rikard has whatsapped to tell us before you did!:) how cool. Reality TV of DevOps
PS: Slack archive of DevOps Enterprise lives here: https://devopsenterprise-archive.itrevolution.com/general/2020-10-13
Gene, video cuts are rare. How many takes did you need? 😄
Great editing then 😄 I produce some videos so it’s all interesting to see how other get on that regard. :thumbsup::skin-tone-3:
Thanks @patrick.debois256 for helping us keep this virtual event running smoothly! Your paranoia and aplomb are always a source of awe and amazement!!!
![thankyou](https://emoji.slack-edge.com/TASMB716H/thankyou/562b88f98298b28b.gif)
In a few minutes, please welcome our opening plenary, speakers @ross.clanton508 and @maya.leibman for Q&A! @ross.clanton410
PS: @adam: I used Descript to edit some of the footage (and Idealcast podast). It’s freaking amazing. You edit the text, and it cuts the audio/video. It is incredible. https://www.descript.com/ There was a segment I did for London with @mik and Dr. Carlota Perez that required over 300 cuts — could not have done it w/o Descript.
@genek101 indeed. I’ve used that for http://smallbatches.fm. SO much faster compared to editing raw wave forms
Been looking forward to hearing from @ross.clanton508 and @maya.leibman - sounds like quite the story
Thank you in advance for modifying your Slack profile, to help enable even better, more serendipitous and mutually exothermic interactions!
ask the speaker was by far the best feature and collaboration about London IMO. Excited to engage with all of you again in this way!
and #ask-the-speaker-more is a great addition
Good morning @ken.kennedy and @scott.prugh! Nice to see you on here and I look forward to hearing the lastest from you.
How long after the conference before the videos are released to YouTube?
We’re hoping to have all videos publicly viewable by end of conference. It’s a NYTimes-style paygate — watch up to X videos for free. We’re planning on publishing a portion to YouTube.
Yeah, interrupting the speaker with a question is okay and not rude at all virtually. Love it!
@jeff.gallimore How do new BOF sessions get created, if there's interest?
@nickeggleston post the topic in #birds-of-a-feather to gauge interest. then if you want to host something, bring your own Zoom account — just post a link. that said, if the topic is close enough to one of the existing BoF themes, you might just bring it into one of those sessions to get instant traction.
@patrick.debois256 I remember at the end of London's conference, you asked for feedback on things that could make the video player better. I noticed those improvements! Thanks for working hard on those!
@dominica for Lean Coffee, will we be able to wander easily into different coffee circles in the Zoom tool?
Hello. I don’t see the bof- channels in slack. Will they be created later?
Dropbox: http://itrevolution.com/DOES20-db GitHub: http://itrevolution.com/DOES20-git
Here's the link to view the presentations, aka the WATCH page: https://doesvirtual.com/watch
PS: I’m such a huge fan of the video library — all the London videos are in there, too. And I’ve used it so much in the last couple of weeks, to help prepare for this conference!
Hi Ann. Thanks for the watch link. For what it is worth, that link is hard to find in the ITRev website, on the events.itrev page etc.
do we have access to the videos and slides only 7 days?
Awesome intros @genek101 and @jeff.gallimore!
![thankyou](https://emoji.slack-edge.com/TASMB716H/thankyou/562b88f98298b28b.gif)
Please welcome our first set of amazing speakers!!! @ross.clanton410 and @maya.leibman from American Airlines!!!!
@ross.clanton508 - OG - I miss you at Target
@lucas.rettig Why don't you come to American Airlines and work with Ross here?!
@maya.leibman where inside the org the excitement for DevOps transformation origninate?
@nickeggleston The excitement is both top down and bottoms up. We have terrific leaders who are paving the way and we have a lot of grass-roots practitioners who are filled with infectious enthusiasm.
@maya.leibman Looking forward to no more mainframes 😉
I have had the joy (and tears!) of being a part of what @maya.leibman is talking about right now. Awesome!
Me too! It's awesome to hear the journey we've been on here at American
“[Hearing the business complain about IT taking so long] just killed me…” — @maya.leibman
Value Stream mapping - learning from each other about how work REALLY happens!
“Our business interpreted MVP to mean Maximum Viable Product”" — so amazing, @maya.leibman!!! I just love love love your story!!!
@maya.leibman how long ago did you start this journey?
@denee.ferguson We started really talking about this in earnest about 4 years ago
@maya.leibman @ross.clanton410: what was the most successful self-paced learning?
Thanks @maya.leibman. I was wondering if there was a particular course or set of courses on Udemy that you feel had the biggest impact?
We set learning journeys, curating various courses for different roles/skills. We could deep dive on this more in our networking session this afternoon if there is more interest...
@maya.leibman What was the make up of the team(s) that went through value stream mapping exercises? All Devs? Devs + QA? DevOps engineers? Who else?
The ones I personally led were a combination that depended on the team. If there were DevOps engineers they were engaged, but the team breakout was product team specific. If they had QAs we had them involved since their work factored into the current value stream.
We try to have both business and IT in the room - lots of a-ha's in the process...
@maya.leibman, @ross.clanton508: How do you get out of business case death spiral?
You really need forward thinking people in Finance. Have your folks call our folks
"A process designed to make you give up" 💯
such a reality… I used to be told “make your finance partner your friend” quickly followed by “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” back in the day
Ours was 1.5 years from request to approval ! Same process
“Our financial approval process so was painful that it deterred people to ask for money. Projects often finished before funding was approved. Even Finance knew things needed to change.” — @maya.leibman. (Sorry for mangling the quote.)
PS: just found this picture from Velocity 2013 conference where I met @ross.clanton410 !
ROFL... That's where we met. That day completely changed the course of my career... 🙏 @genek
“Do whatever it takes to make your product awesome.” “People were like, ’You mean, I don’t need to write [an onerous] ‘5 Point’ to execute on this initiative?!?” — @maya.leibman 😂🎉
and a 5 tab excel spreadsheet with all future costs and resource identified for the next 5 years
reminiscent of Mike Lord's presentation on "The Alignment Trap"
What metrics were you measuring and are you now measuring @ross.clanton508 @maya.leibman?
Just getting back up to this question. Hopefully our evolution of measurements (inputs -> outputs -> outcomes) answered this.
amazing to see year 1 to year 3 and the metrics Maya is showing. I’m interested in year 4 and 5 🙂
— @maya.leibman “The outcomes we want: • Make money • Improve Ops • Increase LTR • Reduce cost” vs. “# of people we sent to Agile training”. cc @mik (The Nokia Trap!!!)
The big KPIs are around frequency of airline-grounding problems and the time to restore and then vulnerability management. If those are in check, we're in a manageable spot
Hi, How did you do in order to sense the outcomes per project, overall?
“fix it as we go” < an incremental approach? seems quite agile of you. 😄
Can we pause the video so @ross.clanton508 and @maya.leibman can catch up with the Q&A? 😅
@maya.leibman Change the finance model to empower the teams to pivot and adapt to meet OKRs - brilliant!
such a fan of Sam Walton quotes and thought… coming from a Target guy…
“Tortured discussions.” I love it. So good. It’s such a wonderful description of this dynamic… @maya.leibman
What was the methodology/taxonomy behind your cost mapping exercise? Curious, did you use/implement or leverage TBM? @maya.leibman
We created a taxonomy of products (oriented around experiences & capabilities) then mapped funding to the products & product groups.
Thanks. That sounds significantly more granular than TBM. It was difficult to read the slides in the live presentation, I will definitely take a closer look.
And what roles were represented?
We didn't leave anyone behind. We asked everyone to participate (all 4,000!). Initially we didn't have any central team leading it. Now with Ross we have about 30 people (including coaches) who are pushing.
What was the role (or roles) of those making the invitiation to 4000 people, and what was the resonse from that large community initially?
One of the most difficult parts of a transformation is not leaving anyone behind. easy to just say jump on or your OUT!. lol
12 pizza meetings - often to make one key decision (or none at all). Not what empowerment looks like...
Agree @maya.leibman! Kudos to you for having the courage to start where you are!
@ross.clanton410: how do you measure/monitor cultural progress?
I'd love to say we have that one figured out, but we're still working it. Very open to ideas on how to do it though.
One question we used at TIM was in a survey asking something like “Do you believe there is mutual trust and respect within your team?” … across teams? … between departments? In our first survey we had a very low baseline. When that came up we felt we were making progress. < @ross.clanton410
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast"
@ross.clanton508, in your Operating Excellence track, were any changes implemented in the HR group to assist with the transformation?
We have HR representatives on each working group, but we haven't made changes in the HR group yet. Mainly, we don't feel those artificial constructs are holding us back...yet.
@ross.clanton508 - who is your Inner Source evangelist ?
We have a bunch of evangelists. We plan to discuss Innersource later at our networking session this afternoon. You should come check it out...
Shout out to the culture working team at AA who helped create this!!! PSA
I love seeing the pre-Covid pics of people actually working close together. The good ol' days. 😞
It is. BTW... I consulted there the last half of 2019 and first half of 2020. Good times.
might have been Ross that implemented “Make Decisions, Not Decks”
i still have the sign hanging in my conference room
How has COVID impacted the transition and organization? What's been good/bad about it, and where has AA embraced RemoteWork?
In many ways we've gotten more productive with COVID. People enjoy having the heads down time. But we also need the ability for teams to come together and we've started bringing folks back in order to get the best of both worlds
Start finishing and stop starting!! @ross.clanton508 @dominica
@ross.clanton410, how are you dealing with listening to your own voice right now? I am in a panic thinking about how I need to sit in this Slack and listen to my own voice tomorrow for 30 minutes. I've avoided listening to my own voice for decades and somehow Gene has disrupted that. :man-gesturing-no::man-facepalming:
Maybe just read the comments and reply without having the video playing? 😄
It's kinda weird to hear it for the first time live. Y'all are keeping me busy with Q&A though so it's more like background noise 🙂
What struggles were there in trying to work across hierarchies? often there is some turf issue...
