Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution
| Titre | Date | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Behind The State of DevOps Research, Favorite Aha Moments, and Where They Are Now: Interviews with The DevOps Handbook Coauthors (Part 2 of 2: Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble) | 27 Jan 2022 | 01:29:34 | |
In part two of this two-part episode on The DevOpsHandbook, Second Edition, Gene Kim speaks with coauthors Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble about the past and current state of DevOps. Forsgren and Humble share with Kim their DevOps aha moments and what has been the most interesting thing they’ve learned since the book was released in 2016. Jez discusses the architectural properties of the programming language PHP and what it has in common with ASP.NET. He also talks about the anguish he felt when Mike Nygard’s book, Release It!, was published while he was working on his book, Continuous Delivery. Forsgren talks about how it feels to see the findings from the State of DevOps research so widely used and cited within the technology community. She explains the importance of finding the link between technology performance and organizational performance as well as what she's learned about the importance of culture and how it can make or break an organization. Humble, Forsgren, and Kim each share their favorite case studies in The DevOps Handbook.
ABOUT THE GUEST(S) Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble are two of five coauthors of The DevOps Handbook along with Gene Kim, Patrick Debois and John Willis. Forsgren, PhD, is a Partner at Microsoft Research. She is coauthor of the Shingo Publication Award-winning book Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and The DevOps Handbook, 2nd Ed., and is best known as lead investigator on the largest DevOps studies to date. She has been a successful entrepreneur (with an exit to Google), professor, performance engineer, and sysadmin. Her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals. Humble is co-author of Lean Enterprise, the Jolt Award-winning Continuous Delivery, and The DevOps Handbook. He has spent his career tinkering with code, infrastructure, and product development in companies of varying sizes across three continents, most recently working for the US Federal Government at 18F. As well as serving as DORA’s CTO, Jez teaches at UC Berkeley.
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TIMESTAMPS [05:22] Intro [05:34] Meet Jez Humble [10:19] What Jez is working on these days [15:56] What inform his book, “Continuous Delivery” [24:02] Assembling the team for the project [26:30] At what point was PHP an important property [31:56] The most surprising thing since the DevOps Handbook came out [35:07] His favorite pattern that went into the DevOps Handbook [43:40] What DevOps worked on in 2021 [44:46] Meet Dr. Nicole Forsgren [50:32] What Dr. Forsgren is working on these days [52:18] What it’s like working at Microsoft Research [55:58] The response to the state of DevOps findings [59:18] The most surprising finding since the findings release [1:05:59] Her favorite pattern that influence performance [1:08:49] How Dr. Forsgren met Dr. Ron Westrum [1:11:06] The most important thing she’s learned in this journey [1:14:46] Her favorite case study in the DevOps Handbook [1:19:12] Dr. Christina Maslach and work burnout [1:20:46] More context about the case studies [1:25:32] The Navy case study [1:29:04] Outro | |||
| Personal DevOps Aha Moments, the Rise of Infrastructure, and the DevOps Enterprise Scenius: Interviews with The DevOps Handbook Coauthors (Part 1 of 2: Patrick Debois and John Willis) | 16 Dec 2021 | 02:19:36 | |
In part one of this two-part episode on The DevOpsHandbook, Second Edition, Gene Kim speaks with coauthors Patrick Debois and John Willis about the past, present, and future of DevOps. By sharing their personal stories and experiences, Kim, Debois, and Willis discuss the scenius that inspired the book, and why and how the DevOps movement took hold around the world.
They also examine the updated content in the book, including new case studies, updated metrics, and practices. Finally, they each share the new lessons they have learned since writing the handbook and the future challenges they think DevOps professionals need to solve for the future. Kim will conclude the series in Part 2, where he interviews the remaining two coauthors, Jez Humble and Dr. Nicole Forsgren.
ABOUT THE GUEST(S) Patrick Debois is considered to be the godfather of the DevOps movement after he coined the term DevOps accidentally in 2008. Through his work, he creates synergies projects and operations by using Agile techniques in development, project management, and system administration. He has worked in several companies such as Atlassian, Zender, and VRT Media Lab. Currently, he is a Labs Researcher at Synk and an independent IT consultant.
John Willis an author and Senior Director of the Global Transformation Office at Red Hat.. He has been an active force in the IT management industry for over 35 years. Willis’ experience includes being the Director of Ecosystem Development at Docker, the VP of Solutions for Socketplane, the VP of Training and Services at Opscode. He also founded Gulf Breeze Software, an award-winning IBM business partner, which specializes in deploying Tivoli technology for the enterprise.
Patrick DeBois and John Willis are two of five coauthors of The DevOps Handbook along with Gene Kim, Jez Humble, and Nicole Forsgren, PhD.
