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2021-05-20
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@ronwestrum: have you ever studied the sociology of incident analysis in particular, or do you know others that have? (Or perhaps you have just considered it as one element of the larger organizational culture and not something to study on its own?)
Jeffrey, I am very aware, from the aviation literature, about how often incident investigations go astray. In one of my papers (in Risk in Extreme Environments) I list four famous accidents that were mis-investigated the first time around. Also see "evaluation of military weapon systems!" There is a politics to investigation. Best, Ron W
And, I have to admit, I have thought about making this an area of study. Just look at the Nimrod investigation (Great Britain), and what led up to it. Ron
Excited for Day 3! What a line up!! Kim & Spear, Westrum, Smart, and so many other exciting topics.
Respect @rshoup Got the chance to be in a more favorable timezone, however attending RSAC at the same time which is in PDT, days end at 2am here ;)
📣 Kicking things off this morning is @mail832, Head of Product at UK Government Digital Service!
Good morning, all! I hope you’ve had an amazing Days 1 and 2 — we have a TON of amazing stuff planned for Day 3 — If all goes well, we may have some surprising additions to the program that I think you’ll really love. (It’s something we’ve never tried before, but hopefully it’s “high risk, high gain!” Motto of Apollo program. 🙂
👋:skin-tone-2: Hi everyone, great to see you even if I can’t actually see you! My talk is up now, about how GDS and the Government as a Platform products (GaaP) enable digital services to be built in super-fast time. I’ll be here posting bonus content as we go...
Hi, @mail832!! So delighted that you’re presenting this morning — I loved your talk last year, and it was so great meeting you one year ago!
PS: OKRs, everyone’s fave topic, show up in this presentation, too.
Was about to say, OKRs seem to be everywhere this year :thinking_face:
“I’m so glad you volunteered” 🙈
Wow, I didn't realise the shielding service had to be built on 3 days notice, I thought there was more time. Great job @mail832
If you want to hear more on that one: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2021/02/24/podcast-the-clinically-extremely-vulnerable-people-service/
2You really have to do MVPs if your first product needs to be out in 4 days :shocked_face_with_exploding_head:
More about GaaP contribution to COVID-19 response here: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2020/05/13/how-government-as-a-platform-is-helping-in-the-covid-19-response/ (May 2020)
"Do it once but right" - If someone solves payment properly for everyone, watch people fly 😱
@mail832’s COVID vaccination appointment was delivered thru her own service!! 🎉
The consistency and simplicty of .http://gov.uk websites is really something to behold. It makes it enjoyable filling in all those forms
"Users shouldn't need to know how government is structured to find what they need" 👏
Government websites that work... a distant dream 😂
1such things make it just better - shows there are humans working behind the scenes to make all of this happen - good work!
Here's the Service Standard I was just talking about: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard
Looking at that data on what problems matter, that's knowing what problem to actually solve, so much to learn from that
@mail832 not a question, just a massive shoutout to how incredible the whole GaaP platform is. Many times I've needed to go on http://Gov.UK for various things, and it's beautiful to see how the different services have the same look and feel! Major kudos for getting services stood up in short periods of time at the start of the pandemic, shows some great agile working there, despite the constant changing requirements/demands I'm sure!
I wish I could say the same thing about US govt websites — some are fantastic, but others are… not as fantastic. Yet. 🙂
I'm sure they'll get there! Hopefully there's some participants from the US Govt here today who can pick up a few tips 😉
18F has a PaaS which was 'inspired by' ours, I believe, and ours has been similarly inspired by things they've done with their since - there are pockets of this stuff!
I like the approach of not being everything to everyone. There is an important cross over here with the philosophy that platforms should treat their users and consumers with a choice. If you mandate the platform, you have to be everything to everyone which comes with bloat and complexity.
That's such a good point. We aimed to be so good people want to use us first. No need for mandate in that case.
Have you found resistance to the change by other departments? How did the employees of different organisations take on this massive change? @mail832 #ask-the-speaker-plenary
Not really. We just... built our things and made them so good others wanted to use them 🙂
Other solutions still exist, and sometimes they meet the specific needs of their department better. But if the need is a common one, it should be much easier to use our thing than build a new one.
@mail832 It is amazing what you and your team have achieved! This is something many governments can learn from, e.g. the Dutch government... 😶
It's all in the open - both how we did it (https://gds.blog.gov.uk/) and most of the code 🙂
“I want my feature. That’s what these OKRs are for. Give me my feature.” 🙂
i'm amazed at how many themes just keep coming up over and over in so many of these talks all week !!
If you don't measure it, does it really exist? :thinking_face:
"Build a status tracking platform" "We built a status tracking platform" :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing: :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
@mail832 These are great examples from a fictitious organization! What an incredible imagination you have! How did you come up with those examples? 😆
It reminds me of another fictional organization, Parts something or other…😁
Some of my proudest career moments have been the things we didn't build.
(@jonathansmart1 holy cow, flipping awesome. Thank you, @mail832!)
“It’s not the users’ job to tell you what they need. It’s your job to find out.” Brilliant.
2I borrowed that from a blog I read years ago - if anyone knows the source, please tell me so I can credit them!
one of the hardest parts about good Product Management practices, especially when teams are used to operating in a Project model
https://medium.com/@TomvanB/it-s-not-the-customer-s-job-to-know-what-they-want-this-great-quote-by-steve-jobs-is-what-i-want-3cc2201fcabd This crops up from a quick search :thinking_face:
A bit like Henry Ford saying if he had asked customers what they wanted they'll have said faster horses, not cars
hmmmm... the Apple approach is a bit different. I may be mis-characterising but I always read theirs as "it's not the customer's job to tell us what they want, it's our job to tell them" 😆
"Quoting word for word is powerful and can be a double edged sword"
Quoting customers verbatim is easily weaponized, for good or for evil — I can definitely relate to that, on all sides of this, as the wielder, and the victim. 🙂
I love that these are published in the open for other orgs to learn from
I love all these graphs showing usage of these platforms blowing up, @mail832!
https://github.com/orgs/alphagov/projects/ (http://GOV.UK Design System) https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk/features/roadmap (http://GOV.UK Notify) https://github.com/alphagov/paas-roadmap/projects/ (http://GOV.UK Platform as a Service) https://www.payments.service.gov.uk/roadmap/ (http://GOV.UK Pay)
This talk resonated with my favourite chapters in Melissa Perri's product book: 17. Problem Exploration 18. Solution Exploration https://www.amazon.co.uk/Escaping-Build-Trap-Effective-Management-ebook/dp/B07K3QBWG1/
👑 Government as a Platform and Covid-19 – How Shared Platforms Enabled New Services To Be Built In Under a Week from @mail832 is available for sharing here: https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=552759225
Our careers site here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital-service/about/recruitment (will also post more in the #hiring channel)
Wow, so many. This job specifically, it was seeing so many great presenters at MapCamp* from the public sector and hearing about not just the cool things they're doing, but also how far ahead of the curve some departments are on agile, user-centred design and a ton of adjacent practices. *the Wardley mapping event - if you don't know Wardley mapping it's very relevant for a lot of the hot topics at DOES
When you said 2 hours every 6 weeks, do you recommend watching that individually or with a team?
With a team would be better so you can discuss what you're seeing, but watching playbacks solo is better than not hearing direct from your users
Absolutely incredible! So many ideas and inspiration from that session @mail832 - thanks for sharing and providing so many different links/resources too! 🙂
1Thank you, @mail832! And now, our very own @genek and @steve773 are here!
Thank you, @mail832. That was amazing and I loved how focused and to the point the presentation was. So much to digest! 👏:skin-tone-5:
1Very well done, great outcomes for the UK @mail832
1All those one-liners - love the way @mail832 presented the story. Thank you for sharing this with our community.
You say that like it's a bad thing... like, we kind of have a big responsibility 😉
I love the fact that GDS is good at this stuff! That large enterprise isn't is a tragedy.
BTW I have friends who worked as agile coaches at the Home Office and they loved it.
Oh, my! Up next is @steve773 and me!! (Feels odd, introducing myself. 🙂
That was fantastic @mail832 - not a word wasted. How did you pack all that in?! Top stuff. Plenty to chew on (and gave me hope in at least one government service!) 👏
2Really looking forward to this talk, hearing the latest of this collaboration between you two!
Glad to see a government leading in digital practices and bringing true help to people, Thanks @mail832 !
1The insights were packed yet so easy to digest loved it! @mail832 👏🙌
1Good morning people! Thanks for watching and listening. Questions? Fire away.
So much to learn from you Steve, but @genek gives only 30 mins 😞
This case study is so interesting — in pharmaceutical development, where all the main characters have Ph.D.s.
Hey covid. I’m just glad I remember to put on pants each day. My side kick Wilson doesn’t always remind me.
We’re getting an education on pharmaceutical machinery. Boundary-spanning!
Hit molecule appears a little analogous to software engineering proof-of-concept.