We're definitely still working on that. Change is hard. The words we're using is "Empower teams and try not to put our personal leadership stamp on everything"
@ross.clanton508 to help people live those values/principles for scaling, at what stage did you need to change the personal incentive/reward system?
The PSA values are relatively new in our transformation. We had a previous set, but these simplified them further. now working on the incentives/rewards around it..
I love them. At Barclays we found that, in the end, line management often have more discretion than they realise and whilst the "late majority" population make noice about the incentive system it perhaps was not as much of a blocker as sometimes presented.
@maya.leibman great to see you again, at least virtually. We met and chatted back in the day, in your old job, on the One World MegaDO. Glad to see you excelling in your IT role.
BTW, it was awesome seeing @ross.clanton410 and @maya.leibmanin the beautiful American Airlines studio — we recorded remotely, assisted by the capable AA AV crew.
Did you remember to put the tray tables up and return the seat back to its full upright position when you were done?
It's fine to have a Napoleon costume... its the complex that is the problem. 😉
Here is the link to The Seat at the Table: https://itrevolution.com/book/seat-at-the-table/ And the eBook is currently on sale for $2.99!
Ross mentioned two book titles....does anyone recall the titles?
@maya.leibman and @ross.clanton508 I had a couple of questions of where you are in terms of the thinking on how to encourage speaking up and if impression management is a concern but they can wait, you're utterly -and expectedly- overran with questions today - you'll be answering these for days 😂
I love getting new book recommendations from @ross.clanton508
@chris.movick “Measure what Matters” is the best place to start with ORKs. https://www.hawkins.io/book-review/measure-what-matters/
I have a non-popular opinion of OKRs when they are used as a mindless replacement or when they eskew the people work -which they too often do-
Pretty sure I agree with your opinion. OKRs are not individual performance metrics.
It's old but stands I think @bryan.finster - BTW hello! https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/psychological-safety-hard-lets-try-okrs-instead-duena-blomstrom
OKR = Objectives and Key Results
"The way leaders are engaged aren't through status meetings." @ross.clanton508
“The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization’s ability to learn and adapt faster than the competition” — @schmark
google OKRs, they are becoming pretty common
“To enable safe travel, we need customers to be able to have touchless kiosk check-in, even if they have bags” — @ross.clanton410
Would love to hear some examples of what "empowerment" really looks like. It can be a buzzword. But it might be representative of something deeper (that we want)
@jackvinson We still struggle with this. The words we use are "empower teams and try not to put your own personal leadership stamp on everything." We just need leaders to realize their job is to remove impediments. And need to control trying to change what the team is doing.
I liked that value statement. It implies more of the in-service-to mentality, rather than having to prove "my" value (as a leader).
I like the line from Team of Teams : eyes on, hands off. Teams need to provide transparency, and that transparency allows leadership to let the teams make decisions. Then it is the job of the leaders to endorse those decisions to reinforce that the team had the authority to make the decision.
I enjoy Christina Wodtke's take on OKRs in 'Radical Focus'
@maya.leibman @ross.clanton508 Do your (network) infrastructure teams also utilize the product focused model?
Definitely making a push towards IaaS but in the meantime they function as platform products
145% increase in boarding pass cans, 17 sec reduction in checkin time (huge improvement for people who would otherwise wait in lines!)
"ditched the release calendar" - this is music to my ears
http://AA.com crazy North Star goal: PR results in production deploy in an hour: “literally, people were laughing all around the room.”
@jason.johs @asgeir.olafsson @erica.morrison Lets do this!! PR to prod in 1 hour!!
I love those audacious goals, particularly when you achieve them 😉
“code deployment lead times dropped from 3 weeks to one hour. 40 deployments in last month”
@ross.clanton508 @maya.leibman Thanks for sharing the setbacks as well as the successes. Each transformation journey has common patterns, irrespective of industry...it is strangely reassuring to hear we are not alone.
@ross.clanton410 how big a role did automated testing make in this transition to CD?
It was a key part of our success. Breaking the deployments into smaller chunks and driving testing automation were two necessary hurdles we had to overcome to get to CD.
https://devopsenterprise.slack.com/archives/C015DQFEGMT/p1602606576334300
On Legacy COTS: Loyalty product runs on Siebel CRM: 50+ automated deploys! (This is amazing!!!). “Conversation changed w/business: business often waiting for changes; now we can deploy more frequently and faster than they can accept. Now business/product team trying to optimize end to end experience.” Awesome!
I love this: "We need to shorten lines at the airport" instead of "I want to create a pop-up..."
Thanks AA for all the things done this year related to frequent flyer extensions. Tough to maintain levels when you can't travel.
I think what @maya.leibman is saying right now will be what will be taught in all next-gen MBA programs, or in wherever leaders go to learn what they need to learn. Thank you!!!
I hope it gets taught... the alternative makes me cry.
I can take this straight to higher ups in my company. Framing is really important. My gut tells me this will really help product owners collaborate with engineering.
I already pinged the whole management team on company Slack about this... publicly 😄
@maya.leibman @ross.clanton410 Curious if your leadership focus leans more Transformational Leadership or Servant Leadership focused (or if you emphasize different things at different leadership levels)? I'm having this debate within my org right now. A potential trade-off we're having is the pendulum swing from prescriptive to servant leadership is creating a gap in people focused on vision and strategy.
I think it's a bit of both. Transformational in how we focus on vision and outcomes. Probably more Servant in terms of how we want leaders engaging with and supporting thier teams.
The job of each of the layers above the team is to remove the impediments that the teams are facing.
Continue the conversation after this presentation and visit #bof-american-airlines cc: @ross.clanton410 @maya.leibman
now I need a wookie mask…. can I expense that?
“The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow” …I’m pretty sure you need to expense that Wookie mask. yw.
This underscores the criticality of support from leadership for success
@ross.clanton410 @maya.leibman Did you establish product teams for your shared IT Services?
Yes. I actually own many of these shared services as I have most of the infrastructure products in my org. We treat our enablement shared services (e.g. Hangars / Dojos) as products too.
Would love to connect and understand the process you went through to formulate those product teams.
Would be happy too. You can join our networking session and see if we can cover some if it there. Happy to connect further later as well
Great, see you at the networking session; currently working on an effort to align our Infrastructure/Shared IT Services groups into product teams while the rest of the IT organization is under a similar transformation
Doug Parker, CEO, American Airlines: “Transformation is everyone’s job — the champions are not IT. It’s the business leaders’ jobs!” So good, @maya.leibman @ross.clanton410!!!
@ross.clanton410 what was the biggest headwind you had to break through to make the shift from releases in weeks to 1 hour?
@derick.stenftenagel honestly, it’s something we’d been trying to do for some time, with relatively low success. Each time, we had big ideas and big plans, it always came from ‘top down’ and we treated it like a large effort or a project. In that mode, we always seemed to struggle to invest enough time and tools etc in moving the needle. It always involved tool purchases and big up front roadmaps, and they were mostly about trying to automate what we already did. It wasn’t until we took a more informal “run at it” last year using an Improvement Kata, NOT as a big sponsored project, but as a few hours each week that people ‘with skin in the game’ - the actual people doing the work - voluntarily participated in. At that point, we starting making strides (really small ones at first, every couple of weeks) to just improve one thing at a time. The Improvement Kata was the key. The Improvement Kata allowed us to just inspect each thing we learned every day / week, and start asking things like “what if we just stopped doing this?” or “how can we just make this one thing better?” - The people involved were the people that owned these systems and processes, and quite honestly, at first, most of the big changes just came from changing process and removing gates. No tools, No tech. Our first “next target condition” was “Release 2x per week” - when we got there, we realized it was a burden and people were maxed out. The next “next target condition” after that became “release in the middle of the day” - each time we reached a new target condition, we relieved the burden on the PEOPLE and made sure to not make work harder, but smarter and smaller. Eventually there were so many people “all in” with their newly freed up time that it just snowballed. Happy to answer more questions about this in the #bof-american-airlines channel, and happy to connect directly with anyone who wants to know more. The tech and Kubernetes aspects are super cool as well, but they were definitely means to an end, versus a planned target.
Kudos to the amazing American Airlines IT organization! What a breathtaking journey you’ve been on!!! cc @maya.leibman @ross.clanton410
Thank you @maya.leibman @ross.clanton508. We have great leaders!!!
What hacks/techniques do you all use to create cheerleaders at the top of your orgs <!here>? This was an amazing case study @maya.leibman
I hesitate to think of hacks when we're talking about people, but I think you have to start with incentives, specifically how they align (and don't) with the mission
The right way has to be the easy way, and ideally the rewarding way
@sam793 We started with the willing and built successes that they could share with others - then we give them different platforms to share those stories
@steveelsewhere - agree, always interesting to reflect on how these incentives and measures influence the decisions get made, when these are not transparent its incredibly difficult to drive change and collaborate
@ana.torres love it, it’s so easy to try and go BIG fast especially in orgs as large as AA! But doing as you say, getting small wins, making these willing leaders heros one by one and letting that replicate is the right way to effect org wide change
I was going to say exactly that - changing whole orgs isn't possible and an exercise in futility. Maya's story about the business advocates meeting was true. But we now have quite a few business leaders at the table and actually making change happen in their orgs.