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TIMESTAMPS [00:00] Intro [01:18] What’s new and improved in the second edition of the DevOps handbook [03:56] Meet Patrick DeBois [10:35] How faster technology made ideas like DevOps possible [18:11] The myths and inefficiencies of team autonomy [20:04] What the first DevOps days were like [27:59] Different opinions between the dev community and ops community [30:49] Mob programming and the future of collaboration [39:31] Two surprising things Patrick learned about DevOps [47:20] Patrick DeBois’ favorite DevOps patterns [51:28] How fear of not delivering on time can mask technical errors [59:45] What Patrick DeBois is working on these days [1:04:38] What was expanded in the second edition of the DevOps handbook [1:06:30] How Gene Kim entered the DevOps world. [1:07:38] Meet John Willis [1:10:42] Why the DevOps movement took off [1:16:00] Mastering production disasters [1:23:32] The birth of the DevOps Days conference [1:37:37] Feelings of belonging and connection in a conference [1:41:29] A few clarifications [1:49:32] Two of the greatest DevOps open spaces [1:52:40] The difference between variety and variation (the cost of knowledge work). [2:07:12] Why you should want more stoppages in your production line [2:10:16] John Willis’ two favorite DevOps case studies [2:18:55] Outro | |||
| Leadership Development and Balancing Creativity and Control with Admiral John Richardson | 01 Apr 2021 | 01:51:58 | |
In the first episode of Season 2 of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Admiral John Richardson, who served as Chief of Naval Operations for four years, the top officer in the Navy. Before that, Admiral Richardson served as director of the US Naval Reactors, which is comprehensively responsible for the safe and reliable operation of the US Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion program.
In part one of this two-part conversation, Kim and Admiral Richardson explore how the Department of Defense and the armed services can lead the way to respond effectively to the digital disruption agenda. Admiral Richardson discusses how he operationalized creating a high velocity learning dynamic across the entire US Navy. He also presents his theories on how we need to balance compliance and creativity. And finally, he presents some amazing examples of how to strip away the barnacles from processes, those layers of controls and supervision that may have crept in over the decades.
Also joining the conversation is Dr. Steve Spear, who has written extensively about the US Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program program in his book The High-Velocity Edge.
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Admiral John Richardson served as the Chief of Naval Operations for four years, which is the professional head of the US Navy. While in the Navy, Richardson served in the submarine force and commanded the attack submarine USS Honolulu in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for which he was awarded the Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Inspirational Leadership Award. He also served as the Director of Naval Reactors, responsible for the design, safety, certification, operating standards, material control, maintenance, disposal, and regulatory oversight of over 100 nuclear power plants operating on nuclear-powered warships deployed around the world.
Since his retirement in August 2019, he has joined the boards of several major corporations and other organizations, including Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company, and Exelon, a Fortune 100 company that operates the largest fleet of nuclear plants in America and delivers power to over 10 million customers.
Dr. Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal for HVE LLC, the award-winning author of The High-Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System. A Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, Dr. Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so that they know better and faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple industries including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, US Army rapid equipping, and US Navy readiness.
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[00:00] Intro [01:54] Meet Admiral John Richardson [04:00] Responding effectively to the digital disruption agenda [07:05] Admiral Richardson in his own words and his Act 2 [08:27] Meet Steve Spear [09:29] How Steve’s work caught Admiral Richardson’s attention [11:46] Admiral Richardson’s efforts to create a learning dynamic [19:18] A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority [27:01] What he does with leader who’s afraid of the concept [28:48] Contrasts between learning culture and compliance culture [37:37] Fingerspitzengefühl [41:03] Steve’s thoughts on compliance vs creativity [43:47] Leadership development and compliance control [48:38] Addressing near misses [56:29] DevOps Enterprise Summit 2021 in Europe [57:52] Scar tissue processes [1:01:22] Finding a balance with leaders [1:09:43] The story behind general Eisenhower and General Patton [1:14:02] The three layers of creativity [1:27:23] How technology changed a sense of community [1:33:30] Admiral Richardson’s working relationships in the Navy [1:42:19] Where the software capabilities need to show up [1:48:02] Navy Leader Development Framework Version 3.0 [1:51:22] Outro | |||
| The Rise of Knowledge Work, and its Structure and Dynamics with Jeffrey Fredrick | 03 Dec 2020 | 01:51:44 | |
In the final episode of the first season of The Idealcast, Gene Kim sits down with Jeffrey Fredrick, coauthor of Agile Conversations, to synthesize and reflect upon some of the major themes from the entire season. In Gene’s continued quest to understand why organizations behave the way they do, Fredrick helps connect the dots and points to new areas that deserve more study. They discuss the nature of knowledge work, including how software creation requires so much more conversation and joint cognitive work, and the challenges this presents. They also dive into the bodies of knowledge that are required as we push more decision making and value creation to the edges of the organization. Then, Gene and Fredrick revisit the concept of integration and why it’s so much more important now than 50 years ago. And finally, they discuss why “Are you happy?” and “Are you proud of your work?” are two very powerful questions and what they actually reveal about people and the work they’re performing. And why this is all so important as we try to create organizations that maximize learning for everyone. BIO: Jeffrey Fredrick is an internationally recognized expert in software development with over 25 years’ experience covering both sides of the business/technology divide. His experience includes roles as Vice President of Product Management, Vice President of Engineering, and Chief Evangelist. He has also worked as an independent consultant on topics including corporate strategy, product management, marketing, and interaction design. Jeffrey is based in London and is currently Managing Director of TIM, an Acuris Company. He also runs the London Organisational Learning Meetup and is a CTO mentor through CTO Craft.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jtf LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/ Website: https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/