Totally — I suggested to @steve773 that we use the term “wireframing” or “low fidelity mockups and storyboards.”
Already loving the talk, engages the brain seeing the applications to my own situations 🙂
@saket.kulkarni I think so. It’s more than conceputal, but certainly not workable.
@jeff.gallimore Yes…and…which we mention in the white paper attached above. Value stream tuypically focuses on the nodes on the pathway. Here, we’ll see they start addressing the linking connections between the nodes. The frequency and bandwidth of communication over those links. @bernard.voos v
Really interesting to look at this through the lens of information flow
You’re doing a great job setting up the parallel to other industries we’ve already seen. Concepts of lean and flow come into play everywhere.
That sounds so familiar from dev teams
I’m super interested in seeing how this plays out. 🙂
@saket.kulkarni Yes! Because across lean agile etc is the challenge--getting the collaborative whole greater than the creative parts!
Market vs Functional orientation?
Sounds like the culture would be more Westrum type bureaucratic than generative.
@bernard.voos @mik Yes…and…not organized for RELATIONSHIPS…not organized for having the collaborative creative communication.
1@jtf I think this is generative both in terms of who needs to be in discussion with whom and within those discussions
Is social graph analysis relevant here? Seeing who is talking to who and where the real points of influence are?
I’m not sure it’s relevant, but I’m drawing parallels in my mind to what I’ve read about how development on COVID vaccines progressed in the past year compared to previous vaccine development.
@steve773 I agree, generative once you start having the conversations. I meant bureaucratic before when people weren't talking to each other
What is the connection to https://www.seetosolve.com/ at the bottom of the slide?
@jonathansmart1 @saket.kulkarni @chris.gallivan278 yes to all you said. In the white paper, we offer some speculation on how important having focused workflows for vaccine development was in order to have high speed high yield collaboration
Not that it was the bureaucracy preventing the conversations, rather that you had the same information flow as if there had been barriers to conversations.
@jtf even worse. There was no bureaucracy forcing the conversation. Whatever integrating routines and processes were first created, those had withered. So, that’s why you got these isolated silos and then silos within silos.
You could impose bureaucracy to encourage (force?) conversations and in some places that would be a step toward generative… 🤯
That sounds more like leadership than bureaucracy, but perhaps the common element is "authority".
What you’ll see here is the emergence of a (temporary) routine/social map so make clear where the conversations should be occuring.
Steps 4 and 5 look a lot like the sorts of steps we see in scaling agile (irrespective of framework).
Withered is a great term! It works well with the analogy of culture like gardening. You need to cultivate and nurture those interactions. And the best cases might be like permacuture where you create self-sustaining systems.
Was it easy to get the biologists and chemists to talk to one another again, did they need a little push or were they resistant?
@logankd Thanks for the See To Solve Question. WE created two software products to support the high velocity learning behavior we’re describing. On the website is our ‘alert,’ basically a portable andon to call immediate attention to difficulty. FLOW, is a tool for creating these relationship maps. Happy to share more off line.
@logankd Thanks. I’ll hang here (or in birds) for about another 30 minutes. Dentist appointment after that 😞
this conference is great, there's so much stuff going on and to learn
I'll go into gather/birds and find you (after a short break). Hopefully others will as well
I apologize, I didn't realize there was another session right away (thought there was a break). Good luck with the dentist and thanks for your session. I'll check out the website
I can imagine how having a virtual andon cord would be helpful. I like how that follows the Toyota lean idea. A client I'm working with is in constant fire fighting mode.
I feel there is such a natural alignment of the shared language of Team Topologies and the subtlety of relationships in value stream mapping.
@steve773 Have other industries like drug discovery tried creating cross functional teams across these domains?
@steve773 Have other industries like drug discovery tried creating cross functional teams across these domains?
This seems quite a bit like the tayloristic waterfall processes in software
I think @steve773 has shared the story about Toyota’s development of the Prius. I think that was another example.
We found many of these examples in dev vs testing vs ops. It turns out when you get those folks on the same team it creates a lot more flow but a shared responsibility. No longer is writing code the only thing a dev is focused on. They work with test and ops to create code that can be tested and operated...
@scott.prugh Hey Scott. I think this is the counter of waterfall in that the frequency, speed, and granularity of feedback is WAY up, and much earlier in the creative endeavor. The main failure mode of waterfall and similar styles is the frequency, latency, clarity, etc. of feedback to inform course correction.
The D-M-T cycles are slower in the Pilot v Benchmark, is that good? (19 in 6 months where previously was 60 in 13 months)
Tough targets working as a forcing function for optimization?
"change the conversations and you change the culture" < 🙂
1@christian.kullmann Funny question! Turns out, they liked each other, but had little idea what the other did. At one point, the chemists were talking amongst themselves as if the bio lab was just pippette squeezing drones. Finally, one interceded and said, “You KNOW I also have a Phd!!!!”
@scott.prugh we've been trying with varied success in the O&G sector as there are a huge number of specialist disciplines
Brilliant background about research & 5-10 years for vaccination- is this a normal cycle? So much less time than anyone predicted, now so many vaccines for current one
its one thing to be on the same team, its another thing to work together
@philipday D-M-T…maybe slower but SO MUCH higher yield. One-third the cycles in half the time to better outcomes
“Your organization may be actually fighting you… and it’s YOUR FAULT (as the leader)“. 😆
@philipday And, those were ‘cheaper’ cycles, more thought experiments within and across silos, fewer having to actually make stuff (time and money).
Thanks I think this is relevant in a lot of contexts Have good priors -> fewer cycles to ultimate solution discovery
@chris.gallivan278 Yes! Check out the white paper (posted above) where we draw analogies with Team of Teams.
“Everyone is trapped in their cones, that prevent people from doing integrated problem solving with others outside of their functional speciality.”
Here’s another newsletter link on similar issues of accelerated creative learning, but different field entirely. https://conta.cc/3u4gwRI
I was wondering if there was a link in the language!
Gene’s comment on “Thinking fast and slow” by Kahneman. I thought I noticed a link.
Those org charts are remarkably reminiscent of datacentre networking evolution. Improving the flow of work is not too far from improving the flow of packets!
Donald Reinertsen talks about this in The Principles of Product Development Flow
cross-functional teams are great for solving the problems within the value stream, but there's still the challenge of cross-team collaboration. At least with us, there's quite often some need for asking help from another team.
The point being that no matter what kind of organization structure we have, there's always need for communication 😄
yes, and also there's more often than not a situation that the cross-functional team does not possess all the skills needed, but some other team has the knowledge already. So some kind of cross-pollination is needed
@ds has a great story of working with a biotech firm and how eye opening it was that the mouse lifecycle becomes a hard limit on cycle time. (Need to grow the right mouse strain for a test.) Very different from software!
From control theory: • Ops favors ◦ Frequency ◦ Latency • Planning favors ◦ Granularity (detail) ◦ Accuracy (fidelity)
@genek any recommended reads for that? :thinking_face:
Leadership - Eyes on, Hands off love that statement about delegation.
(I remember some control theory from Electrical Engineering junior year. Holy smokes, can’t even remember.. Will search for you later! 🙂
"Outliers" I remember was a great book that covered some of this on CRM
I loved listening to this case in Idealcast!
Favorite quote: > Sioux City Approach: “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind’s currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You’re cleared to land on any runway.” > Haynes: “[laughter] Roger. [laughter] You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?”
PS: Reading the Wikipedia entry on UA 232 was my first time I’ve found an egregious, factual error in the Wikpedia entry. There’s actually some disagreements on how many DC-10 trainers there were on the flight, due to a transcription error of the cockpit transcripts — I intend to make my first Wikipedia proposed edit ever. 🙂
@genek: interesting to consider how these time cycles and domains of Planning, Operations, and Improvement to the "three gaps" of Clausewitz, the gaps of Knowledge, Alignment, and Effects. Planning does what it can to make the most to close the knowledge and alignment gaps so that Operations can be as effective as possible. Improvement looks back (like incident analysis) to understand what gaps were exposed and to feed that back into future cycles (ala OODA loop).
(The effects gap is why you need the people in Operations to have the agency to respond to what actually happens in the moment.)
Wow — tantalizing, @jtf. It’s time for another one of our conversations to discuss!! (Next week?).
That would be a great conversation to have, indeed! Thanks for drawing the parallels, @jtf
KEY POINT OF WHAT @genek IS SAYING: There’s such a profound shared understanding of standards that the extra guy can slot in, they can adapt (add/subtract) from existing routines, etc.
Standards and a common body of knowledge really help bridge gaps in communication :thinking_face: Makes the work of ITREV really important for us to grow!
Long and short: standards don’t have to be the enemy! They’re our friend if we treat them as our best known approach for addressing a situation. Then, our changes are on the increment, on the edge, not whole cloth starting from scratch.