THANK YOU, @maya.leibman @ross.clanton410!!! @jessicam will post details on the American Airlines AMA. Right now. 😆
<!here> Attend the American Airlines Networking Event! https://devopsenterprisesummitlasve.sched.com/event/eqKJ
@genek101 Back in 2018 when we (with @jwillis) created the DevOps 2025 Strategic plan - a key goal was getting the CEO / Board of Directors to care about DevOps. I love that @maya.leibman got our first DevOps Enterprise CEO talk! 🙌✈️
Now would be a good time for a break in the session so we can finish up with the previous spearkers...
Yes... but... then I can't pay attention to the current talk... maybe it jsut a personal limitation.
Nobody has asked a question there, so probably not just you. 🙂
Changing channels breaks flow... it's awesome when it all goes into one video session and chat... just need to automate separating it into different buckets after it winds down... so hopefully later-watchers can come and ask follow-ups there. Hard to implement in slack, though, I am guessing. If only there were some Dev-types around... :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
https://devopsenterprise.slack.com/archives/C015DQFEGMT/p1602606811355400 Hence why I have the best seat in my house (literally) for this! :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
Excellent!! Thank you @maya.leibman and @ross.clanton508
And let me say, @scott.prugh was a bit uncomfortable about @ken.kennedy talking about him — but the entire programming committee asked him to “take one for the team,” so we could better understand the value that he’s created for the org. 🙂
We have an AMAZING delivery transformation journey here at American Airlines!
Great insights @ross.clanton508 and @maya.leibman about your journey! We at Advance Auto Parts are in year 2 of similar journey. Would love to connect
Hey Ravi, come see us at our networking session this afternoon and we can connect further.
“greatest value to our customers in the shortest sustainable lead time”
line one in all of our job descriptions
THIS --> "We focus is on optimizing the flow of work." @ken.kennedy @scott.prugh
Way to kick it <mailto:off@ross.cl|off> @ross.clanton410 @maya.leibman! Thanks for your leadership!
<!here> 👋 Let’s keep the conversation going! Maya and I will be joining the AA networking session this afternoon at 4:45 CST to have some fun and share our journey! In the meantime, join us in #bof-american-airlines and tell us what's on your mind in this 90-second survey and we’ll prepare the cabin for takeoff! ➡️ https://www.menti.com/9r5oiojq8n ⬅️
I’ve watched @scott.prugh talk about CSG for seven years — and it was still super, super super interesting to me hear talk about how @ken.kennedy talks about the company, and the different lens he views the world. Thank you!!!
Awesome presentation on our Delivery Transformation journey at AA @maya.leibman @ross.clanton508! Proud to be a part of the team!
Great Presentation , it was a good realization of how far we have come !
@scott.prugh @ken.kennedy "Greatest Value in the shortest sustainable lead time" 💯
I'm flying AA next time I fly somewhere...drooling all over keyboard...
@ross.clanton410 @maya.leibman what was your final solution on the funding model - did you manage to get out of project based funding especially with increased contention for dollars in the current climate?
@srinivas.sarathy We continue to improve our approach but yes, we still allocate funds to products and continue to work on OKRs so that they're truly outcome focused. We are continuously improving and working on leader mindsets!
Yep, funding is all allocated to products now. We're in year one in the new funding model. Still pivoting some project behaviors, but we are getting better every day at OKRs and prioritization of funding
The length of those titles right after the American Airlines slide... being President twice... yikes.
“750 TPS to 8000 TPS” — an order of magnitude increase in transaction volume… on technology where you paid by MIPS used!!! 🤯🤯🤯
We have de-centralized the majority of our releases. We have also localized change.
@scott.prugh what were the factors that determined “impact”? and what were the “sizes”?
We measure what is called an Impact Minute = MTTR * Failure Group Size
That gives us a measure of not just how long recovery takes but how many transcations, subscribers, etc are affected.
![thankyou](https://emoji.slack-edge.com/TASMB716H/thankyou/562b88f98298b28b.gif)
percentages of changes that result in degraded service, require a hot fix, or rollback
We currently measure rollback directly, since that can be instrumented. We re also tracking defect rates. I've no idea how to instrument the difference between a new change and a roll-forward hotfix on on a high performing team.
Change failure rate is an interesting one. With a high cadence of changes, no such thing as one root cause (a conflux of factors coming together), it can be hard to determine causality.
no doubt, as velocity increases the fuzziness increases.
We seem to get stuck on if my change completes by my measure, but causes impact to your product if that should be counted on the change failure rate. I was curious what others thought, thank you for your input.
If metrics are used to judge from the outside instead of helping things improve, then to goal will be lost. The goal is "how do we better serve the customer?" "I deployed and I'm fine, but it broke you. /shrug" doesn't serve the customer.
If people aren't focused on actual outcomes, then they need better incentives.
The book that was just mentioned is Accelerate: https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/
“180K call center represents. 1000 unique integrations. 2010. software releases were major events. Each release affected all customers. Often, releases required 2 weeks of triaging issues…”
Dropbox: http://itrevolution.com/DOES20-db GitHub: http://itrevolution.com/DOES20-git
That was fast, does this include the slides from the keynote and this current talk?
I haven’t checked. I think so. Videos of breakout sessions are available now, and the plenary sessions later: Video library: http://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com
Must be same with the slides, I don't seee the plenary slides yet
The dropbox link is populated but the Git one appeared empty to me.
@jeff.gallimore Roughly speaking, impact is determine by the % of functionality compromised times times the % of customers affected. impact minutes is derived by multiplying impact by duration.
![thankyou](https://emoji.slack-edge.com/TASMB716H/thankyou/562b88f98298b28b.gif)
“in 2010, release went in on Sunday morning. Monday morning, we realized we had a major problem. Going from bad to worse. Every application affected. My phone was blowing up with calls from CIOs from every telco: Comcast, Charter, Dish, …“. — @ken.kennedy. OMG.
This issue manifested itself as a DOS attack... Basically the protocol stack on AIX had differnet TCP/IP window sizes which caused packet backup and servers to tip over
Cannot over-emphasize the power of this --> "Our employees are 5 times happier" @scott.prugh 👏
“the hardware change was part of the release” < ??!!!!??!!??!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
stunning STUNNING lack of communication/coordination.
“How could you make it worse?” :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
But how many people do we run into who are convinced they WILL make it worse? (Reflecting bak to the AA discussion of preferring Action over Analysis)
“When Ken approached me, I was apprehensive. I had heard about the problems about SLBOS. The problems were legendary.” — @scott.prugh (This is so great. If I were asked to lead this, my first reaction would have been, “uh, is this a demotion?” 😂😂😂
And just for context, our customers' digital transformations fueled this explosive growth. Great problem to have... right?
Cost per TPS: from “$7306 -> $23.” This is so amazing. And the topic of @scott.prugh 2019 LV talk. So incredible.
recent aha moment: this kind of automation is a second Taylorist revolution. We are taking complicated releases process done by experts and making them simple automated process done by computers.
recent aha moment: this kind of automation is a second Taylorist revolution. We are taking complicated releases process done by experts and making them simple automated process done by computers.
Old ideas are new again. I think your analysis fits. :thumbsup::skin-tone-3:
I think one could even argue that depending on how non-identical your (pre-Infrastructure as code) environments are and how heavily non-automated deployments depend on who does them, many release processes fit the (Cynefin) definition of complex - doing what you think is the same thing as last time may result in different outcomes, resulting in major unpredictability. And of course in this case, any variation is usually in the unwanted direction.
I want to agree and extend @mathias.eifert. Even in the case where we’ve automated everything—or perhaps even especially in the case where we’ve automated everything—we can end up with emergent complexity. The interaction of lots of simple pieces, when there is interdependence, can yield unexpected complex responses.
Good point, @jtf! That's perhaps the underlying reason why monitoring the processes that we have turned "simple" (by constraining them through automation) for brittleness is a key counterbalance in order to maintain resilience.
I'm guessing it was a lot harder to measure the 'before' metrics than to measure the 'after' metrics...!
“One senior Ops leader: my job is to protect our customers from YOUR developers’ bad code.” — @ken.kennedy 😂😂😂😂
Sounds like the ops team was pretty customer-centric, though! #silverlinings
It is surprising how pervasive the thinking is that developers left to their own devices write terrible code. Does this happen with other job roles?
Aren't developers just optimistic? So experiencing the hostile production environment enlightens them on how to be better at their craft.
LOL "Protect the customers against the code" 🙈
“two organizations that lack empathy, you are not going to be successful” < 💯
Excellent description of the conflict created by different needs in the organization. There is a common objective, right? We all want the company to be successful?
"when you have two organisations with different goals then its not going to work" 💯
such a good story! this happens too often between dev teams and security too!
phenomenal success stories @maya.leibman @ross.clanton410. Proud to be part of AA IT Org :)
“I went to my boss, CEO, ’we need to change; we need one leader over dev and ops. if you make a decision, and it didn’t involve me, I’d go look for another job.” — @ken.kennedy Such a fantastic example of the leadership and courage required to crack some of these problems!!! 🙏🙏🙏
“…and once again, I reached out to @scott.prugh to help me solve this problem.” — @ken.kennedy 😂😂😂
Ops members are part of the same team that builds the software
We told them the job requirements were different. We told them we'd help them build the required skills. Some dove in. Some opted out of the company.
Need to ensure code quality from the devs? Make them carry the on call phone! Awesome! @ken.kennedy
Whoa devs on call - talk about personal responsibility - can only imagine the pushback
You have no idea. Question #1 was are we going to pay them more because they're going to be on call.
when i was a dev manager back in the day… i once had an ops manager tell me to “eat my own dog food” and then I was put on call. Let’s just say that i started pushing better code!