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[00:11] Intro [03:13] Meet Jeffrey Fredrick [03:54] Why conversations are important [08:03] Why conversations are more important now than 100 years ago [11:02] The Five Dysfunctions of a Team [13:08] Integration [16:33] The need for better integration now [20:18] What is information hiding and why it’s important [26:32] The pace of change moves the trade-off [31:41] Two important questions to ask [42:17] The system of fast and slow [48:25] Selection bias [51:07] Thank you from Gene [52:13] Jeffrey’s significant a-ha moment [59:45] Injecting change [1:06:24] Structure and dynamics [1:12:44] Command in War [1:23:39] Complaining about a feature factory [1:25:40] Standardized work and integrating feedback [1:22:21] Two elements of information flow [1:36:49] Insights on peer programming [1:43:54] Learning more and learning earlier [1:45:55] Is there something missing? [1:48:50] Contacting Jeffrey Fredrick [1:49:55] Outro | |||
| The Principles and Practices Behind Team of Teams (Part 2) with David Silverman & Jessica Reif | 29 Oct 2020 | 01:26:25 | |
This episode of The Idealcast features the second part of Gene Kim’s interview with Team of Teams coauthor and CrossLead CEO David Silverman and CrossLead Head of R&D Jessica Reif. In this episode, they take up the topic of how internal marketplaces are structures that can connect mid-level leaders to each other, helping allocate scarce resources to where they're needed most, which enables the further unlocking of capacities. They discuss challenges around the cost of change and the new skills that mid-level leaders need in order to survive and thrive in an era where being functionally excellent in one’s own silo is not enough. They further talk about the similarities between special operations and agile, especially comparing and contrasting terms that further concretize concepts the agile and DevOps community have held for years but struggled to name. And finally, they discuss where we go from here. BIO: David Silverman Entrepreneur, bestselling author, and former Navy SEAL, David Silverman is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CrossLead, Inc. Founded in 2016, CrossLead is a technology company whose leadership and management framework is used by leaders and companies around the globe. In 2015, David co-authored the New York Times bestselling leadership and management book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. As a thought leader on culture change, high-performing teams, and leadership, he is a frequent guest speaker for business leaders and conferences around the globe. After his 13-year career as a Navy SEAL, David and a group of like-minded friends sought to reinvent the way the world does business in today’s dynamic environment. Based on their collective service in the world’s premier Special Operations Units, they devised a holistic leadership and management framework called CrossLead. Today, CrossLead is a leading framework for scaling agile practices across the enterprise. Implemented in some of the world’s most successful organizations, CrossLead drives faster time-to-market, dramatic increases in productivity, improvement in employee engagement, and more predictable business results. Prior to CrossLead, David co-founded the McChrystal Group where he served as CEO for five years. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, David served as a Navy SEAL from 1998-2011. He graduated Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUD/S) Class 221 in 1999 as the Honor Man. David deployed six times around the world, including combat deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia where he received three Bronze Stars and numerous other commendations. David serves on the advisory board of the Headstrong Project and is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization. David lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Hollis, and their two children. He maintains an active lifestyle as a waterman and runner. Twitter: @dksilverman Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-silverman-648035a/ Website: https://www.crosslead.com/ Jess Reif Jessica Reif is the Director of Research & development for CrossLead Inc, where she leverages the latest management research to develop new approaches to increasing business agility for CrossLead’s clients. She leads CrossLead’s education efforts and has developed training programs that have been delivered to over 20,000 leaders. Previously, Jessica served as a Product Delivery Manager for applied machine learning and engineering teams at Oracle Data Cloud, where her role was to facilitate agile development among a team-of-teams. Jessica holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In her free time, she enjoys golfing, baking, and hiking. Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jess_Reif Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-reif/ Website: https://www.crosslead.com/ YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
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[00:08] Intro [01:55] What parallels Jessica Rief sees in the technology domain [08:56] What Steve Spear’s story means to David Silverman [14:47] Empowerment is not inherently a good thing [20:35] The Core, Chronic Conflict and the Marshmallow Challenge [28:28] Leaders, get comfortable with the unknown and trust somebody [37:39] Micromanagement in the technology space [41:11] IT Revolution’s new books and virtual library [42:39] Advice to micromanagers [46:34] Auditing your time appropriate to your level of leadership [48:28] Solving problems closer to the edge [53:20] The role of mid-level management [58:47] What skillsets are important to winning [1:07:22] Leadership theories [1:08:47] How Team of Teams has affected daily work [1:18:32] How to contact Jessica and David [1:19:40] Thomas Kuhn’s Paradigm shift [1:23:22] Newton’s three laws of motions [1:25:35] Outro | |||
| (Dispatch from the Scenius) David Silverman’s DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2020 Talk | 08 Oct 2020 | 00:35:53 | |
In the latest Dispatch from the Scenius, Gene Kim shares David Silverman’s 2020 presentation from DevOps Enterprise Summit London - Virtual. In a continuation of Episode 11, the Team of Teams coauthor and CEO of CrossLead talks about the key concepts from Team of Teams, and provides even more context for so many of the topics covered in last week’s episode.
David talks about the genesis of the joint special operations command, which was created after the failure of the daring Iran hostage rescue in 1979, and how it found itself in 2003 in Afghanistan and Iraq, tactically winning but strategically losing, unable to find terrorist leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He describes the principles that they drew upon, which will be familiar to almost everyone in the DevOps community, the practices that it led to, the amazing outcomes that resulted, as well as the leadership skills needed in this new world.