@jonathansmart1 commented yesterday on getting something into a standard, to help make it stick - can be useful tool to ensure a company goes the right direction
Related to your key point above: I think there’s also a very big aspect discussed in other presentations these past few days…that of competence. Besides having standards and a common language, a common understanding of the domain space is important. Especially for the creative application of ideas in the heat of the moment (the pilots and trainers in the cockpit, the Apollo 13 engineers in that room, etc.).
I think of this as being shared Doctrine, something that was pointed out to my Wardley: https://medium.com/wardleymaps/doctrine-8bb0015688e5
Another example of where a vast expertise is tapped — Mark Whatney trapped on Mars, and all engineers on earth helping him get home. He’s no longer solving problems alone, instead he’s backed up by thousands of engineers on Earth!! In the book/movie, “The Martian!!“” cc @steve773
I do think there may be lessons from the drilling industry and how remote collaboration centres to provide operational control of remote drilling operations have looked to address some of these points - rooms filled with mixed discipline specialists
(Is it Dr. Mark Watney, or just Mr. Mark Watney?). He’s a biologist, right? Botanist?
PROBLEM: integrating routines decay and we fall into silos and silos in silos. SOLUTION; Map flows to see RELATIONSHIPS to enable the collaborative conversations.
🎯 Fast and Slow Integrated Problem Solving Structures from @genek & @steve773 is available for sharing here: https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=552759240
Holy smokes!!! Upcoming Idealcast is amazing: @steve773 and I learn how Portland Vaccination clinic increased vaccinations from 2K/day to 8K/day!! 2 weeks from now. We interviewed Trent Green, COO, Legacy Health. Was awesome!
Love the Idealcast -- so quickly my favourite podcast!!
Ah, up next is a DevOps Confession! As someone had requested yesterday! 🙂
@genek “Good practice comes from bad experience. And experience comes from bad practice.”
@genek and @steve773: Thank you for so clearly highlighting the core of DevOps in your talk.
ah … the dreaded impostor syndrome
@andreas.baernthaler Thanks Andreas. Let’s follow up here in the Slack or by e mail. <mailto:Steve@HVELLC.com|Steve@HVELLC.com>. Please grab the whjite paper (above) and check out some of the newsletter links. Very best!
So many could relate well with this DevOps confession - cc @genek Thanks for sharing, I am looking for a wipe
My favorite book on coaching: https://boxofcrayons.com/the-coaching-habit-book/
Until this minute I was moving the idea of releasing a regular internal newsletter of my teams achievements to senior management back and forth in my head...now, thanks to @genek words, I think I know what to do :)
@genek this confession resonates with me a lot, there is so much you can learn about yourself by looking at what you think about (project on) others. Sometimes it is you who has to start building trust into yourself
"I know I think I am taking the company forward" - reminds me of Jeffrey Snover session back in DOES 2018 LV
Redshirts come with a variety of titles, but they all share the passion for moving the mission forward and see each other as peers.
Thanks for sharing @genek. That confession resonates strongly with me.
DevOps Confession from @genek is available for sharing here: https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=552759255
Thank you @genek It really resonates with many of us and personally it has provided better dose of confidence and also the areas we need to work by making teams’ work more visible 🙂 🙏
📣 Coming up in a few minutes, @ronwestrum will talk about Information Flow Cultures!
It's not often I say "I'm looking forward to this" after so many past conferences... I'm looking forward to this! thanks @ronwestrum for all your work, it's been a huge help/inspiration to me over the years 🙇
and for everyone. I came to know only via @nicolefv presentation in one of our DOES / DORA report
Without your work Ron, we'd all still be stumbling around asking ourselves why some companies have a "better culture" than others, without even knowing what those words meant. Thank you again
I'm about to study @ronwestrum’s culture across global teams (including both enterprise and open source!), and i'm so happy and honored to be able to continue and extend his brilliant work. thank you again for all of your foundational and ground-breaking work!
I'm not sure how to handle all of this information flowing into me this morning 😅
Holy cow! Up next is the FAMOUS Dr. @ronwestrum!!! Anyone who has read the State of DevOps Research studies that I did with Dr. @nicolefv and @jez from 2013-2019 will likely be familiar Westrum Organizational Typology Model!
From 2013 then @ronwestrum that one slide information flow appeared in so many DevOps presentations. Unfortunately, some are still struggling with this.
It’s difficult to overstate how excited I am that he’s speaking to us here!
listening to @ronwestrum LIVE? with all of you my new friends? Pinching myself to make sure this isn't a dream 😍
"Information is life blood for organizations" - I like that analogy.
Thank God for Project Aristotle - when we look back it would have moved the needle for teams in the tech industry to get to healthy and happy dynamics so much as compared to the thankless job the academia was doing before it
Awesome example...especially having in mind the unbelievable crimes that von Braun was able to do during WWII..
How long did the rivet -> welding migration take? And should they have shut the building during that time?
How did they get the newspapers to hold the story? That sounds like something reporters nowadays would be dying to blurt out in an instance?
This is an amazing analysis from @ronwestrum on how Boeing may have lost their incredible engineering culture after they acquired McDonnell Douglas… So full of insights.
This Boeing story doesn't have a happy ending... Reverse takeover by McDonnell Douglas
Sad story. HQ relocated hundreds of miles away from engineering
My internalization of the technical/technological maestro: • high energy • high standards • great in the large • great in the small • loves walking the floor So good!!!
Really interesting how that overlaps with a lot of what Simon Sinek is "preaching" about leaders :thinking_face:
Happy teams ARE family - all teams with high Psychological Safety describe it as such
That doesn't match with my experience. It is often the case, but I've also worked with happy teams that wouldn't say they were a family. They would say they were high performance, and that was the common identity.
Agree - many examples of the world's highest performing teams describe their teams as family
Takes one key leader to make things worse and exceptional leadership to fix it.
Now I really want to read how the business press covered the Boeing acquisition of McD at the time — I’d love to hear what their aspirations were, and what the hoped for outcomes were…
Criminal case settled out of court recently. Boeing blames two ex test pilots...
Generative dialogue is critical for successful teams and only happens in safe to speak up environments
SO cool that we got to hear the backstory of what caused Boeing to have the now famous breakdown in Psychological Safety that led to the catastrophe
The feeling of "..what else I don't know" definitely makes people unhappy!
Thank you for sharing @ronwestrum
@ronwestrum how can we get ahead of the problem and convince future leaders to care?
The types of executives I've worked with either care or are closed minded to any ideas but their own and are not interested in learning.
Focus on the advocates initially and bring the other type along through data and performance. Some won't come on the journey but they may not prosper in the long term
We should have a beer about that. I've some specific examples where the right answer was to fold and move. 🙂
I kind of think people care or they don't. But some people change later in life. Ron W
I'm headed to the bar in an hour. I'd love to discuss it.
@ffion @ronwestrum I'm at the bar. This would be a great conversation. :)
Ah @bryan.finster486 that would have been amazing but I’m in prime parenting zone right now!
Monitoring a culture is doable, but it's also a look in the rear view mirror. The hard thing is to find leaders will to create a great culture.
If you enjoyed this and haven't yet listened to the Idealcast with @ronwestrum check it out: https://itrevolution.com/the-idealcast-episode-17/
@ronwestrum It was so fun to watch all five hours of the “21st Century Jet - Building the Boeing 777” — one of my favorite parts was how Boeing gained the ETOPS certification, expanding to 180 minutes. It seemed like the opposite of “regulatory capture.” It was so good! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oyWZjdXxlw
@ronwestrum Perhaps this is more a question for a psychologist, but do you have any theories as to why certain people are drawn to particular organizational cultures? It sounds like everyone should want a generative culture but people (like Stonecipher) seem to actually prefer another culture!
@ronwestrum any ideas how to bring multiple "working" cultures together during mergers and acquisition ?
I know you didn't ask me but I would say focus on Psychological Safety at the team/bubble level not try to make the whole org PS at once
Duena Blomstein, but reaction patterns are often sent down from the top. In Its Your Ship it was the captain, but reaction can be the same in much larger organizations (think Mulally).
This is what makes @genek such a remarkable thinker - he's genuinely curious about even the most obscure of cogs
When you ask stuff it's clear you're genuinely interested in all sausages and how they're made indiscriminately of flavour not with any agenda in mind - just extreme open-mindedness - you know this stop fishing :P:)
@ronwestrum Great talk. Culture really is key to attracting and maintaining talent.
For want of a better word, there are people who are drawn in an authoritarian direction. I kind of think Stonecipher might be one of them. But the real contrast, I think is between those who have a mission like makimg planes, and those who just want to make money. I find the former attractive, and have always been drawn to them. and the latter boring, although I understand them. When I did the book on the Sidewinder missile, I was deeply impressed by the great majority of those I interviewed, and in the end, identified with them. Ron W
True, the most driven people are the ones doing what they love, not what necessarily pays them the most.
FYI a recent article on the lack of psychological safety at Boeing: https://itrevolution.com/lack-of-psychological-safety-at-boeing/
PS: Part 2 of my Westrum interview on The Idealcast is being released today — it may be already up. Another 2 hours of amazing insights. I talk about the amazing ETOPS certification and test protocol there, and the genuine creativity of the 777 team to gain it, with full confidence of FAA and pilots union!!!