I love it! Creating a shared view of delivering value. Set the tone for the transformation - breaking the culture of “my”.
we did the same merged dev and ops however we are now struggling with developers not able to deliver with velocity and getting burn out
Not a lot of training outside of automation. We relied heavily on leadership and front line managers to lead the transformation
Devs on-call is a great way to improve service quality very quickly.
Devs on-call is a great way to improve service quality very quickly.
YES! They will script it instantly.
Yeah, I mean of course, it has to be done right, but too often devs are siloed away from problems the code exhibits in prod.
I used to be the dev sitting next to the ops guy doing repetitions. I saved him the next day.
The teams I support have been required to carry the on call phone. It makes it much more personal for them when they deploy code. 😀
I wonder how that impacts on NPS, Engagement, etc. Devs are so lucky to so often be in flow/zone and that's key to why they do what they do - the clean-up or fixing part is not flowy
clean up, defects, etc is a sign of low quality. Quality needs to be built in at the start, things like pair programming, swarming, test driven development, etc. Being on-call gives you a focus on high quality before you send your work to prod.
Seeing flames helps in building quality
DRI - Directly Responsible Individual - if your code is what breaks things in production - your phone rings
I am starting to develop a pet peeve against "blanket blameless" 🙂
DRI was explained to me by PM at Microsoft on how they drive code quailty and accountability while empowering devs to release on demand.
@cncook001 being on call and dealing with unintended consequences helps bring awareness to the wider effects of what one does....
Right. It leads to discussions how do I not get woken up for this code release. Things like multi region deployments, blue/green, canary's etc.
I agree with these comments. It really allows for accountability (which isn't a bad word) for their work instead of a false belief that operations is "someone else's problem". As stated above, quality needs to be in the forefront of everyone's mind from the beginning. I jokingly tell the folks I work with that it is their BBQ on Saturday that will be impacted if they don't think of quality/reliability. It usually only takes one time! 😂
Indeed. It definitely drives behavior in the right direction. And we know that there is no culture change by fiat, rather culture is created by daily behaviors. Therefore... change the behavior = change the culture.
@me1342 Blanket blameless sounds like too much. However, the "you make it, you fix it" at extremes is "you fail to fix it completely the first 48 hour shift, you are the one to wake for the next 48 hour shift, when your loaned time expires" is a dumb way to work. So, "actively claiming team responsibility" would be a better option where finding the culprit is trumped by finding the heroes.
Hmmm... maybe send an automated email to a person whose code was patched off-hours according to git blame... 😄 "Hey, did you know, someone made a change very late.. what could that have been?"
You need enough depth in the teams to have a healthy rota, and to be able to excuse the on-call person from project work so that they can directly fix broken prod things during the day without also needing to contribute to team output.
Good conversation... there is definitely tension between individual and team responsibility for issues related to code quality. Each "failure" is a learning and growth opportunity, and having a learning culture is important to the success of the business and happiness of the employees...but... if there's clear line of direct responsibility for the code and an expectation that you will be engaged if it breaks, then the risk of being called at odd hours should hopefully drive attention to both obvious and higher-order effects of a given change.
"when you have 2 orgs that plan work separately, you can't be successful" @ken.kennedy was moving to product teams the critical move that made the biggest difference in your change management process? Or something else...
This part of the story where dev and ops are combined is told by @scott.prugh and @erica.morrison in 2016: https://www.slideshare.net/ITRevolution/scott-prugh-erica-morrison
@ken.kennedy merging Dev & Ops teams - did you get pushback from the Risk organisation re: segregation of duties, and if so what was the agreement reached?
This was often justification for keeping Dev and Ops separate. We are regularly audited and you just need to show the right controls are in place. Design/Build/Run teams are key.
I agree - was just wondering what specific controls you arrived at. I'm collecting stories!
interesting talk on Change Management, one of the biggest pain points in our organization today. Would love to see what their Change Management process look like now, in more details
See our paper on this: https://itrevolution.com/book/breaking-the-change-management-barrier/
awesome, thanks Scott, will definitely check it out later
In terms of the transition for Ops -> DevOps, writing code, some people leaving, what was the timeline for Ops people to learn and change? I assume you still have people with more Ops than Dev skills, and vice versa, but what percentage of people ended up leaving?
Frankly, it took 18-24 months but getting the right tools in place was more of a long pole than upskilling. attrition (planned and unplanned) was close to 20% over those two years.
i just started making a list of the 5x and 10x developers i know… 🤯
should a technical leader still be writing code? would you be concerned if you saw your cio merging to master on a Saturday, at 3am?
Seems like the 10x devs might want to stay 10x devs. And be extremely successful that way. Reward leaders and 10x devs so you can have both.
completely agree Jeremy… these are the best people i know, so I’m going to think through who could be the 1 leader and start having the career conversations
Our entire senior leadership team were all lead developers at one time, but we all became sold on the idea that we could have more impact by leading than coding.
To a person, I think we all still do a little coding now and then. Love it too much to quit entirely.
To @scott.prugh: “I need you to evolve from a 10x developer to a 10x leader, so you can make a bigger impact. I couldn’t be more proud of @scott.prugh, creating more leaders.” — @ken.kennedy
Evolve from 10x dev to 10x leader - what specific steps and challenges did you encounter in your personal journey @scott.prugh?
I think they were tracking the percentage of features that were decoupled from the deployment, I’m assuming feature flagging or some of branch by abstraction approach.
We measure the % of features not batched into a release(ROD%). Basically it acts as forcing function to decouple features from a releases.
we had quarterly releases and no code drops between release. now 60-70% of our features are delivered when complete (released on demand). the batch size of our quarterly releases is that much smaller.
We had quarterly planning and quarterly release. We now plan quarterly and on demand and release every day.
For the record, @scott.prugh asked me when we asked him to talk about this: “I don’t really want to talk about myself. Are you sure anyone will want to hear this?” The entire programming committee finally convinced him that this community would benefit so much, despite his modesty. 🙂 (I remember @chawklady @jason.cox @dominica @tapabrata.pal @jeff.gallimore being quite vocal about this. 🙂 THANK YOU @scott.prugh!
Thanks for sharing that Gene. I wonder if imposter syndrome played a part in Scott's relictance to put the spotlight on his story.
Learn. AND share it. Figure out how to apply what you are learning and thinking. Think out loud!
One of the amazing things I learned from @ken.kennedy — I asked him, “Why is it so important for you that @scott.prugh creates more leaders?” His response: “Well, it’s because I keep getting handed larger problems, and I need him to help me solve them. And it can’t all depend on him.” A profound lesson in there.
So is this the path forward for a Brent or a Maxine? Does one cease being an IC or is that a different path?
Thank you @scott.prugh for emphasizing Psychological Safety. 🎉. Speaking of Psychological safety, @paula.thrasher is facilitating a Lean Coffee on this topic. Check out the #lean-coffee channel this afternoon to learn where and when to join Lean Coffees at 2:45 pm PT today. 🙂
Thank you @scott.prugh for emphasizing Psychological Safety. 🎉. Speaking of Psychological safety, @paula.thrasher is facilitating a Lean Coffee on this topic. Check out the #lean-coffee channel this afternoon to learn where and when to join Lean Coffees at 2:45 pm PT today. 🙂
Great that we're all speaking about it! Our session about Psychological Safety and Impression Management is on Track 3 day 2 at 2:05pm
Have you done any work on the interaction between psychological safety and imposter syndrome?
OMG! I love this. My nightly Slack thread to management is going to be extensive!
In absence of a culture for learning in an organization, what are some of the ways that you would recommend to inculcate that culture? Making it more specific, we communicate the importance of learning and add the personal development angle to it as well (we try to operationalize it using personal OKRs). However we still don't see enough of "Read and research voraciously". Do you have a recommendation for us to try some different strategies to create a culture of reading, learning and researching.
Your leadership needs to model the behavior you want to see. Start there.
Basically Change Behavior First to Change Culture. See Shooks Model of Change
This book illustrates a good way to shift the culture of a team to become a learning organization: https://www.amazon.ca/Around-Story-Turning-Followers-Leaders/dp/1591846404
How does Read and Research voraciously balance against the pressure to deliver features faster?
You can learn more about the book Accelerate that @scott.prugh mention here: https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/
@ken.kennedy: “To convince leadership of DevOps importance: 1) make the correlation for them: revenue, profitability, market share, customer satisfaction. share State of DevOps Report with execs, studying effects of specific practices with org performance;”
I like talking about the language of the executives. To an extent your executives are your customer. You learn to talk in the language of your customer rather than ask them to learn yours.
from that lens, everyone is a customer. and i feel often successful leaders know when to change their language.
💯 : changing language is a kind of empathy, and good communicators are great at speaking in a way that helps their listener.
@ken.kennedy “2) build trust; you must have a proven track record of success; business cases matter; budgets are finite;”
@jtf — totally agree. I love how these talks model the language/behaviors required to show that the work of this community matters, to people who matter!!!!
"deliver on commitments" ❤️
“nothing builds credibility like delivering on comittments”
Build trust by delivering on commitments. Definitely the quickest way to give the transformation team the space to just get on with it 😁
How have others justified the value of coaching investments?
At the end of the day, it's a sales pitch: Have a discussion with the person, learn their challenges, explain how DevOps can help with their problems, reference someone they may know that has realized the value already.
Kudos to the amazing team at CSG! It’s been amazing to see all your amazing achievements since 2013!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH, @ken.kennedy and @scott.prugh!!!!