BIO: David Silverman Entrepreneur, bestselling author, and former Navy SEAL, David Silverman is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CrossLead, Inc. Founded in 2016, CrossLead is a technology company whose leadership and management framework is used by leaders and companies around the globe. In 2015, David co-authored the New York Times bestselling leadership and management book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. As a thought leader on culture change, high-performing teams, and leadership, he is a frequent guest speaker for business leaders and conferences around the globe. After his 13-year career as a Navy SEAL, David and a group of like-minded friends sought to reinvent the way the world does business in today’s dynamic environment. Based on their collective service in the world’s premier Special Operations Units, they devised a holistic leadership and management framework called CrossLead. Today, CrossLead is a leading framework for scaling agile practices across the enterprise. Implemented in some of the world’s most successful organizations, CrossLead drives faster time-to-market, dramatic increases in productivity, improvement in employee engagement, and more predictable business results. Prior to CrossLead, David co-founded the McChrystal Group where he served as CEO for five years. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, David served as a Navy SEAL from 1998-2011. He graduated Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUD/S) Class 221 in 1999 as the Honor Man. David deployed six times around the world, including combat deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia where he received three Bronze Stars and numerous other commendations. David serves on the advisory board of the Headstrong Project and is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization. David lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Hollis, and their two children. He maintains an active lifestyle as a waterman and runner. Twitter: @dksilverman Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-silverman-648035a/ Website: https://www.crosslead.com/
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[00:08] Intro [01:56] Meet David Silverman [04:05] The inception of US special operations [07:35] Best practices associated with management [10:59] Cynefin framework [11:53] Complexity environment [14:32] How to senior business leadership can communicate effectively and persuasively [15:59] Back to fundamentals [19:55] DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas - Virtual [21:33] Think as a living organism [23:19] Model of radical transparency [24:02] How to make it work inside your organizations [31:24] How to define great leadership [33:53] David’s request for examples [34:22] Coming up in the next episode [35:42] Outro
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| The Principles and Practices Behind Team of Teams (Part 1) with David Silverman & Jessica Reif | 01 Oct 2020 | 01:44:13 | |
In this episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim sits down with Team of Team’s coauthor and CEO of Crosslead, David Silverman, and Director of Research and Development at CrossLead, Jessica Reif, for a two-part interview. In Team of Teams, David and his coauthors explained how the Joint Special Forces Task Force in Iraq was struggling to achieve its mission, and how they turned it into a success. Their experience led to a deep and critical rethinking of almost everything in US military services and in the commercial industry. Now at CrossLead, David works with Jessica Reif to continue researching and codifying these practices into their management framework. In Part 1 of the interview, Gene and his guests discuss the structure and dynamics of the transformation described in Team of Teams and how these leadership characteristics are needed today in the new ways of working. This leadership framework reinforces the concepts of common purpose, shared consciousness, empowerment, and trust within organizations to help teams work together more effectively in complex environments, particularly when they have to continuously adapt to change. Stay tuned for Part 2.
BIO: David Silverman Entrepreneur, bestselling author, and former Navy SEAL, David Silverman is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CrossLead, Inc. Founded in 2016, CrossLead is a technology company whose leadership and management framework is used by leaders and companies around the globe. In 2015, David co-authored the New York Times bestselling leadership and management book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. As a thought leader on culture change, high-performing teams, and leadership, he is a frequent guest speaker for business leaders and conferences around the globe. After his 13-year career as a Navy SEAL, David and a group of like-minded friends sought to reinvent the way the world does business in today’s dynamic environment. Based on their collective service in the world’s premier Special Operations Units, they devised a holistic leadership and management framework called CrossLead. Today, CrossLead is a leading framework for scaling agile practices across the enterprise. Implemented in some of the world’s most successful organizations, CrossLead drives faster time-to-market, dramatic increases in productivity, improvement in employee engagement, and more predictable business results. Prior to CrossLead, David co-founded the McChrystal Group where he served as CEO for five years. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, David served as a Navy SEAL from 1998-2011. He graduated Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUD/S) Class 221 in 1999 as the Honor Man. David deployed six times around the world, including combat deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia where he received three Bronze Stars and numerous other commendations. David serves on the advisory board of the Headstrong Project and is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization. David lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Hollis, and their two children. He maintains an active lifestyle as a waterman and runner. Twitter: @dksilverman Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-silverman-648035a/ Website: https://www.crosslead.com/ Jess Reif Jessica Reif is the Director of Research & development for CrossLead Inc, where she leverages the latest management research to develop new approaches to increasing business agility for CrossLead’s clients. She leads CrossLead’s education efforts and has developed training programs that have been delivered to over 20,000 leaders. Previously, Jessica served as a Product Delivery Manager for applied machine learning and engineering teams at Oracle Data Cloud, where her role was to facilitate agile development among a team-of-teams. Jessica holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In her free time, she enjoys golfing, baking, and hiking. Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jess_Reif Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-reif/ Website: https://www.crosslead.com/
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[00:08] Intro [03:26] Meet David Silverman [05:50] Meet Jessica Rief [06:59] Writing down his experiences to teach [12:58] Who are David’s students and what he was teaching [14:05] Applying these techniques to COVID-19 [17:54] Comparing David’s experience to General Stanley McChrystal’s experience [23:30] Remembering Defense Information Systems Agency CTO Dawn Meyerriecks’ org chart [25:30] Getting out of own way [28:31] Top differences in what David was trying to achieve [33:46] Compare and contrast the leadership characteristics [37:24] Jess reflecting on changes required at various levels of leaderships [39:58] A look at structural changes or lack thereof [47:50] The chessmaster vs the gardner [49:18] Changing the middle management [56:28] DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas - Virtual [58:04] The frozen middle [1:00:06] Advice to define the work [1:06:10] Ops Intelligence Update Call [1:15:29] Create concrete manifestation of the vision [1:23:30] The dynamics of having the Ops Intelligence Update Call [1:26:03] The need for middle management to augment the process [1:30:55] Gene’s favorite part of Team of Teams [1:34:43] Creating these relationships in a large scale [1:39:55] Successful execution drives strategy [1:41:51] How to reach David and Jessica [1:43:06] Outro | |||
| The Surprising Implications of Architecting for Generality with Michael Nygard | 10 Sep 2020 | 01:30:54 | |
On this continuation of Gene Kim’s interview with Michael Nygard, Senior Vice President, Travel Solutions Platform Development Enterprise Architecture, for Sabre, they discuss his reflections on Admiral Rickover's work with the US Naval Reactor Core and how it may or may not resonate with the principles we hold so near and dear in the DevOps community. They also tease apart the learnings from the architecture of the Toyota Production System and their ability to drive down the cost of change. They also discuss how we can tell when there are genuinely too many “musical notes” or when those extra notes allow for better and simpler systems that are easier to build and maintain and can even make other systems around them simpler too? And how so many of the lessons and sensibilities came from working with Rich Hickey, the creator of the Clojure programming language. Bio: Michael Nygard strives to raise the bar and ease the pain for developers around the world. He shares his passion and energy for improvement with everyone he meets, sometimes even with their permission. Living with systems in production taught Michael about the importance of operations and writing production-ready software. Highly-available, highly-scalable commerce systems are his forte. Michael has written and co-authored several books, including 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know and the bestseller Release It!, a book about building software that survives the real world. He is a highly sought speaker who addresses developers, architects, and technology leaders around the world. Michael is currently Senior Vice President, Travel Solutions Platform Development Enterprise Architecture, for Sabre, the company reimagining the business of travel.