"this was obviously a dangerous condition" < well, it was obvious after the accidents happened
good tie into Nora Jones's talk yesterday about learning from incident analysis. at least the airline industry learned. the software industry hasn't been serious enough to learn the need for the equivalent of CRM.
To repeat: If you have a dope at the top, you will have, or soon will have, dopes all the way down
it's amazing how few people it takes to degrade the whole system
@ronwestrum I really like your very down-to-earth examples and very clear descriptions. As I come from a sociological tradition rooted in Talcot Parsons and Luhman, would you say, that there is an obvious link between those approaches to organizations and your approach? Maybe some Literature to mention?
The greatest book on organizations I ever read was William Foote Whyte, Organizational Behavior. He knew his stuff. As for my own orientation, it could be seen as a permutation of the X vs. Y theory, but there is a long tradition in sociology of humanistic management. What really got me going, though, was the business school stuff on high reliability culture, the exact path by which I got to my current view was long and twisty. I have been working on this most of my adult life. Best, Ron
Good article on the 737 MAX design flaws: https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2019/3/29/18281270/737-max-faa-scandal-explained?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
that would explain why leaders resist change
The Whitehall Study: incredible. https://unhealthywork.org/classic-studies/the-whitehall-study/
(This paper repeats this cross-population study, and they found the same effects two decades later.)
Best literature is in CRM area. Marmot best book is Status Syndrome. Very influential person
(I hope someone is keeping track of and compiling all these book recommendations! I’m having trouble keeping up!!! 🙏
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17nHB3aDOsUI2f3W5EShyoFQiK7NMwIJ8QFkUCANVPbk/edit# https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/162704.DevOps_Enterprise_Summit_2021_Reading_List Small attempt of collecting stuff live 🙂
1@jtf I think if people tag the messages with 📖 emoji, we can scrape them after the conference to help. cc @arne.brasseur @jeff.gallimore
@ronwestrum We’ve been tracking sick days as a metric of team health (without showing this to the teams of course!) and found it is very useful.
Actually people who were getting close to burning out started taking sick days more frequently and we were able to help them out
Has anyone had experience seeing leaders evolve their style? I'm such a believer in growth mindset I'd like to believe that even dopes can change. I've sort of had this experience, there was a command and control leader who created a bureaucratic culture who tried to change... it was just slower and harder and didn't quite get all the way there.
We had a great example of that at TIM where one of the founders made a complete change of style. Really notable.
I find the more experience someone has already, the longer it takes or harder it is for them to evolve their style and change their mindset. Often times, there is a foundation to their way of thinking that has been built up over many years, which is very difficult to completely move away from. I've seen plenty of evolution but never really revolution.
@jtf was this leader familiar with westrums work? was it intentional? were they aware of their transformation/evolution ?
No he wasn't, but I was. 🙂 Yes he was aware.
The sequence was we introduced the theories of Chris Argyris into the product development organization and improved the relationships and productivity there. The improvements were obvious. Then there were some incidents in the commercial team and it was clear that trust & respect were low. The founders suggested that the commercial team might benefit from the same changes as we'd made in product development. I said sure, but if were were going to introduce it to the commercial team the exec team itself should get trained first. After the training for the exec team this founder became a convert and helped lead the training for the rest of the company.
It was the success at TIM in making these dramatic changes, and at all levels of the company, that gave me the drive to write Agile Conversations.
There was cover of Economist, "the trouble with mergers" not suitable for mixed audience
The story of social safety and missiles ❤️
Lots of aeronautical creativity over generations in Mojave. Scaled Composites and Spaceship One, test flights at Edwards, Stratolaunch, etc. It's the Silicon Valley for aviation.
(PS: on a personal note: if you’re like me, you may find it surreal how Dr. @ronwestrum is here, answering questions that we have and commenting. If you had told me that this would happen one year ago, I would have laughed at you.)
It just shows "unimaginable is possible" if you just keep going and holding onto the bigger Vision. Bravo @genek for making this happen 🎉
Thank you Gene for making this happen and our @nicolefv for introducing Dr via email intro to you (I remember you said this)
@ronwestrum @genek Building on the 'dope principle', a colleague of mine always said: "A players get A players in their teams. B players get C and D players".
A big round of applause for Dr. @ronwestrum. THANK YOU!!!
👏 Information Flow Cultures from Dr.@ronwestrum is available for sharing here: https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=552759266
1A tough gig to follow such amazing speakers and thought leaders!
OK OKRs and NOT OK OKRs :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
@jonathansmart1 Are there monthly oscillations in the Google trends chart?
Certified Real Agile Professional - I remember this 🙂 CRAP - now COKR
Sounds like an arrest waiting to happen. “Shoooo … Offisher … how bout dem OKRs, huh?”
Key difference between KPI and KRs here. KRs measure movement
I sense a new Ignite talk from @jonathansmart1 coming next year, extending upon the CRAP certification. 🙂
I am multitasking by booking everybody on the management team for a chat about OKRs (again). So current for me.
would you say that mindset is an outcome of good OKRs, or that you need the right mindset to create good OKRs
this would have been a good day 1 talk. There were a lot of mentions of OKRs, but I didn't have the background or knowledge of OKRs before
Would you say "profit" is a lagging indicator? i.e. focus your efforts on things other than profit?
If you manage to meet your purpose, the profits will catch you.
@philipday Over what timespan? A quarter?
Context is king! An exercise for the reader 🙂 I guess it depends on the scale - a modest feature upgrade to the product might see (modest) gains in a timescale of months A major strategic initiative might not fully show up in the PnL for years, via indirect things it has enabled
Yes. And lagging measures can't be too lagging, otherwise there is less causality
My rule of thumb is no more than one quarter past a quarterly OKR
Weekly profit is a benign lagging indicator 😄
Yes,,, I still see the “underpromise and overdeliver” conservativism in OKR settings… because of the risk-averse conditioning from MBOs.
@jonathansmart1 You mentioned that one should have both leading and lagging measurements, right?
So you're saying our annual top down goals cascade could be improved?
in IT it seems like a challenge to talk about outcomes over activities, so ingrained
I was just thinking this exact thing. But nothing stops IT from adopting new language and just calling activities "outcomes" 😖😖😖
@jonathansmart1 building upon the great OKR guidance from @mail832 and @mik
Forces a baseline measure and measurability. Doesn't happen overnight
Will you be sued for copyright by @corey now thouigh? :thinking_face:
@jonathansmart1 what would you consider the lowest level in the org to establish OKRs?
Depends on context. Could be team level or team of team level @bryan.finster486
On the example shared, how do you know leading measurements 1-4 will reach the objective ? Maybe they are not enough? Would you use simulations, data to plot? #ask-the-speaker-plenary @jonathansmart1
has to be some value otherwise why are we spending time doing this +
Can individuals' performance be measured against OKRs? or is a NO NO #ask-the-speaker-plenary
"Culture over process" resonates big time.
@jonathansmart1 - I’ve heard that you should not use OKR’s for performance review processes. If we leave the OKR’s out, what would you recommend to use instead?
Agree with the advice to keep OKRs and performance appraisals separate, otherwise leads to bad behaviours
that means it is possible that teams often fail at them or not achieve 100%
stretched OKRs drive a behaviour of risk taking and doing ambitious things
you dont want to discourage that by connecting them to performance reviews
also OKRs, at least at my company, are at a team level
yeah and reward when certain OKRs or projects go really well as a reward
@bernard.voos Values. e.g. rewarded for experimenting (and sometimes failing), for learning, for supporting others, sustainable working, rewarded for behaviours, for 360 feedback, for overall outcomes rather than output. Risk of tying OKR to appraisal, is it becomes Weaponised Metrics and we've all seen firms go to the dark side (e.g. Wells Fargo staff making up customer accounts)
Oh that was a smooth save on the presentation @jonathansmart1 XO
@jonathansmart1 have you been spying on my flipcharts? Those boxes seem familiar.
"the future is unknowable" - I would think this is something we can all agree on, but somehow it doesn't stop your [boss/exec/board] from asking for your plan, or even worse, your plan for your plan
Such a key concept - I’ve heard senior execs say things like, “It’s great you guys were able to pivot once COVID-19 hit, but really we should be able to plan better…”
I've struggled with this as the business (engineering focused) have so long been used to Waterfall and clear short and long term plans
@eazyd247 yes, it's about unlearning and relearning. Takes time. Ninja move is to look at and point at the outcomes. Keep on articulating the outcome, more than the output if possible
thanks, makes a lot of sense. It's been compounded at times with multiple re-orgs - often feels like you're starting again every few quarters
Especially for large organisations, this OKR alignment is critical. With 1000s of teams and products
in my opinion, this is a very very hard process :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
@jonathansmart1 i am late to this thread but can you share some ways of achieving alignment. are there some tools for this to be able to do this effectively and efficiently?