@ken.kennedy @scott.prugh @maya.leibman @maya.leibman asked, "Is this bigger than DevOps" @ken.kennedy and @scott.prugh talked about Org Design, tying DevOps to Org Performance with Executives. I agree 100% And I love this stuff. But, is there a broader taxonomy to help my peer leaders and executives understand that this is DevOps? That DevOps is bigger than automation, pipelines, etc.? What do we call this bigger/broader thing? I've tried, "Hey, can we help teams have fun building cool stuff together?" Need some guidance here if anyone has thoughts or sympathy :)
@jonathansmart1 I remember at lean coffee you mentioned that "DevOps" in origin was left undefined so those using it would have to create and opertationalize their worn definitiions... Do I remember that right?
I love the callout of areas where they need help. That's transparency in action.
Please welcome @david627 and @jessica.reif!!! I’m so excited that @david627 is speaking again, with his fantastic colleague @jessica.reif!
@scott.prugh @ken.kennedy How are you measuring team member satisfaction or engagement in their work?
Great! I'll take a look at that. Thank you!
Fellow Navy vet.....submarine vet here!!! Thanks for you service
So excited for this: @david627 and @jessica.reif Good Luck!!
We've listened to @genek101 interview with @david627 and @jessica.reif on The Idealcast, but we're still looking forward to more learnings from this talk! https://itrevolution.com/the-idealcast-podcast/
Before I forget, you can find a link to @david627’s fantastic London-Virtual conference here: http://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=432219018 (In our amazing video library, which I LOVE using — I used it so much over last 2 weeks in prep for this conference.)
We’ve been working closely with the DOD- some amazing progress !!
I like this failure mode being described, projecting onto the other your own assumptions.
@jtf Yes, we all thing "they" are just like "us". (Except when we think "that would never work here"....)
describing what happens when the enemy operates on a cycle time faster than yours, a faster OODA loop in action
The structure and dynamics of the F3EA process is.. uncannily and eerily similar to something we’ve all lived with, right?!?
plan...do...check...act....or kill....
…until @jessica.reif mentioned it, I never had thought about the timing of birth of Agile movement and the timeline of Team of Teams….
It seems, almost Kuhsian, @jtf! (Dr. Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolution!)
a paradigm shift / change in dominant architecture perhaps?
https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thomas-Kuhn/dp/0226458083 Totally.
a breakthrough in information flow --> breakthrough in effectiveness has got to be a hallmark of the information age.
In vehicle development QA can consume 70% of the time to market
Good point @jessica.reif - @genek101 can the committee make it a desiderata for the next DOES?:)
If we got a million every time that gets mentioned outside these conferences, we'd have nearly a million.
Hahaha not entirely the case @ferrix I annoy people every day with it
Thank goodness, I am mostly joking.
Well, specifically when you ask people about "the best team they were ever on" they seem to spontaneously describe psychological safety pretty exactly
Trust, Common Purpose, Shared Consciousness, and Empowered Execution
"Capabilities of an agile ecosystem" - a lot like forming storming norming performing
I love the birth of the Ops Intelligence Call — created to enable fast, dynamic and distributed at scale, spanning hundreds of thousands of people, across the globe.
This is so relatable. Experienced it more or less when COVID hit us.
@david627 How do you get 3000 people to give a quick, timely update? @jessica.reif
following, to get notified when the reply comes
The format of the meeting relied on one person giving an update to represent a larger group (one leader representing a unit, for example). A consistent update format (similar to what is used in a daily Scrum) made it easier for them to prep for the meeting and know what they were expected to provide. We have seen parallels in organizations using “Scrum of Scrums” formats to track dependencies across teams.
"Build contextual understanding to empower decentralized execution" - love it!
That 120 number looks suspiciously close to Dunbar's Number, for the CG to know the person on the other end on a personal level
That’s referenced in the book (Team of Teams)
This liaisons is my fave part of Team of Teams book: the liaison that just took out trash and had Chick-Fil-A delivered to people.
He joined CrossLead after leaving the agency…and the sandwiches continued!
Putting on my combat shirt just for this topic.
BTW. The Finnish military (a reservist-based organization) leads with Deep Leadership which has 4 cornerstones. 1. Inspirational Motivation 2. Intellectual Stimulation 3. Individualized Consideration 4. Building Trust I think the "Idealized Influence" or "charisma" is not something 1/7 of the forces can have, so that's why the 4th I is different from Transformational Leadership.
“If it hurts to give these people up, taking them off the battlefield, you know you’ve picked the right people.” — @david627
frequency and size of the meeting as a function of the rate of change in the environment makes a lot of sense.
higher the frequency -> slower the rate of change?
works the other way… faster rate of change needs more frequent meetings.
You want to be able to digest the information being produced by the environment. If your rate of digest is slower, you fall behind.
Faster rate of change = faster rate of information generation = more frequent meetings to make sense of what’s being generated
@aaron.brohimer @laura.henry Sounds like our playbacks.
Transparency & Accountability - 2 big indicators of humility and self-confidence
“keystone forum meetings can reduce the need for many point-to-point meetings.” — @jessica.reif
less meetings on the calendar is the real dream! maybe even a kpi…
Yes! If we are doing something new (like this meeting), what things can we STOP doing? Rather than piling on more and more to people.
This is a great question. We often find there is an opportunity to consolidate existing meetings into a “Keystone Forum” rather than create a new meeting.
Gardener model of leadership is so good, so powerful.
Gardeners don’t make the plants grow, they create the right environment, they tend & nurture. < paraphrased from Team of Teams
So many good gardener analogies out there. Another one we use at CrossLead is the concept of “pruning the rosebush”. Enterprises naturally produce more good ideas than they can pursue - the prioritization process should mirror pruning, wherein the gardener (1) removes dead buds, which is easy, and (2) identifies mediocre buds that are pulling resources from the most promising ones.
I love the gardener approach to leadership. It always reminds me of Oogway's peach in Kung Fu Panda about the sacred peach tree. You can nurture it, care for it. You can chose where to plant it but it will always produce peaches.
There was also an old wiki pattern role called the Gardener which was a role in many teams.
“The leader as the Chess Master: where the big challenge is putting the right pieces to create the perfect fighting pose, controlling each piece. “vs. leader as the Gardener:” (who doesn’t actually create the fruits themselves. The plants do!). — @jessica.reif
guess where the bottleneck is when your organization is is managed using a chessmaster model? lol
@genek101 @david627 @jessica.reif @jtf David/Jess. Great contrast in traditional org chart vs. networked diagram. Gene and I have been talking about just such a migration to the right people to talking to the right other people at the right time about the right things, with a networked model as the most efficient (least friction filled, lowest energy) way to make connections. Why is top down needed? Because we need someone to do the triage to direct communication from one node to the node to which it must be appropriately connected. The image is almost like the folks through various layers acting like old school telephone operators running cables here and there “Hold for Mr Finney please. Hold for Mr. O’Callaghan please.” The network model works only if you can distribute that decision making/sense making/reconnecting. In times past, that couldn’t be done. However, now, when we can monitor traffic over the one-by-one linkages, tracking volume and content, we can organically morph the network based on highs and lows, having it reprogram itself. For a cool example of of a low energy way to get to low energy ways of staying connected see Secret Mind Slime (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/secret-mind-of-slime/) starting at minute 24:00.
@genek101 @david627 @jessica.reif @jtf David/Jess. Great contrast in traditional org chart vs. networked diagram. Gene and I have been talking about just such a migration to the right people to talking to the right other people at the right time about the right things, with a networked model as the most efficient (least friction filled, lowest energy) way to make connections. Why is top down needed? Because we need someone to do the triage to direct communication from one node to the node to which it must be appropriately connected. The image is almost like the folks through various layers acting like old school telephone operators running cables here and there “Hold for Mr Finney please. Hold for Mr. O’Callaghan please.” The network model works only if you can distribute that decision making/sense making/reconnecting. In times past, that couldn’t be done. However, now, when we can monitor traffic over the one-by-one linkages, tracking volume and content, we can organically morph the network based on highs and lows, having it reprogram itself. For a cool example of of a low energy way to get to low energy ways of staying connected see Secret Mind Slime (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/secret-mind-of-slime/) starting at minute 24:00.
Hardest part of this shift is getting buy in from senior leadership to empower teams to make the calls
very threatening to the leaders who see their role as being “the decider”.
I agree this is part of it. The next question then becomes: 'so what are we supposed to do' or 'what does that look like'
y.. concerns seem to have been focused on whether teams would do something "too risky"
Mid-managers are in a tough spot... Prove themselves to their superiors, and still be relevant to the teams.
They are often the first management to move... and the last. The final ones need two-way pressure from below and above.
We are seeing middle managers as being our biggest blocker for cultural change by blocking their teams from learning new skills, because they are "too busy"
We have a 70:20:10 principle (70 percent of "customer needs", 20 percent on "easier work tomorrow" and 10 percent on "learning and innovation) mandated from high-up-snow-on-top. that helps learning and improving no matter what the little boss says.
+1 for public channels, so hard to move teams out of point to point communications
Up to the leaders to model, to communicate in public channels.
I’ve found that I need to ask people who message me privately to repost in public channels.
This is genius Speaking Up principles training @jessica.reif
I love the advice of “favor public channels (Slack, Teams) over point-to-point communications (emails, texts): other people can learn from it.” — @jessica.reif I heard the CEO of Flowdock (remember them? competitor to Slack, bought by Rally Software) describe the value of public communications. Quote is in DevOps Handbook.
Oh, missed that in Handbook. I know some of those guys. Studied together in the Uni.
Public Channels over Point-to-Point, yes! 💯 I work with so many organizations that make this mistake.
People will gravitate naturally towards P2P and 1-on-1 and exclusive groups but if we can show the value of safe common conversations they'll embrace it
Why is that? What is the psych component of a person that makes us do that?