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[00:09] Intro [02:19] Mike’s reflections on Steve Spear, Admiral Rickover and the US Naval reactor core [04:33] Admiral Rickover’s 1962 memo [08:13] Cynefin framework [12:40] Applying to software engineering [16:06] Gene tells Mike a Steve Spear’s story [18:58] 10+ deploys a day everyday at Flickr [19:43] Back to the story [24:34] Why the story is important [27:35] When notes are useful [35:05] Too many notes vs. too few notes [40:00] DevOps Enterprise Summit Vegas Virtual [41:35] How to know if a code is simpler or more complex [47:23] A lively exchange of ideas [51:31] The opposing argument [54:20] Implementing items of interests [55:21] Back to the payment processing example [56:07] Case 3 [1:03:03] The challenge with Option 2 [1:08:19] Pure function [1:10:19] Rich Hickey and Clojure [1:15:01] Rich Hickey’s “Simple Made Easy” presentation [1:16:37] Exploring those ideas work at the macro scale [1:22:31] Immutability concept [1:23:58] The importance of senior leaders’ understanding of these issues [1:26:53] Outro | |||
| Dispatch from the Scenius: Tempo, Maneuverability, and Initiative Subtitle: Micheal Nygard’s 2016 DevOps Enterprise Summit Presentation with Commentary from Gene Kim | 27 Aug 2020 | 00:37:46 | |
In the latest Dispatch from the Scenius, Gene Kim provides original commentary on Michael Nygard’s 2016 DevOps Enterprise Summit presentation Tempo, Maneuverability, and Initiative DevOps has been and continues to be part of a larger shift in organizational structure, system architecture, infrastructure, and process design. In order to be successful, each of these must change together to achieve a high tempo. In this presentation, Nygard talks about maneuverability and how to get teams, and teams of teams, working toward a common objective. And he provides principles and patterns for how large organizations can overcome the pitfalls they so often face. In this presentation, Nygard provides several real-life examples of failed and successful transformation efforts through a lens of tempo, maneuver warfare, and initiative.
Bio: Michael Nygard strives to raise the bar and ease the pain for developers around the world. He shares his passion and energy for improvement with everyone he meets, sometimes even with their permission. Living with systems in production taught Michael about the importance of operations and writing production-ready software. Highly-available, highly-scalable commerce systems are his forte. Michael has written and co-authored several books, including 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know and the bestseller Release It!, a book about building software that survives the real world. He is a highly sought speaker who addresses developers, architects, and technology leaders around the world. Michael is currently Senior Vice President, Travel Solutions Platform Development Enterprise Architecture, for Sabre, the company reimagining the business of travel.
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TIMESTAMPS [00:07] Intro [01:20] Mike Nygard’s speech [02:29] A story of despair and hope [03:55] Gene explains the joke [04:15] Back to Mike’s story [09:17] Military concept: manoeuvrability [14:12] Architect Elevator [16:50] Edge of Instability [17:55] DevOps Enterprise Summit 2020 [19:32] War of attrition [20:47] Disposable infrastructure [22:59] Studying tempo [24:57] Horizontal and vertical integrity [28:52] What is the intent [32:44] Gene’s last observations [36:46] Outro | |||
| Architecture as the Organizing Logic for Components, and the Means for their Construction with Michael Nygard | 13 Aug 2020 | 01:33:39 | |
In the latest episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim is joined by Michael Nygard, a senior vice president at Sabre and author of the bestselling Release It! Nygard has helped businesses and technology leaders in their transformation journeys over his long career and was even one of the inspirations behind The Unicorn Project’s protagonist, Maxine.
In their discussion, Kim and Nygard explore how we can enable thousands or even tens of thousands of engineers to work together toward common objectives, including the structure and dynamics required to achieve it. They also examine what truly great architecture looks like and the continuing importance and relevance of Conway’s Law.