Selfies... they always work :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
iroincally i think some of our businesses do this, but rarely shared in this form to tech 😔
IT is just the guys doing the computer bits right? 😢
“dont spend 12 months in Powerpoint”
🔥 OK NOTOK OKRs — 3Ms: Mindset, Mission and Measurement from @jonathansmart1 is available for sharing here: https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=550704697
That was fantastic @jonathansmart1 🙌👏
Great intro talk about OKRs! I finally understand OK OKRS @jonathansmart1 🙌
Expect to get it wrong... that's the path less traveled.
@jonathansmart1 wonderful talk, but wish you had added a trigger warning first , some of those anti patterns are a little too familiar :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
This is about an AWESOME guidance paper from @suzette.johnson5 @chawklady and team. The topic is 🔥 .
@jonathansmart1 is also hosting a special Birds of a Feather session on OKRs (#bof-okrs) today.
Putting our BVSSH thinking hats on, is this bundle safe? Imagine an exec was performance managed to these... should they be bundled with • Something about acceptable capex costs • Something about ongoing maintenance costs / stability • Something about satisfied compliance department ?
This is about objectives, not the limitations. The naysayers will make sure to be heard anyway. No reason to build boundaries when setting direction.
Right but what if you hit the objectives, pay the exec bonuses, while building a mountain of tech debt and then there's a disastrous compliance breach in year 2?
You could argue achieving these sort of metrics wouldn't be consistent with building up tech debt
No, you don't pay bonuses based on OKRs. That's incentivising experiment success...
When you introduce monetary incentives, the targets will be reached with whatever price - technical debt will rise.
Also, having OKRs is not about having no other standards or having pride of a job well done.
Ah, not linked to incentives, great Was that explicit in the talk? I might have missed it Incentives are toxic IMHO - I've posted this a few times over the three days
@jonathansmart1 did you mention incentives?
Yeah, that's the top 1 mistake I am seeing. Both of the metrics I am responsible for have been skewed that way right now in a certain organisation. You get more data points for your metrics but you lose trust in the quality of measuring.
There's another thread on this somewhere. It leads to Weaponised Metrics. Think Wells Fargo fake customer accounts
Also leads back to under promise to over deliver, rather than moonshots
How do you keep them away from personal appraisals? If they are supposed to be prominent, high-profile, north-star things, that might be hard Keep them inside org units and not reported upwards?
The market share example also won't be in isolation. There will be other OKRs for a given quarter or year. For example, reduce capital spending
An OKR alignment, with transparency, so that everyone can see in one place the goals that every Value Stream (or VS of VSs) has.
https://devopsenterprise.slack.com/archives/C015DQFEGMT/p1621508593414100
The may be health measures (KPIs) around stability, capex, compliance. And KRs around the KPIs we want to move (e.g. reduce P1s from 10 a month to 1 every 6 months)
Changes in KPIs can be the "proof" part of Key Results. But the Objectives bring some other purpose and binds a theory of "this leads to that".
“so, what exactly, are you doing around digital disruption?”
We should all help each other open source consulting. Several of us do that. Expert as a Service. 🙂
Thanks @jonathansmart1, this is really inspirational! Can't wait to start using OKRs 👍
I think orgs use consultants and their fancy slide decks as a fast/easier way to get that disruption. reminds me of the "cargo Culture" thing in Jon S's book
#BrianAsAService #BrAinAsAService
Look forward to learning what you are up to at USAF
Let's schedule another Bourbon Driven Development session. @chawklady, want to join?
Y'all send me some times and I'll get it done.
I love how @chawklady is modeling how an executive would talk to this consultant: confirm shared understanding of problem, desire to get best outcomes for the company (and the consultant). Not defensive at all.
Now Dr. @suzette.johnson5 is modeling on proposing an iterative approach (not big bang), and let’s agree on how we can all hold each other accountable, as a team.
Yes, I need a mentor, not someone doing for me. Also need to know they are qualified to mentor me.
“Upskill yourself” while we ship the work to another supplier
Completely agree! It is so much easier to grow the people we already have than trying to get it somewhere else. It does require patience and strategic intent (and many times we do not have either)
Ha! And now @chawklady is validating that this is our [company leadership] job, right? And not the consultant’s job, unless they plan on taking over company operations. (Am I getting that right, @chawklady and @suzette.johnson5?)
building together and inside - it seems like there is a struggle by some to recognize internal change agents/champions despite it being very obvious to others the people who have passion/energy
Give teams hard challenges, the tools to accomplish them, the ownership for how, and ownership of the outcomes. Upskilling is the outcome. 🙂
And not “here comes the consultants: open pocket, insert vacuum cleaner!” 😆
@chawklady and @suzette.johnson5 Second bullet is so important - we had some agile consultants come in and they were practically bullying our teams. Totally violated the cultural norms we had.
If I ever pulled that at a client’s, I hope they’d send me packing!
Make that part of the on-going validation of the "health of the engagement"
The behavior sadly came from one of the execs who brought the consultants. That exec cast the shadow that it was ok to behave that way.
Improvement only comes from people who have skin in the game.
equitable skin in the game matters too ... me having 190% can't compensate for a partner having 10% (i know the math doesn't work) :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
LOL. Yes, exactly so. Focused on the goals, not expanding the consulting footprint.
> Seek first to understand, then to be understood
(I admire how earnest and sincere @chawklady and @suzette.johnson5 are — very focused on goals, thinking thru what it’ll take to get the desired outcomes. 🔥) (I also imagine that this Forum team spent a day laughing at the absurdities that made this Forum topic so necessary, right? 😆 And that delivering this presentation required “putting game face on” and “keeping certain thoughts firmly inside our head” ??)
Me too. @chawklady has always been my first mentor on this journey.
You ask a bunch of legacy workers to learn new ways of working, put themselves out there. This takes safety. Sometimes outsourcing can take the wind out of the change sails.
Anyone else struggling with similar problems that @chawklady and @suzette.johnson5 are talking about with Internal Consulting teams (I’ve seen them called things like Strategy Implementation)?
Anyone else struggling with similar problems that @chawklady and @suzette.johnson5 are talking about with Internal Consulting teams (I’ve seen them called things like Strategy Implementation)?
I used to run one. Teams became dependant onb
I used to run one. Teams became dependant on us rather than the build the capability. They didn't have the headcount to hire so they used us as perm staff
i’ve seen it/am seeing the same right now
I've seen the same with "embedded engineers". I typically would discuss the exit up front
Yes, that's a trap we tried to avoid at the Walmart Dojo. We held ourselves accountable to being customer focused and making ourselves peers to the teams we were helping instead of being a Center of Excellence.
And what are the shared expectations on when exit of those resources is achievable
"Our goal is to help every team become the team we want to join so we can disband the Dojo" was our published goal.
2COE = Centre of Enablement 👌 COE = Centre of Excellence :thumbsdown:
Exit? There was no exit from some teams. Escalations ensued. It was Hotel California.
It’s hard to free up people to work on Transformation initiatives, especially the critical high performers, but you have to prioritise their development as you put the mixed team together. I frequently see 2 anti-patterns:-employees given admin roles or just putting the people that are easy to free up into the team
Funny thought: all you awesome consultants out there: in ten years, you’ll be doing this to the next generation tech leaders, and they’ll all see you like this: (just kidding — I’m sure y’all will make sure that won’t happen! 😆 🙏
Use consultants for their expertise and to, well consult.......the culture of the company remains.. It can go so right....but it can also go so wrong. We have had contractors with over 10 years with the company 😛
I’ve found that often results from an unwillingness of the people at the company to take over/learn the work the contractors are doing (on the operational level). On management level there are often warped incentives such that they think it’s somehow cheaper to have contractors working for you for 10 years!
@chawklady That’s a great point. Ensuring we have a shared understanding of the goal and how we’re all going to contribute to it is fundamental to a good working relationship between client and consultant. I think a good consultant will do their best to ask the right questions to understand and, where needed, help the client better articulate what the outcomes are they are looking for.
Consultancies want you to be dependent on them. The successful ones are really good at it. You have to fight really hard to avoid it.
I think this is a consultancy anti-pattern and might be born out of insecurity. Personally, I think I’ve done a good job when the client is comfortable and happy without me. I’d rather move on to help another area of their business or on to another client who can use my assistance more. 😊
This seems to be a rare outcome, according to the experiences here, and is the point of this talk. We need to be savvy clients, with a firm idea of keeping the boundaries on accountability and dependencies, otherwise the consultancies will often leave bad things in their wake.
I agree with @saket.kulkarni I work for a company that does consultancy, but our goal is to raise the tech savy in our region and not to be the "bad wake" consultants. I'm often embedded in a team for a few years, developing, but also nudging , training and mentoring
consultants are often seen as much easier to get in rather than increasing head count. Can be very hard getting the business case through on the need for the latter
Thank you, @chawklady and Dr. @suzette.johnson5!!!! That was awesome!