Invisible forces cause tension....! Love the make dependencies explicit comment
“Delegate until you’re uncomfortable. Leaders are often promoted, and then keep doing what they used to do.” — @david627 When I heard this during the recording, I stopped in my tracks. 😂😂😂 (cc @jeff.gallimore @rshoup)
This is wonderfully phrased. I'm still learning how to do it ! :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
"Delegate until you are uncomfortable" - how do we help people "squirm" but make it okay for them to try?
Our experience is that it is easiest to distribute authority a little at a time. Give up one set of decisions…than another. This helps de-risk the transition process and makes it more psychologically manageable to leaders who are glued to their decision space.
One of the teams that we work with had it as a Team Action "Get uncomfortable at least once this week"
beauty of it is that courage is highly contagious - we see a huge spike in the indicators we measure once we do a Courage Hackathon that lets them model all kinds of previously Impression Managed ideas and behaviours and then celebrate them
@me1342 Do you have people talking about their discomfortable moments? Or is it more a mindset that self-replicates?
That too @jackvinson - one of the interventions we suggest for teams that need it is called a Team B!tch Fest and those see a bit more of the moments if they disliked them. But in general we measure when they engage in Impression Management and how much Courage they have and whether or not they speak up and then with that info and the data in the dashboard they come up with the agenda in these Hackathons themselves
@me1342 A "courage hackathon"...? I'm going to need to research that more later today...
@mring We are describing it and a few other of these interventions to prevent impression management and therefore improve speaking up in our talk tomorrow at 2:05pm Track 3 but if not let me know and I'll shoot you some articles and videos
Thanks @me1342 - A quick google search led me to your Sept 1 2020 article in LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/courage-hackathons-duena-blomstrom/). I will also check out your session tomorrow. Thank you!
Thanks for reading it and speak tomorrow!
“…and you end up slowing other people down.” 😂😂😂 (Uh, nothing to see here. Keep watching the talk, people. 🙂
@david627 @jessica.reif Is Transformational Leadership something that you would come across in a US military career?
I am not sure if that is the language used, but definitely the concept of vision setting in mission planning is key. Dave is offline at the moment but may be able to chime in later based on his career in service!
Yeah. As I said ☝️ above, the Finnish military leadership is somewhat a carbon copy of Transformational Leadership.
The most important change in my leadership style in the last 5 years? Always explaining the Why.
@steve773 Coming up is such an amazing example of internal marketplaces emerging to enable distributed problem solving…
![thankyou](https://emoji.slack-edge.com/TASMB716H/thankyou/562b88f98298b28b.gif)
And I thought that cloud computing helped maximize resource utilization, yikes. Helicopters?!?
^^ scarcest resources were ISR (intelligence, surveillance, recon) and helicopter transport! cc @jessica.reif
When distributing decision making, I've seen times where distributing goes well 9 out of 10 times, but with a failure, decision making snaps back like a rubber band to how it used to be. Have you seen ways to prevent that in yourself or others?
and yet mistakes made in traditional decision making rarely lead to trying a new model… hmm….
Calling it out. That's the only way I know.
@david627 @jessica.reif I'm curious how you might approach the balance "need to know" vs "expectation to share" in environments where need to know is ... shall we say, not going away. (Note who I work for.) My sense would be viewing it as a pendulum, but would love to know your thoughts.
<!here> Join @jessica.reif and @david627 for an AMA session later today! https://sched.co/eqKJ
THANK YOU @david627 and @jessica.reif!!! They’ll be hosting an AMA — @jessicam will post details shortly!!!
I miss hearing the applause for great talks!
Up next: @jonathansmart1: who created my fave definition of DevOps: “better value, sooner, safer, happier!”
Good morning, afternoon, evening global DevOps Enterprise Community!
Good afternoon from Indy... been looking forward to your talk since London
Thank you everyone for your questions and commentary! Had so much fun with this! Please feel free to reach out to us at <mailto:jessica.reif@crosslead.com|jessica.reif@crosslead.com> or <mailto:david@crosslead.com|david@crosslead.com> to discuss further, or to learn more about CrossLead!
@jessica.reif @david627 excellent talk; I was especially interested in the 24 hr communication cycle covering: events over the last 24 hrs, what we should be doing differently, and what we can do to unblock. It has similarities to a daily scrum, but I was interested applying these specific questions to onshore/offshore communication to keep both shores moving through external dependencies and blockers, in a scaled environment of 11 teams. Have you seen this applied in this context already?
We have seen it used in similar context. Specifically, a “end-of-day” “beginning-of-day” sync between teams that are working across the ocean. Another important element here are standards for how asynchronous communication tools are used, like Slack. Ex: having a particular channel to discuss releases, etc, can be valuable for organizing asynchronous communication.
Great job Jessica. I was captivated by the presentation of you and David
You are also all welcome to join our recently launched CrossLead LinkedIn community here, where we talk about these issues (and similar ones!) https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8954386/
National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-OILCOMMISSION/pdf/GPO-OILCOMMISSION.pdf
Columbia Accident Investigation Board http://s3.amazonaws.com/akamai.netstorage/anon.nasa-global/CAIB/CAIB_lowres_full.pdf https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/us/dogged-engineer-s-effort-to-assess-shuttle-damage.html
(these were the comments from the book reviewers, @jonathansmart1? 😂😂😂 JUST KIDDING! It’s an amazing book1!!!
Yeah, just a blip for me about 10 mins ago.
I just buy everything IT revolution publishes.
I just buy everything IT revolution publishes.
might as well set up a direct deposit for me
Thinking the same, and hoping my company accepts all my expense reports 😄
@leahb everything consistency delivers. Plus, there’s nothing else out there in the market similar to what ITRev does.
Wait for @genek101’s next book and maybe they'll run a "Buy x copies and we'll send you the whole IT Revolution library!" deal. Did that with Unicorn Project and stocked our IT library 🙂
@andrew.hughes give a ping when Gene’s next book comes out and remind us of the above and we’ll see what we can hook you up with 😊.
We need an IT Revolution all-in-one subscription!
I finally met Jon Smart in person in 2016, right after the first DevOps Enterprise Summit London!
Lucky man @genek101 I never did meet @jonathansmart1 in person yet despite how we live down the road and say the same things in the same industry 🙂 We'll change that if 2020 ever changes though!
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-digital-leadership-isnt-different/
I am always interesting in the source of stats and how they are measured.
did Jon make himself into a bot?
How do we think about all the production that still happens in our world? People are still buying plenty of widgets... (Still plenty of changes as a result)
True dat. As I reckon you'll agree, looking at your profile, with flow and ToC mentioned, Lean for the type of work which has known unknowns, as it's been done many times before (Complicated in Cynefin) and an agile approach for work with unknown unknowns as it's not been done before (Complex in Cynefin). Both with many things in common, such as flow, flow efficiency, kaizen, ToC, respect for people and so on. Agile maximising for variance, optionality, experimentation, cheapest cost of failure (learning). Lean minimising variance with a notion of standardised work. In the context of knowledge work and software, it is both agile and lean. Agile created binary on a lean CI/CD conveyor belt path to production. Similar to cars. Agile created new models of cars (CAD/CAM, clay, prototypes), then Lean Production. Except we don't write the same software again and again, each binary on the assembly line is unique.
(still discovering Slack - only just saw this reply) The fun thing with widget production is the heavy dependence on technology - technology that keeps growing and changing. Ideally, all in service to delivering value through the system.
Agile & lean, with shallow dives into Chaos (see Cynefin again)
Best Practices in Complexity... yeah 😄
But some folks love "Best Practices" and the sense of certianty they engenger.
(PS: while I’m posting pictures: here’s a picture of when I met @steve.robert.barr at CSG in 2014, in Chicago! @scott.prugh was standing right beside me.)
The first talk I stumbled on from Jon Smart was that Certified Really Agile Practitioner talk when I was looking for something funny. 🙂 Want more of that too! 😄
Nothing in the origin of the word lead has to do with "command"
I hate that a layer of management refers to themselves as “the leadership”
"Did you say: 'some of the people who also lead'?"
Sooner Safer Happier. Comes out Nov. 10 but you can get 30% off here: https://itrevolution.com/sooner-safer-happier-promo/ Or get a free ebook (while supplies last) tomorrow at his happy hour sponsored by #xpo-split-feature-flags.
Remember they used to constcript troops and the commanders would sit behind and shoot anyone who tried to leave the field of battle...
Agile, Lean, Devops are not the goal, they are a means to the end of Better Value Sooner, Safer, Happier!
More on BVSSH here: https://soonersaferhappier.com/ The publish date for "Sooner Safer Happier" book is Nov 10
Head over to #xpo-split-feature-flags happy hour tomorrow night to get the ebook while supplies last.
Oops, I was thinking of The (Delicate) Art of Bureaucracy!
Throughput. I like the "units of value" definition here. Not just "units".
Value, like happiness, is ultimately subjective and related to the satisfaction of the individuals needs or wants...
Is there a way to get a list of all the books mentioned during the conference?
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/149789.Devops_Enterprise_Summit_2020_Book_leads
"Transform! I dare you" ❤️
Pro Tip: Check your video player window, and select Quality > 720p to max out video quality setting. Just noticed that I couldn’t read some text b/c mine was set to Auto!
Pro Tip: Check your video player window, and select Quality > 720p to max out video quality setting. Just noticed that I couldn’t read some text b/c mine was set to Auto!
BTW, where's the full-screen button? 😄
bottom right of the player....
they pushed it out..you may have to reload the page
https://devopsenterprise.slack.com/archives/C015FGB49UK/p1602609200213400 used as a backdrop on #happy-hour already 😄
Wow thanks for posting the link... it's like you've given the talk already are are just waiting to deliver these
We had pandemics 100 years apart - 1918 and now. 🙂 I hope we don't get another one for a very long time, or we're better prepared for something like this next time!