Bio: Michael Nygard strives to raise the bar and ease the pain for developers around the world. He shares his passion and energy for improvement with everyone he meets, sometimes even with their permission. Living with systems in production taught Michael about the importance of operations and writing production-ready software. Highly-available, highly-scalable commerce systems are his forte. Michael has written and co-authored several books, including 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know and the bestseller Release It!, a book about building software that survives the real world. He is a highly sought speaker who addresses developers, architects, and technology leaders around the world. Michael is currently Senior Vice President, Travel Solutions Platform Development Enterprise Architecture, for Sabre, the company reimagining the business of travel.
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[00:07] Intro [02:12] Meet Mike Nygard [04:36] What is TPF operating system? [05:40] Finding the perspective to write Release It! [11:07] Totality Corporation [13:54] Moving large teams towards common objective [18:37] Decentralized economic decision making [19:52] The Principles of Product Development Flow [23:38] Tale of two outages [27:27] Distance incentive supply [32:00] Architecture is one top predictors of performance [35:05] Other attributes of good architecture [39:19] The Fear Cycle [43:40] An amazing finding in State of DevOps Report [45:02] Amazon replatforming example [50:35] The universal takeaways [53:07] DevOps Enterprise Summit 2020 [54:55] Characteristics of reorganizations and structural changes [1:00:00] Self-contained systems [1:02:40] Mike’s definition of architecture [1:07:13] Coherence Penalty for Humans [1:10:10] Leadership’s responsibility to the architecture | |||
| The Topography of Problems, and the Importance of Distributed Problem Solving with Dr. Steve Spear | 30 Jul 2020 | 01:04:55 | |
In this bonus follow-up interview, Gene Kim and Dr. Steve Spear dig into what makes for great leadership today, including the importance of distributed decision-making and problem-solving. They showcase the real advantages of allowing more decisions to be made by the people closest to the work, who are the most suited to solve them.
Dr. Spear also shares his personal accounts of the honorable Paul O’Neill, the late CEO of Alcoa who built an incredible culture of safety and performance during his tenure. And Kim and Spear dive deeper into the structure and dynamics of the famous MIT beer game.
ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal for HVE LLC, the award-winning author of The High Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System. A Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so they know better faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple “verticals” including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, Army rapid equipping, and Navy readiness. High velocity learning concepts became the basis of the Alcoa Business System—which led to 100s of millions in recurring savings, the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiatives “Perfecting Patient Care System”—credited with sharp reductions in complications like MRSA and CLABs, Pratt & Whitney’s “Engineering Standard Work”—which when piloted led to winning the engine contract for the Joint Strike Fighter, the operating system for Detroit Edison, and the Navy’s high velocity learning line of effort—an initiative led by the Chief of Naval Operations. A pilot with a pharma company cut the time for the ‘hit to lead’ phase in early stage drug discovery from twelve months to six. Spear has published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, Health Services Research, Harvard Business Review, Academic Administrator, and the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings He invented the patented See to Solve Real Time Alert System and is principal investigator for new research on making critical decisions when faced with hostile data. He’s supervised more than 40 theses and dissertations. He holds degrees from Harvard, MIT, and Princeton and worked at the University of Tokyo, the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment and Prudential Bache. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevespear Email: steve@hvellc.com Website: thehighvelocityedge.com
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| (Dispatch from the Scenius) Dr. Steve Spear’s 2019 and 2020 DOES Talks on Rapid, Distributed, Dynamic Learning | 23 Jul 2020 | 01:10:16 | |
In the latest Dispatch from the Scenius, Gene Kim brings you two of Dr. Steve Spear’s DevOps Enterprise Summit presentations in their entirety.
In Spear’s 2019 presentation, “Discovering Your Way to Greatness: How Finding and Fixing Faults is the Path to Perfection,” he talks about the need and the value of finding faults in our thinking that result in faults in our doing.
Spear continues to explore this lesson in his 2020 presentation about the US Navy 100 years ago, when they were at a crucial inflection point in both technology and strategic mission. It is one of the most remarkable examples of creating distributed learning in a vast enterprise.
As always, Gene provides exclusive commentary to the presentations.
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Dr. Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal for HVE LLC, the award-winning author of The High Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System. A Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so they know better faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple “verticals” including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, Army rapid equipping, and Navy readiness.
High velocity learning concepts became the basis of the Alcoa Business System—which led to 100s of millions in recurring savings, the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiatives “Perfecting Patient Care System”—credited with sharp reductions in complications like MRSA and CLABs, Pratt & Whitney’s “Engineering Standard Work”—which when piloted led to winning the engine contract for the Joint Strike Fighter, the operating system for Detroit Edison, and the Navy’s high velocity learning line of effort—an initiative led by the Chief of Naval Operations. A pilot with a pharma company cut the time for the ‘hit to lead’ phase in early stage drug discovery from twelve months to six.