In my opinion, in consulting, the idea should be: learn your customer - do it alongside with your customer - let the customer do it him/herself...
🎉 Build Internal Capability, Not Consultant Dependency from @chawklady & @suzette.johnson5 is available for sharing here: https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=550704769 Forum papers available here: https://itrevolution.com/free-resources-sign-up/
Hello! I hope everyone is having a GREAT DAY 3 MORNING!! 🎉 Our first surprise we have for you today! So, how would you like to get a “behind the scenes” look at how we created this DevOps Enterprise Summit? We heard so much already about how important it is to talk about accidents and near-misses — @nora talked about it yesterday, and Dr. @steve773 and Dr. @ronwestrum did as well today. These are the same principles that you use in your daily work. If you’re interested, join us at 1:50 pm BST during the mid-day break, where I’ll share how we created all the speaker videos, and the tools we built to deliver the two virtual conferences last year, and the two conferences this year. And in the spirit of the above, we’ll share some of the things that went wrong, some of our “near misses”, and all the contingency planning we did to survive a scenario where critical services we depend upon go down (think Slack, Vimeo, EasyLive, Google Cloud) — and how to better recover than the memorable end to DOES 2020 Vegas! :) To join the session, just be watching Track 1 (https://doesvirtual.com/watch?track=1). I’ll be presenting with @arne.brasseur and we’ll do Q&A as well. We’re excited to share and hope you enjoy the peek behind the scenes! Bring your lunch! :) (And for the first time, we’re doing it LIVE! What could go wrong?)
5I've been excited for this type of a talk ever since you talked about how much you learned from Patrick and his "paranoia" about dependencies.
Thank you @chawklady @suzette.johnson5! Now, let me tell you about my great set of practices... 😉
@david.read Key goal is to generate a monthly bill not necessarily to provide the best consultancy experience...I've worked with really good ones who impart knowledge and learning, and not so good ones who drive "bums on seats"
Sadly, I do see this happening often. Ironically, this is just as bad for the consultants’ development as it is for the internal employees’ journey. The potential strength of a consultant is their experiences across many companies and segments, so if they keep their bums stuck to your seats, they will quickly depreciate in value. 😂
As our world becomes more non-deterministic, we need to stop hiring consultants to design and then handover. Design-Dev is as big a problem as Dev-Ops - we need consultants to accelerate our experiments and learn with us
Day 3 AM Plenary Talks — Government as a Platform and Covid-19 – How Shared Platforms Enabled New Services To Be Built In Under a Week from @mail832 — https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=552759225 Fast and Slow Integrated Problem Solving Structures from @genek & @steve773 — https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=552759240 DevOps Confession from @genek — https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=552759255 Information Flow Cultures from Dr.@ronwestrum — https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=552759266 OK NOTOK OKRs — 3Ms: Mindset, Mission and Measurement from @jonathansmart1 — https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=550704697 Build Internal Capability, Not Consultant Dependency from @chawklady & @suzette.johnson5 — https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=550704769
That's a tough one. the famous russian saying is Kto Kom (who dominates?) And merged corporations are like merged families, often "the sum of its parts." People look to top management to see which way the wind blows. At Boeing, it was an ill wind. People were really angry and scared.
Ask your questions here and I’ll feed them to @genek and @arne.brasseur.
“almost there…” just building suspense here :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
My first thought is I'm surprised the sun is up in Oregon right now 🙂
Patience, grasshoppers. This idea was literally born hours ago.
@ronwestrum I’d like to tell you that it’s quite satisfying to me that you’re presenting and chatting with this crowd. After many years of drawing on domains and fields that are not typically seen as “tech” or “IT” I’ve managed to trick convince some inspiring minds to take a closer look at this domain (including my now coworkers and friends Dr. Richard Cook and Dr. David Woods) so thanks for engaging!
An aside, I also wanted to mention that while many here know of your organizational culture typology work, your https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284049195_Requisite_imagination_The_fine_art_of_anticipating_what_might_go_wrong was very influential for me when I did my master’s degree in Human Factors and Systems Safety (Lund) - so thanks for that, too. 🙂
Though I haven't seen them in a while, I once saw a lot of Dick Cook and Dave Woods! Thanks for your good comments!
No bash scripts were used for this session?
Almost.. 🙈 There's a slide coming up about a contingency plan where we use one bash script for a backup
Ah, one is none … 😂
Soon there will be Grafana dashboard with live metrics for the talks, like engagement scores 👀
“deploys were trivial. we could push out small changes on a whim.”
That timezone talk brings up: https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right Surely time is easy right? 😂
or do a live “peek behind the scenes” session on a whim, too 🤷
disabled all caching layers - just in case
Fun fact: Those messages support partial markdown. This is how we send those emergency messages, on the DOES Dashboard:
stay tuned for the “near misses and things that went wrong” here shortly…
Is there an additional "Do you really want to do this?" Check? 😄
> Is there an additional "Do you really want to do this?" Check? @philipp.boeschen650
@vladyslav.ukis they said no! https://status.slack.com//2021-05/33aed870657e30a0
Maybe next time you'll have to have Jeff say "please don't crash the slack" along with his donut/croissants 😄
Would the Youtube Livestreams also have instant playback? :thinking_face: That was actually something I was missing here this year
I had to use the Youtube link when my vpn didn't let me connect to 'Watch'. Temporary workaround 👍
For the video editing, wouldn't it be easier to just get everyone to edit their own? Openshot is open source and easy to use as an example.
@andrew.sturrock Adding in intros, opening graphics, title slides, closing slides, external videos, different picture-in-picture formats, padding videos to certain lengths, etc were embedded in the "templates" we created. So this made editing easy enough to only care about the timestamps instead of the rest of the plumbing around it 🙂
So from my point of view (Germany), everything worked smoothly and timely. Just the breaks could have been longer. I feel a little brain overload.
Obvious fix for the filenames - move the number to the front! 🎉
I just thought the captioning was a feature for better availability 😅
yes. let’s go with that answer :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
Don't know if there are attendees in China mainland, but then the Youtube fallback wouldn't help them much (outside of those having "vpn") 😉
That was funny the caption - the speaker said 'Agile' and it came out as 'a gel' 😄
There was a really funny one at work with Teams auto-captioning. Very obscene, can't repeat here!
Going forward with future conferences, as we return to "normal", do you plan to keep it virtual? I really like that everything is achieved so I can go back and rewatch these sessions.
Truly leading by example delivering a brand new talk about how to produce a conference while holding a conference 🤯
Youtube Livestreams (I mean they probably have the infrastructure to boot) can just pause and continue playback at the point you paused 🙂 But yeah I get that!
Gather has turned out to be very useful, how long will it be available post-conference?
Hehehe. Gene's comment about bash scripts is what I thought when I saw the question 🙂
I hope Gather will be around for after after party 😄
be good to have meetups between events on gather : think i raised it before with @nickeggleston
Hopefully the Kims avoided hitting their internet limit this year 🙂
Well done @genek and @arne.brasseur for the live stream behind the scenes talk 😄
Thank you very much. The overall virtual conference experience has been very good. I enjoyed it a lot.
2Thanks to the entire ITRev team, they're a blast to work with ❤️
2Thanks for all who attended the “Behind the Scenes” talk that I did with @arne.brasseur — I’m sure he’s as proud as I am that all the work we’ve done since January has resulted in a great conference experience, where you don’t have to worry about how it all actually works! 🎉
The amazing editing tool that I use is Descript, both for this conference and the Idealcast podcast — couldn’t do either without it! https://www.descript.com/
Seeing the team putting on the conference have fun really helps the experience. Its like the difference between being at a conference where the band looks like they are having a blast vs one that looks bored.
@genek when you say the virtual summit would be like "cinematic experience", it felt even more to me with the use of slack interactions with everyone. I actually feel it is beyond that as "interactive cinematic experience", whereby the actors came out of the screen and reacted with the audience at all times. Amazing experience. Very grateful to you and all your team. We should all shout from the roof tops everywhere about 2021 European DevOps Summit. I for sure will
3Is the "behind the scenes" talk as well recorded?
it is. we’re talking about how best to make that available. stay tuned!
Fantastic thanks @jeff.gallimore
Any update on this @jeff.gallimore Can't wait to see it 😬
For anyone from TuiGroup - I've watched companies take years (and then fail) to converge multiple services into one (I think you mentioned pricing). How did you go about creating the combined backlog?
Single ownership is the key, even when not all systems are yet unified you need single ownership for all systems. Also the business partner started to unify to one voice/person
so we have now one responsible person for all pricing systems (old and new)
That's helpful. Thank you. One challenge I noticed at one company was that no one really understood what the systems did. They had evolved to address thousands of niche cases. I'm guessing you are trying to reduce niche cases as much as possible, so you redefined pricing at TUIGroup as part of the process. Is that right?
And your existence as an enterprise was under threat from COVID, which I imagine made compromise easier to make.