Psychological unsafety. More subtle version is heavy emphasis on "meeting commitments" (where everything becomes a commitment)
meet the date... no matter the cost
Yes.... But the element I see more often is people downplaying possibiliites. Over building. Over analyzing.
Approaching the unknowable as if it's knowable. At the point of knowing the least.
And the analogy of death with 'deadline' and 'drop dead date' often used. How motivating.
“The space shuttle program was retired in July 2011 after 135 missions, including the catastrophic failures of Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 that killed a total of 14 astronauts.Feb 1, 2019” https://www.space.com/19436-columbia-disaster.html I had forgotten how distant those two events were!
the documentary on netflix is a good watch if someone is interested in learning more about what happened there
Information flows have a huge impact on outcomes, and fear dramatically impacts information flow.
indeed! and the link to the Westrum Three Cultures.
How important was it to have an outsider like Feynman on the investigation of the Challenger disaster? And did it ultimately matter, if the org didn't change?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python)
Oh. Yeah. A Thinking Error!! Deterministic Mindset.... @ken.kennedy
@chris.gallivan we just saw deterministic mindset as a motto
Build the Right Thing Build the Thing Right (from a previous talk by Jon)
Much better than Build it Right the First Time, world of difference
With an eye on Better (Quality), Value, Flow (Lead Time), Safety and Happiness (BVSSH), so that it's not at the expense of one of them
Yes! and putting it that way makes it (hopefully) easier to communicate with stakeholders, as they don't speak the jargon of lean, devops, agile...
"The Agile Imposition" I really like how you changed the name of the org at your previous org away from the technical terms like Agile and DevOps toward BVSSH...
Who was the new leader and what role did he create for you @michael_winslow?
BVSSH = Better Value: Sooner, Safer, Happier
BVSSH = Better Value: Sooner, Safer, Happier
These examples of good leadership sound more “green” than “teal”. Do you think I’m wrong on that @jonathansmart1? (I’m happy to be wrong)
That’s not a criticism! Just testing my understanding.
http://www.reinventingorganizationswiki.com/Teal_Organizations
Pro-tip: If the full-screen button is missing from the video controls (supposed to be right end of the bar), F5 may help.
https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/
more information on that subject in "Work Rules"
Want to lead well -- realize that asking "How Can I Help You" >>>>> "Heres How You Help Me"
Psychological safety also includes being able to say "I was wrong"
Intelligent failure? Want to get certified... I could sell that 😉
We have an extension of "How can I help you" at our org - leaders are expected to offer help by asking directed questions like "are you blocked somewhere?", "are you happy?", "what do you think we are not doing right as a team", etc. etc
@jtf has such an interesting view on “are you happy?” being such a great indicator of so many things…
Theory Y says that people want their work to matter, they want their projects to succeed. If they feel their projects are likely to fail, they are unhappy. Thus unhappiness is a leading indicator of project failure.
Had a manager, ask here and there how can I help you, but their better approach was to provide a suggestion to the me on how they thought could help and ask for feedback. Shows they actually put some thought into the situation vs. making me doing all the work and putting me in sometimes awkward position and pressure
Better question that “how can I help you?” via Bob Marshall: https://mobile.twitter.com/flowchainsensei/status/1315609779725889536
Anyone playing the psychological safety drinking game is in real trouble…
"You don't fail an experiment, you learn from it."
As long as the teams don't fear that it's their "Final Attempt in Learning"! 🙂
Given that Psychological Safety is a common topic in all plenary talks so far, we've created a new slack channel #psychological-safety
Or in other places: Fired At Insufficient Luck
Celebrate failure. Searle (drug company) gave awards for running the killer experiment that stopped projects early.
@dominica do you take a drink when it is mentioned? 😄
We have an ops group focused on deterministic solutions for our dev teams
Supporting Lines vs Reporting Lines... These are the people I support (no who "report" to me)
Woah! "Replace reporting lines with supporting lines" @jonathansmart1
Who are the best people to discuss the improvement and coaching kata with?
I’d love to be part of that conversation when it happens.
Maybe come to my Lean Coffee track tomorrow and propose it as a topic?
So true re: supporting lines. Another pet peeve of mine: leaders saying "the people who work for me". They work for the company, and as a leader, you support them.
Great talk as always @jonathansmart1 - courage & psychological safety is something I'm working on now. I really like the idea of leadership thinking more in terms of supporting lines over reporting lines!
Bonus material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwbiSCgiZNA
Jon wants to hear stories, case studies of where leaders have adopted better behaviors leading to better outcomes
Great content as always @jonathansmart1!!
Always get inspired listening to @jonathansmart1 speak. So much to learn!
@jonathansmart1 from “Neils Pflaeging”’s “Organize for Complexity”. His concepts really align with what you’re saying, although I don’t think he writes enough about safety, which is critically important to be mindful of.
![thankyou](https://emoji.slack-edge.com/TASMB716H/thankyou/562b88f98298b28b.gif)
Breaks are so helpful in giving a little time to try and catch up with all the slack threads I am now waaaaaay behind on ....
if you’re logged in to the conference, you can find @jonathansmart1 Andy Patton vids in the library: Here's one with me taking about saying No (for comic relief): http://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com?video=467719259
don't know if this is a question in this topic but let's try. CMDB - is it a key point for DEVOPS, VSM ?
CMDB is useful, but it won't save you regardless of what ITSM vendors tell you.
@bmmc talked a bit on how they use a CMDB with the whole DevOps landscape to manage their controls and Application TCO
It is nearly impossible to keep up to date and it drives large batch and coordination overhead that misrepresents what central groups understand about the system.
Use it is a guide. But push real risk analysis to the edges. Basically the people closest to the work understand the most about the real risks and what the real landscpae looks like.
Don't use CBDB as a false belief that a centralized group understands what the landscpae really lloks like. This was always very hard and became nearly impossible with dynamic infrastructure
Oh man, I've had a blog post kicking around my head for months called "The only thing that knows the state of a thing is itself". @scott.prugh is spot on.
Oh. And get rid of centralized approvals, They don't work and drive long lead times and low performance. See @nicolefv work on this in Accelerate and SODR
Also, if you're in the cloud, the CMDB is called "tagging". Try to implement it any other way, and you will lose.
How do you incentize stakeholders to not want centralized approvals?
Check out @nicolefv’s work, they add no value.
Start small... Trial a few team localizing CAB approvals(self approvals for lower risk changes)
We have a bunch of patterns here you can leverage: https://itrevolution.com/book/breaking-the-change-management-barrier/
The strongest force driving the death of approval processes is that nobody actually wants them - they just want the results, so that gives you an opening. If you can get the same or superior results, you win.
Configuration management database? I wouldn't call it a "key point". But it definitely helps to have one
I think the point people were making earlier is the a CMDB is desired state, not actual state. When you confuse those two things, you get burned.
@dave could you please share the link for the "CABs are useless" talk you have mentioned?
Quick comment per ☝️… ‘yes’ we did use CMDB to drive satisfying some compliance requirements and to assist with calculating the TCO of an application because we focused CMDB to solve those challenges (along with some change management and other things), but it’s not what drives the pipelines…we just used the ITSM vendor capabilities to tap into the deployment results such that we could pull out the data we needed for those requirements. Doing a real Configuration Management System (CMS) is hard and requires ironclad discipline (https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Asset_and_Configuration_Management#CMS_CMDB) I applaud anyone that has been able to achieve that! (however) I don’t want to give the impression from my talk that we are doing so. Hopefully if you saw the ‘Method’ part of my talk that was illustrative.
@nick.kritsky so, this is from #DOES18, but I think @nicolefv is around and I've seen her give a number of versions of this talk (when Nicole talks, I always listen) so maybe she has one she likes better. https://youtu.be/DgpsX5yLXQw?t=1770
@dave thanks for sharing! This one sparks joy. After having seen the CAB bit in the end I am watching the video from the very beginning.
<!here> Join @jessica.reif and @david627 for AMA happening now! https://doesvirtual.com/ama-links
Looking forward to sharing the podium wit John Cutler for our talk later today and to have real time Q&A on Slack during our talks.
At 415 PST, welcome speakers @tim333 and @christopher_d_porter, members of the speaking team for Fannie Mae!
Yes, please welcome @tim333 and @christopher_d_porter from Fannie Mae, who are co-presenting with Kimberly Johnson and Ramon Richards!!!
"this year has been a whole load of 2020" :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
It could be worse... it could be a whole year of eisenbahnscheinbewegung.
New one for me.. “Eisenbahnscheinbewegung” is “the false sensation of movement when, looking out from a stationary train, you see another train depart.” - In our usage I assume this implies "movement" that looks like progress?
I think I’ve known @christopher_d_porter for 15+ years… I knew of his amazing work with the famous Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) — is my memory correct, Chris?
@genek101 , yup, i worked on that report for several years. One of the best teams I’ve ever been a part of.
@genek101 I think the first time we met was at the RSA Conference at the Irish Bank.
Well, what I actually asked Kimberly Johnson, “What did you do incredibly amazing or incredibly horrible that landed you the responsibility of owning the technology organization?” 😂😂😂. (@jeff.gallimore was with me that amazing evening, along with @christopher_d_porter !)
…this part blows me away… Kimberly Johnson brought her entire management team with her to tech org, and brought the weight of expertise and evidence to their board of directors, ensuring they were fully onboard.
KJ has been one of the best leaders I’ve ever worked for. Prior to her move into COO, she was our CRO (Chief Risk Officer) and I had a dotted line into her role here. So in effect, I’ve worked for her for the last 5 years in one way or another.
KJ has been one of the best leaders I’ve ever worked for. Prior to her move into COO, she was our CRO (Chief Risk Officer) and I had a dotted line into her role here. So in effect, I’ve worked for her for the last 5 years in one way or another.