Spear has published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, Health Services Research, Harvard Business Review, Academic Administrator, and the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings He invented the patented See to Solve Real Time Alert System and is principal investigator for new research on making critical decisions when faced with hostile data. He’s supervised more than 40 theses and dissertations. He holds degrees from Harvard, MIT, and Princeton and worked at the University of Tokyo, the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment and Prudential Bache.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevespear Email: steve@hvellc.com Website: thehighvelocityedge.com
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| Simplifying The Inventory Management Systems at the World’s Largest Retailer Using Functional Programming Principles with Scott Havens | 23 Sep 2021 | 02:03:15 | |
In this episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Scott Havens, who is the Director of Engineering at Wayfair, where he leads Engineering for the Wayfair Fulfillment Network. Havens is a leading proponent of applying functional programming principles to technical and organizational design. Previously, Havens was the architect for Walmart's global omnichannel inventory system, unifying availability and replenishment for the largest company in the world by revenue. Havens shares his views on what makes great architecture great. He details what happened when an API call required 23 other synchronous procedures calls to return a correct answer. He discusses the challenges of managing inventory at Wal-Mart, how one implements event sourcing patterns on that scale, and the functional programming principles that it depends upon. Lastly, he talks about how much category theory you need to know to do functional programming and considerations when creating code in complex systems. Before listening to this interview, please listen to Episode 22, which provides Scott Havens's 2019 DevOps Enterprise Summit talk with commentary from Gene Kim.
ABOUT THE GUEST(S) Scott Havens is a Director of Engineering at Wayfair, where he leads Engineering for the Wayfair Fulfillment Network. Scott cares deeply about scalable data-intensive software systems; he is a leading proponent of applying functional programming principles to technical and organizational design. Previously, Havens was a Director of Engineering at Jet.com and was the architect for Walmart's global omnichannel inventory system, unifying availability and replenishment for the largest company in the world by revenue. In his home life, Havens enjoys good food, good wine, bad movies, and asking his daughter to stop "redecorating" his Minecraft castles, pretty please. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-havens/ Twitter: @ScottHavens Email: scott@sphavens.com
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TIMESTAMPS [00:24] Intro [02:23] Meet Scott Havens [03:48] How architecture fits in functional programming [04:48] Event source systems at Wal-Mart [19:45] The effects and behaviors [22:36] Duality of code and data [26:13] Currying [32:34] How the 23 service teams’s world change [40:56] Hallmarks of great architecture [51:10] How he replaced the dominant architecture at Wal-Mart [56:46] Configurations and speculations with couplings [1:03:51] How can simple systems suffer from problems like this [1:09:11] Idempotence, Clojure and side effect [1:17:01] Issues with switching to event-driven asynchronous architectures [1:25:15] Vast scale in which these organizations operate in [1:29:54] A moment that showed Scott the effects of what he helped create [1:33:51] Onboarding new engineers to the new system [1:45:11] Working in the Windows 3.1 multicast networking group [1:47:32] Reflection on Moda Operandi experience [1:52:11] Advice to someone who wants to replicate Scott’s journey [1:56:17] What to understand about category theory and algebraic thinking [2:01:11] How to contact Scott [2:02:48] Outro | |||
| The Pursuit of Perfection: Dominant Architectures, Structure, and Dynamics: A Conversation With Dr. Steve Spear | 16 Jul 2020 | 01:44:05 | |
On this episode of The Idealcast with Gene Kim, Dr. Steve Spear talks about the primary characteristics of dynamic learning organizations, through the lens of its structure and the resulting dynamics, and how it enables those organizations to win and dominate in the marketplace. From his 1999 Harvard Business Review article “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System” to his bestselling book The High-Velocity Edge to his monomaniacal advocate for the scientific method employed by everybody about everything all the time, Spear’s influence on the successful pursuit of excellence and perfection is undeniable. Discussing everything from the importance of curiosity and experimentation, fast feedback, mission orientation, leadership, healthcare organizations, military strategy and organization, and of course Toyota, Spear and Kim explain why organizations behave the way they do and demonstrate why dynamic learning organizations are so successful. ABOUT THE GUESTS Dr. Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal for HVE LLC, the award-winning author of The High Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System. A Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so they know better faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple “verticals” including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, Army rapid equipping, and Navy readiness. High velocity learning concepts became the basis of the Alcoa Business System—which led to 100s of millions in recurring savings, the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiatives “Perfecting Patient Care System”—credited with sharp reductions in complications like MRSA and CLABs, Pratt & Whitney’s “Engineering Standard Work”—which when piloted led to winning the engine contract for the Joint Strike Fighter, the operating system for Detroit Edison, and the Navy’s high velocity learning line of effort—an initiative led by the Chief of Naval Operations. A pilot with a pharma company cut the time for the ‘hit to lead’ phase in early stage drug discovery from twelve months to six. Spear has published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Academic Medicine, Health Services Research, Harvard Business Review, Academic Administrator, and the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings He invented the patented See to Solve Real Time Alert System and is principal investigator for new research on making critical decisions when faced with hostile data. He’s supervised more than 40 theses and dissertations. He holds degrees from Harvard, MIT, and Princeton and worked at the University of Tokyo, the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment and Prudential Bache. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevespear Email: steve@hvellc.com Website: thehighvelocityedge.com You’ll Learn About:
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| (Dispatch from the Scenius) Elisabeth Hendrickson’s 2014 and 2015 DOES Talks on Feedback Loops, with Commentary from Gene Kim | 18 Jun 2020 | 00:49:08 | |
In the second installment of The Idealcast’s Dispatch From the Scenius series, Gene Kim explores Elisabeth Hendrickson’s 2015 and 2014 DevOps Enterprise Summit presentations. Listen as Gene breaks down Hendrickson’s experience and learnings, all to help you find fundamental principles to apply to immediately keep your feedback cycles healthy and happy. In this episode, Hendrickson, an experienced QA engineer, shares her realization that the better she got at her job, the worse she made things for the organization as a whole. Thus began her journey to uncover the relationship between testing and quality, which has led her to a reality of increasingly tight feedback loops. Episode Timeline:
ABOUT THE GUESTS Elisabeth Hendrickson is a leader in software engineering. She most recently served as VP R&D for Pivotal Software, Inc. A lifelong learner, she has spent time in every facet of software development, from project management to design for companies ranging from small start-ups to multinational software vendors. She has helped organizations build software in a more efficient way and pioneered a new way to think about achieving quality outcomes and how that hinges on fast and effective feedback loops. Her book, Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing, was released in 2013 and explores technical excellence and mastery, and creating effective feedback loops for everyone. She spoke at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in 2014, 2015, and 2018, and received the Gordon Pask Award from the Agile Alliance in 2010.