Yes we consolidate as well the business process around it.
and of course COVID made it easier to get agreements
📣 The first of our closing plenary talks is from the Disney team! Welcome, @jason.cox @nasia.a.haque @shaili.guru @emeka.asika @steven.j.steinman @shirley.liou @laura.j.barnes @neha.zalpuri @hynespd and Deepti Mutnuru
Hello, @jason.cox and an AMAZING cast of characters from Disney!!! So excited about this talk!
@genek: really excited to hear about this after the discussion of leadership in the navy from @jmrichardson1
I think the Technology Management Rotation program is so incredible — when I first learned about it, I wanted to apply for one of those openings — but I don’t have an MBA!!! 😭
its like an internship while not being paid like an intern
[Achieving Disney goals] “…requires leadership. That means we have strong technology leaders.” — @jason.cox
@jason.cox you are absolutely working for the right company. you are Disney for me! you are 🪄
@jason.cox Did I understood it correctly that this was a Technology only rotation?
Admiral John Richardson would no doubt love this "leadership factory"!
They are actually doing and delivering while learning - creating value, which is what people are motivated by
Across all businesses. You will hear, but it allows these leaders to work across our divisions and products, on Studios products, Imagineering/Parks projects, and direct to consumer streaming, etc.
Is this the teaser trailer to the presentation? 😄
At some point @jason.cox will just present an entire movie and we'll all sit here and watch it with 🍿
Imagine though, a Disney movie about leadership principles and DevOps 🤯
Getting everyone to realise technology is throughout the whole organisation and tech teams can contribute so much to culture, would make huge change in most organisations
It’s not if you’re ready to sign up…it’s if you qualify! 😭😂
@jason.cox how do you make it easy/easier for the TMRs to plug into new teams and new teams to have the TMRs plug into them?
TMR Alum here! We find out about a new rotations a few weeks before we join the team, so we’re encouraged to go ahead and meet with our new day-to-day leaders and other team members. This really helps us establish a rapport before we even get there. After 4 rotations, we are very, very good at starting new jobs and providing value quickly.
1Oh, there's a stereo pingpong in the audio track... that's annoying. 😞
was it only for external new joiners, or was it available for internal people too?
I didn't expect intention from anyone at Disney to have it like this 😄
I know you can do an "okay" audio experience
That comment about leaders staying the code reminded me of you!
“Leaders who stay in the tech” = Technical Maestro
“We need leaders drive technology; explore and innovate; our former CIO created the TMR program, across not just the enterprise, but within each business segment… “…one of her strategic pillars is technology. We need strong tech leaders. We don’t launch leaders in tech who don’t stay deep in tech. So often leaders become detached from tech — they’re no longer in the code. “So, we looked for candidates who were technically curious; and interested in business” So good!
“We need people who aren’t just educated in technology; but are technically curious.” So good!
Actually technology being moving fast, I first search for continuous learner, not gurus of a tech probably less adaptable and potentially soon oudated. Mastery can be built, curiosity less.
@jeff.gallimore great question - we solicited assignments from all businesses - I would get 60 or so ideas from groups across the company and then would work with the TMRs to pick the best ones for them. I would work with our CIO to finalize those assignments. We always had way more assignment opportunities than TMRs which was a good indication of the need.
What an honor to have been selected, @jason.cox — I love how they arrived at this decision, on how it would benefit the TMR program!
@genek I think having something else as your education AND tech curiosity is better than having run of the mill software engineers on all chairs. One sort of diversity
And I had no idea that you owned both sides of TMR — selecting candidates, selecting projects, and matching them together!!
@jason.cox Was it all on top of the day job or was time created for you to lead TMR?
FREE MONEY for the business units!!! Now we’re talking!!!
"Leaving something for accomplishing things" mind blown
With a 12 or 6 month rotation, how do you keep the focus on continuous delivery of value? Is there ways the focus is kept off of "We need to finish this before I leave!"?
“these TMRs have skill, some experience, but an OVERSIZED level of energy and drive.” They’re ambitious, partly as demonstrated that many of them put themselves thru an MBA program— is that correct, @jason.cox?
Unsurprisingly someone from Disney has a smooth voice and is a great storyteller.
@ffion yes was on top of the rest of my work. I had my leaders keep asking me if I wanted to continue it or if it was too much… it was a lot of work, but was a labor of love.
Sounds like a job in itself but absolutely critical work and the impact it will have had on the people involved let alone Disney culture will have been huge
@jason.cox has been absolutely invaluable to the TMR program. He has constantly championed the program and its value, and consistently supports those of us who have already graduated the program. We couldn’t ask for a better director.
For a leadership development program to be successful, you NEED these kinds of champions, front and center and fully invested.
I fully agree that a fresh perspective can be very beneficial. At our company we have a process that encourages that business line X can get an impartial/external view from a small team from other business lines. It is always a great learning experience and provides good new directions.
@dacahill7 Great question - it always amazed me how these leaders were able to level up existing products as well as deliver significant contributions on new ones, sometimes starting new efforts that continued well past their assignment.
PS: @jason.cox — @drjgoosbysmith Goosby Smith is watching along with the rest of us. I’m hoping that this is delighting her as much as it’s delighting me! 🤞
Here's another great example of Jason's generative leadership, worth a read: https://www.jasonacox.com/wordpress/archives/876
I'm guessing there is a clout and influence associated with being a TMR that makes it easier for these folks to reach out to people? @jason.cox
love to see the various and diverse background and how people come together to create the magic, the culture and the future!
@jason.cox how much work/challenge was it to get other business leaders onboard with this?
These fast track management programmes are well-known for being a rocket for a person's success, long term in the org. Rotation is fantastic for quickly getting experience. Also the strong networking amongst cohort - they help each other out for many years. It's really attractive for candidates and companies wanting to grow good managers.
Well similar flavor of working we do at NatWest Group. The Grads (MBAs) we hire need to work on a rotation of 6 months for certain years before moving to a definite business area (that too has a certain process including the GRADs choice) and then they move after a fixed period. So regular movement is spoken methodology that we do. Thanks to @jason.cox & team for giving next level of how it can be taken forward.
I've clicked through pages on there before and thought "Wow this would be a lot of fun to work on!"
It’s a great experience. Especially if you’re a comics fan. I do see a lot of opportunity for improvement, though, but I’m sure they’ll get around to it! 🙂
I have to imagine competition for that job was pretty high. 🙂
@rshoup We talked a lot about that in the program. The profile for a leader is someone who builds networks and relationships. We work on that and I’m incredibly proud of all of the TMR graduates… they continue to do that! And Yes, added value they bring to their role from the program is the cross-business connections they have built.
Great! There's an implicit "sponsorship", I'm guessing, which would be a great accelerator to the networking and relationship building. You maybe don't need an exec intro if you can say "I'm on my TMR rotation". So exciting and inspiring.
That's awesome, do they presumably have a behavioural element to the programme and is their network with each other an outcome too? Trust amongst your leaders as they grow through the business?
Yes, the leaders that have been through the program not only keep those relationships, they also are big supporters of future TMR leaders that enter the program. They becomes mentors as they graduate too. 😉
One of my favourite elements of great development programmes!
@jason.cox, what do you do to keep your technical skills sharp and how much time do you dedicate to it?
@eazyd247 you will hear from one in the talk today…. great support from leaders. They saw the outcomes and wanted to help.
I’m so jealous that @jason.cox learned AutoLISP decades ago.
Reminds me of @david627 from Team of Teams — middle level leaders who are expert at working across the organization.
Actually lots of similarities -- good call. Free help, strong person, explicitly about coordination. I wonder if any of the TMRs took out the trash at an embassy like the Special Forces guy 😉
One of the TMRs helped launch a new product: IoT sensors for trash cans in Tomorrowland that expanded to all parts. It helped improve location and the route for “”taking out the trash” in an optimal way. So in some way, they did take out the trash as part of their rotation. 😉
@nickeggleston - stay n the code! I tell the TMRs this. 🙂 Keep exploring and surround yourself (your team) with curious people that keep challenging you on the tech side as well as leadership side. I keep my fingers in code (I’m not good!) and publish some of it to create good personal pressure: https://github.com/jasonacox
Just shows how big of a leader @jason.cox is that he basically gave most of the time to everyone else in this talk, 😍
Nick Cannon, our CTO at Animation, is a great partner that wouldn’t be part of the program without @nasia.a.haque leadership to introduce him to the program.
You were fantastic, @nasia.a.haque!! You made the TMR program and @jason.cox and all of Disney look so good! Thank you!
A huge thank you to @jason.cox and the Disney team!! 📣 And now, to close out the conference, we have a very special presentation on Creating Inclusive Organizations by @drjgoosbysmith !
great presentation as well. looked like world class production! awesome stuff @jason.cox and the entire team!
Great job @jason.cox for pulling this presentation together so quickly. Glad so many of you enjoyed
And great job @hynespd !! I wish we could have recorded and told more of your amazing stories.