Kimberly Johnson has an internal reputation for “running to the fire” — she had a very special role for helping rewrite millions of mortgages in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
@christopher_d_porter How does it feel to have her supporting your efforts? As CISO, I’m sure you’ve had experiences where you didn’t have the full support of leadership?
It’s great. A lot of the CISOs I speak with don’t have the level of support that we have. I think it’s because there’s a shared understanding of the risk that we have as an organization, the data we have and how important we are to the housing economy.
❤️ Fannie Mae - without them my company couldn't do what it does.
“Fastest way to save money? Turning things off.” “Fastest way to waste money? Doing things twice.”
Brilliant! Unfortunately I had to watch the presentation on my phone so I couldn't be on slack! So here I am scrolling up knowing that Gene wouldn't miss a great quote! :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
That was a great point on the various types of metrics…
@jtf I think Kimberly Johnson models splendidly we’d want business leaders to talk about technology. cc @mik
Absolutely! She’s clearly talking their language, and at the same time being an adult in the conversation in taking responsibility when appropriate, and setting a boundary when appropriate.
She scared me when she said they got all their DevOps house in order in 1 year. That was just the kernel. Phew!
I been working on it for 2 years and we have so much to do
Yes, and she painted a good picture of leading v lagging metrics, and time it takes to get to business outcomes
Kimberly Johnson on the house purchase process: “Over 40 percent of people surveyed put buying a house as the most stressful event in their life. By doing so, these people are saying buying a house is more stressful than applying to college, interviewing for a job, or going through a divorce, which I found remarkable. If what we do is help people get into houses, and that is such a stressful life event, there is a great deal of opportunity for us to make a better experience for our borrowers. ” https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2019/06/24/fannie-maes-kimberly-johnson-primes-the-companys-innovation-engine/#7a7c62ca346f
@mik - that is a theme with Kimberly across all her roles, get the right metrics in place and drive to them.
COO Kimberly Johnson speaking like a Technology Leader, showing she gets it! We all need to focus on outcomes.
Great point! So may people abort the journey during the dip.
I remember a book by this Kim dude about magical horses that suggested that COOs and CEOs should be tech savvy and potentially from an IT background. I am hearing some of that now.
Mea culpa. It was the magical bird prequel to the horse book.
having assets that are 30 year loans means Fannie Mae needs to care about risks that span a 30 year horizon. 🤯
BTW: this is so clever: two stories: one hyper-urgent short-term (COVID-19) and one long-term (30 year climar risk).
…it does raise the question to @tim333: “what did you do really amazing or really awful to earn this role?” (hahaha)
@tim333 do you look to cooperate with regulators to help reduce the risks? eg influencing the adoption of firesafe building codes to reduce risks to existing mortgages. ... and is it interesting getting stuff done in an environment where not all participants believe in a climate risk?
Great points @tim333 re needing to pivot fast and have transparency and metrics in the current (climate) climate
I didn’t mishear Kimberly Johnson: Fannie Mae has a $3.5 TRILLION balance sheet. https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/fnma/financials/balance-sheet
@martin391 We look to work with all types of stakeholders. Fannie Mae is big but we can't move the needle alone. There is an asymmetry in conviction on the topic but US regulators are starting to come around and push for more work on climate
![upvotepartyparrot](https://emoji.slack-edge.com/TASMB716H/upvotepartyparrot/baf72b3b906de0b9.gif)
one out of four homes in America. “Can lead to a low risk tolerance.” Hello, @christopher_d_porter!
Okay. So they are recapping Phoenix Project, only from real life.
I took a lot of lessons from the Phoenix Project and put it in place within InfoSec. We have a release train and have near full visibility into all the work (capacity and demand) that we have on our plate. It’s taken a while, but we’re better than we’ve ever been.
The first time I read the Phoenix Project, I cried a little because I knew and hated those problems. It is a long road especially in big companies.
The old way of security was BOFH h/t @jtf
People might get the wrong idea with you tagging me on that @dave!
I've got a talk called There's No Such Thing as DevSecOps that dives deep on that idea. You were just the 1st to bring up BOFH today.
“Stop calling security findings vulnerabilities; start calling them defects” <= Great idea…
“if you follow the paved road, the CI/CD pipeline, it’s easy to deploy.” “if you don’t, it’s a rocky road, lots of potholes, you get pulled over by the local cops, etc..” 😂😂😂😂😂
"Make the right way, the easy way" https://www.cio.com/article/3448278/make-the-right-way-the-easy-way.html
This was the best line! And he said it so fast. I was like "Did he just say 'get pulled over by the locals?'" Lol!
@christopher_d_porter Love the point about treating vulnerabilities as what they are: defects.
Language is an amazing thing. If you start using the right language, you can change the culture.
@christopher_d_porter Was there any push back from the developers around having to focus on security as well as development? If so, how did you change the culture to overcome (aside from making tools available)?
Love the statement that "security" is just part of the stack... It's not a separate thing.
To some extent. I think part of the problem was that Dev teams were focused way more on feature work rather than on fixing “security” defects. It took a while to make them realize that they also needed to fix these too. Once we shifted left, sorted the high risk defects into their Jira work, it made it much simpler.
So in part changing the culture by aligning the work with something the devs were familiar with (i.e. defects vs vulnerabilities)?
We have some incredible data that shows how older portfolios of apps, that hadn’t shifted left, when we did “to the right” assessments, or pen tests, the newer portfolios had orders of magnitude less security defects. Like around 70-75% less.
The data was originally within the security area and then made available to the rest of the org? I'm asking a lot of questions because I personally want to understand how to better integrate security into our development teams. I'm personally on my own learning journey in Cyber Operations so this subject is super interesting to me. Any suggested reading material or other growth material in this space you would recommend? Thanks in advance.
“there’s a mindset change by devs and security; devsecops is an observation, not a title; we don’t care who does the work; it’s just how work is done.” Mentality of “we protect devs from themselves” no longer appropriate.
That was awesome, @christopher_d_porter — it’s amazing how much the world has changed since those days at RSA!!! Breathtaking, really…
@christopher_d_porter I'd really love to hear what training you found necessary for your developers. We're finishing up our CICD pipeline integrating into our security scanning api's with pass or fail thresholds, but want to make sure I'm looking at pushing quality and knowledge upstream to developers' thinking too.
“Security needs to deputize developers”. I really like that idea.
It just hit me: @jeff.gallimore just confirmed: @christopher_d_porter is the first CISO to present here at DevOps Enterprise Summit! Thank you, Chris!
These two sessions are interesting, because they both show how far we still need to go…
been looking forward to this one all day!
John is a must follow on Twitter for all Product peeps
For anyone who doesn’t follow him, I think that @john.cutler’s tweets are 50% of the information density that I get out of my Twitter feed. Per @genek101’s point
You are a highlight in my twitter feed, pushing out 2020 doom & gloom
well, not sure if you want to take credit for this, but you help me not feel like i’m completely crazy 😂
There's times I've found myself scrolling past other tweets in my list to see if John tweeted.
Yep- I think most of my presentations include a @john.cutler tweet
@chawklady.... whatever I can do! Putting it out there makes me feel less crazy as well. Virtuous cycle of crazy acknowledgement
@christopher_d_porter - We're trying to get a similar "DevSecOps" programme off the ground where we enable teams with skills, tooling and recognition for security. The biggest problem we are facing is Security teams who are "too busy" or don't trust dev teams to do it "properly"
This is a tough thing to be honest. From a security perspective, it’s not in our blood to “trust”. We are figuratively “paid paranoids”.
I agree - we're doing an inversion of control on them as an experiment. Run the programme from Engineering but have Security drive the Board level decisions.
So they still tell us what to do, just at arms length. Not ideal but a first step to prove ourselves to them
When you download the slides from GitHub you just get John. It’s great!
PS: This is my original script that I didn’t fully read, but I believe it wholeheartedly: > John Cutler is, in my opinion, one of the people who is doing the most innovative work in advancing the field of product and design, picking up where Alan Cooper, Marty Cagan, Jared Spool and Heidi Helfand left off. It’s been my personal observation that his tweets are among the most charred within the DevOps Enterprise community, and I’ve personally benefited from his amazing advice and observations.
I think there’s a Zoom virtual background inspired by John’s room
I'm addicted @john.cutler’s Twitter feed. Lots of great insight and threads of conversation!
So… product management is really just a big game of Tetris?
Pretty sure that got played on the Enterprise (pun intended)
A recent example from Twitter that I really appreciated: https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1315806382348615680
The fourth line would be Lean UX with DevOps 😄 They have "real" names 😄
Didn’t quite get that point, @john.cutler — “they leave out the _ formal authority.” Could you explain that a little more?
“using design and technology to create sustainable sources of differentiation and growth”
pull andon cord... discuss and clarify... continue.... it would be very interesting to experiment with this...
“Design + technology can be responsible for the step-changes in outcomes.”
@john.cutler “They copy frameworks, rename everything, projects to products, restructure everything, new titles, new rituals, leaving out the convenient threats to formal authority, of course, but the outcomes are only marginally improved.” Can you say just a little more about what is being missed around authority?
Sounds like @jonathansmart1 talking about superficial org restructuring, parodied in the CRAP talk...
oh. oh ... people copy and paste frameworks, but when it comes to challenging their own power dynamics they ignore that part
classic example SAFe is explicitly designed not to challenge formal authority
creating a whole new table is a powerful idea, not just getting a seat at the table
@john.cutler the only functional implementations (2/50) that I have heard of were SAFe with challenge to formal authority.
The real differentiator is how we deliver? Not what we deliver? The team/company is the product.