Yes, please welcome, @drjgoosbysmith. Goosby Smith!!! I’m so honored that she can teach us — I love her book “Beyond Inclusion”: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Inclusion-Interconnectedness-Resilience-Organizations/dp/1137385413
There's a rental option now for $20! The $80 price tag kept me away from it before.
(another wonderful cross population study — the same instrument that allowed the medical profession link smoking to early morbidity and mortality!!!)
Whoop whoop! so excited to see inclusion always represented in this fantastic conference! Thank you Gene and Team! ❤️
Oh, @drjgoosbysmith — I forgot to tell you. We had former CNO Admiral John Richardson teach us about leader development yesterday! 🎉
Here’s the video of the talk he gave — I thought it was so superb. Let me or @annp know if you have any problems accessing it! https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=550704528
I found @drjgoosbysmith’s talk so important and effective last DOES and encouraged everyone in my company to watch it, hope others do as well.
Thank you, Mik! I can't wait until we can do in-person conferences again! I'm glad it is useful.
So useful! Thank you @drjgoosbysmith!! And yes will be wonderful to meet in person!
The gardener metaphor is very interesting. How do you measure thriving?
In a live organization, I do an inclusion audit. Then I dis-aggregate by stakeholder groups and various identities. I measure thriving quantitatively with this measure...and qualitatively with open responses.
One question is, on a scale of 1 to 5, how often do you share a meal with your manager (that one measures one aspect connection, which I will cover shortly). My measure is based upon my published research in Beyond Inclusion (there are free chapters online that you can google)
such a thought-provoking view of the many dimensions of diversity to consider.
We were talking about internal dimensions like Into vs Extro -version vis-a-vis the desire to get back into the office vs those who have said they will never go back and will change jobs if it's tried.
I totally TOTALLY understand. I, personally, could work remotely for the rest of my life!
Shaping language to impact inclusion is such an important concept 💯
The smallest minority as you parse the attributes is the minority of one aka individual.
ok. who else laughed out loud when @drjgoosbysmith said “i’m in this brown shrinkwrap”?
This is great. If we’re all in the image of our creator, yet we’re all different, it says that we’re only in the image of something encompassing infinity only if we’re only together.
Also, frank and constructive feedback builds trust and is also an aspect of mentoring/coaching
How do you integrate challenge (something the individual needs short term they won't like) to make them stronger in the long run? And how does challenge map into the gardening metaphor?
As soon as you stop treating people like numbers, you'll be surprised what you'll find 🙂
Also, frank and constructive feedback builds trust and is also an aspect of mentoring/coaching
At times it is also dependent on the intent of the receiver even the giver has pure heart.
Absolutely. And giving the giver and the receiver the benefit of the doubt. With mutual trust, you can say and hear just about anything
(what makes it extra funny is I know nearly nothing about Football)
I know some people have a poor opinion of Dungy. I like how he managed his teams. That is why he is my favorite coach. I don't necessarily condone everything he has said
I loved the garden analogy. Is it possible to share the slides or video Dr. J. I dont find them in videolibrary or dropbox. Thankyou
Here is an article that explains what I'm saying: https://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2017/08/the-garden-an-organismic-metaphor-for-distinguishing-inclusion-from-diversity/
2I think the videos are released to the library after they stream for plenary talks.
1Ubuntic Inclusion ... I'm running multiple versions of Ubuntu right now 😂
This point about witnessing fairness feels like a similar thing when you actually feel good when you just see acts of kindness :thinking_face:
It took me some google search to figure out who the coach was. Got it! (Tony Dungy)
Here's a free article that explains my ideas in more depth: https://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2017/08/the-garden-an-organismic-metaphor-for-distinguishing-inclusion-from-diversity/
We at NatWest Group completely resonate & practice with what @drjgoosbysmith. said today. It seemed like I was hearing what our organization has been preaching from top to bottom. Thanks so much 🙂 https://www.natwestgroup.com/who-we-are/working-at-natwest-group/building-a-more-inclusive-bank.html
@drjgoosbysmith the link between fairness & trust is really interesting. In our DEI work , when we introduced the concept of equity, we felt we really needed to build trust with the majority first, otherwise majority would say "hey that's not FAIR!" if we just started giving more water to one plant
omg yes. trust is everything. i've been thinking about this a lot just watching the world this past year
i have lots of thoughts about trust and transparency and all these tectonic global shifts we're seeing... lots to worry about but also so much to be optimistic about (in the long view) if you know where to look for them
thank you so much for your work and your talk, its a message that can be amplified loud enough
What a wholesome and amazing way to close out 👏
Creating Inclusive Organizations from @drjgoosbysmith is now available for sharing: https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/?video=551641853
Was this the best DevOps Enterprise Summit we’ve run?
Content was great - as a virtual event it was great. (in person will be welcome next year)
Thank you @drjgoosbysmith, this was the most important talk on this conference for me (which I can say with conficence now).
Thank you @drjgoosbysmith, this was the most important talk on this conference for me (which I can say with conficence now).
Yes, internal and external. External because people treat us differently because of it, which gives us different perspectives and experiences.
Cannot agre more with you @genek , Indeed the best summit i believe
Great summit - thank you @genek and co. Gather was fun this year. More shorter breaks would be good.
Thank you so much @genek @mvk842 @erin @alex @annp @annp @annp @annp @jeff.gallimore @annan @mollyc, Gaiwan team, speakers, PC committee and sponsors! 🙏🙏🙏
Amazing 3 days here. Learned a lot. Taking bag loads filled with lot of things to reflect. Thank you!
It will be a real challenge to keep all the best of the virtual experience when getting back on a physical stage
Amazing summit.. so good to meet everyone and see the speakers amongst the discussions in gather.
That the speakers join the gatherings is one of the things that makes DOES so special. 😊
Thanks to everyone for pulling together and running another great event 🙂
Thank you - I go back to my job inspired and ready to continue the fight in our journey!
@genek and team, this was a great conference. Lots of insights and ideas to continue the journey...
Thank you, @mvk842 @alex @mollyc @kearav @erin @marjorie @annan @arne.brasseur @mitesh @alys
Thank you ITRev team for making the entire journey so funnn!! ❤️
Thanks @genek and Team for putting together amazing show virtually... It was amazing and i enjoyed every bit
Thank you so much for the great content, learnings and not to forget thank you community! You’re awesome, you’re the best 🙏
Big hands for ITRevolution team . @annp, @alex, @leahb, @mvk842, @kearav, @kearav, @annan, @erin. 🙌
Also, we have an attendee survey! https://forms.gle/p7UoGff2JdgEEKFQ9
Good news! @genek and @jeff.gallimore will be at the bar in Gather in a few minutes! Gather will be open until tomorrow for all of you to continue "Gather"ing!!
Thanks for two weeks access, it's hard to fit it all in one week
Thank you so much to the ITREV team! My boss and wife: @mvk842, @mollyc, @annp, @kearav @alex @annan @lisa.dahms @erin
Could someone post up those dropbox and github links again for the slides?
Video library has all the slides, too, and it’s way easier to sort through (I did all the hard work matching them to talks haha) https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/
All slides are available in the https://videolibrary.doesvirtual.com/, on http://itrevolution.com/DOES21-db, and on http://itrevolution.com/DOES21-git.
This was my first DOES and it exceeded ALL expectations, wish I had discovered you all sooner. what an amazing conference.
Please take a few mins and let us know how the experience was here: https://forms.gle/kdJUB7YGCzg3B1k29
Enjoy the collection of books, links etc.: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17nHB3aDOsUI2f3W5EShyoFQiK7NMwIJ8QFkUCANVPbk/edit# https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/162704.DevOps_Enterprise_Summit_2021_Reading_List
Not sure if it was just me but we lost the end of the final comments... Intrigued about the last words of wisdom....
I just heard it might have cutout just after “sharing is caring”… in which case, these are the final thoughts… For the last three days, we’ve been talking a lot about community. That’s what this… is all about. It’s the spirit of the DevOps Enterprise Summit to get together… to go faster… as a community. And there will be another opportunity for us all to get back together and go faster later this year and again next year. Because we all have a need to connect… to share… and to learn. We have the DevOps Enterprise Summit US Virtual on October fifth through the seventh. And, if all goes according to plan, we’ll be back in London… in person… in 2022. Until then, be well, stay safe, and we’ll see you…hopefully in person… next year. Take care, everybody.
Thank you all for attending DevOps Enterprise!!! And thank you LaunchDarkly! They’ll have the expo open over the weekend, as will Gather!!! 🎉 🎉 More conferring!!!
Thank you so so much all of ITREV for an amazing conference!!! Once again so much to mull on for coming days and weeks and looking forward to discussions with all the new connections 🙂
Huge thanks everyone for an amazing DevOps summit. This was my first one, but it was mind blowing experience. Now, I need to go and start shouting about it everywhere
Here is the collection of all the reference links that were shared / discussed during the #DOES21 event. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/devops-enterprise-summit-2021-reference-links-minus-books-pareek Enjoy Reading 🙂