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| Achieving Better Outcomes Through Structure: A Conversation with Elisabeth Hendrickson | 11 Jun 2020 | 01:29:12 | |
In Episode 3, Gene Kim is joined by Elisabeth Hendrickson, who inspired many ideas in The DevOps Handbook and, more recently, The Unicorn Project. She has shaped the way Gene sees the world of DevOps. From Developer to Tester ratios, to the importance of architecture, and the need for leaders to decompose systems well. Together they explore her years as VP R&D for Pivotal Software, Inc., software development, and the link between organizations and architecture. In a wide-ranging discussion, they cover Elisabeth’s mental model of balance, structure, and flow, to her view of how organizations really work. Listen as Gene and Elisabeth explore her WordCount Simulation, to her personal experience with MIT’s Beer Game, and much more.
ABOUT THE GUESTS Elisabeth Hendrickson is a leader in software engineering. She most recently served as VP R&D for Pivotal Software, Inc. A lifelong learner, she has spent time in every facet of software development, from project management to design for companies ranging from small start-ups to multinational software vendors. She has helped organizations build software in a more efficient way and pioneered a new way to think about achieving quality outcomes and how that hinges on fast and effective feedback loops. Her book, Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing, was released in 2013 and is explores technical excellence and mastery, and creating effective feedback loops for everyone. She spoke at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in 2014, 2015, and 2018, and received the Gordon Pask Award from the Agile Alliance in 2010.
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| (Dispatch from the Scenius) Dr. Mik Kersten’s 2018 DOES TALK, Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework, with commentary from Gene | 01 May 2020 | 00:33:09 | |
As mentioned in Episode 1 of The Idealcast, this is Dr. Mik Kersten’s talk from DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2018 with exclusive commentary from Gene. , In his presentation, Mik dives into the Flow Framework featured in his work, Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework. Get Mik’s insights on building a foundation for innovation in the software field. Follow along as he breaks down the lessons learned as a leader in tech working with brands like Microsoft and BMW. Find out what they got right and what he says anyone looking to innovate in tech should start doing immediately. This is a perfect followup to Episode 1. Episode Timeline:
ABOUT THE GUESTS Dr. Mik Kersten started his career as a Research Scientist at Xerox PARC where he created the first aspect-oriented development environment. He then pioneered the integration of development tools with Agile and DevOps as part of his Computer Science PhD at the University of British Columbia. Founding Tasktop out of that research, Mik has written over one million lines of open-source code that is still in use today, and he has brought seven successful open-source and commercial products to market.
Mik’s experiences working with some of the largest digital transformations in the world has led him to identify the critical disconnect between business leaders and technologists. Since that time, Mik has been working on creating new tools and a new framework for connecting software value stream networks and enabling the shift from project to product.
Mik is the author of the book Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework. Mik lives with his family in Vancouver, Canada, and travels globally, sharing his vision for transforming how software is built.
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| Digital Disruption, The Five Ideals: Peter Moore and Dr. Mik Kersten | 28 Apr 2020 | 01:26:48 | |
This episode dives into the Five Ideals, key principles for success in a digital age, as they are introduced with two eminent experts that Gene admires greatly. For years, Dr. Mik Kersten’s work on dev productivity and digital disruption informed many of the core concepts found in The Unicorn Project. Peter Moore is a business strategy and technology advisor who specializes in helping companies compete in the age of digital disruption. Newly acquainted within the last year, Peter has already shared so much with Gene and Mik about how we can best use technology to win in the marketplace, from the business leadership perspective which is something every technology leader needs to know and embrace. ABOUT THE GUESTS Dr. Mik Kersten started his career as a Research Scientist at Xerox PARC where he created the first aspect-oriented development environment. He then pioneered the integration of development tools with Agile and DevOps as part of his Computer Science PhD at the University of British Columbia. Founding Tasktop out of that research, Mik has written over one million lines of open-source code that is still in use today, and he has brought seven successful open-source and commercial products to market. Mik’s experiences working with some of the largest digital transformations in the world has led him to identify the critical disconnect between business leaders and technologists. Since that time, Mik has been working on creating new tools and a new framework for connecting software value stream networks and enabling the shift from project to product. Mik is the author of the book Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework. Mik lives with his family in Vancouver, Canada, and travels globally, sharing his vision for transforming how software is built. Peter D. Moore is a business and digital technology strategy advisor specializing in helping companies manage for exponential revenue, margin and net income growth. Over the past 15 years, Mr. Moore has worked with CEO’s, COO’s and other C-Suite executives from Citigroup, Charles Schwab, Johnson & Johnson, Mead Westvaco, Microsoft, Tommy Hilfiger, SAP, SAS Institute and U.S. Trust. Over the past five years he has collaborated with his brother Geoffrey Moore to develop new models and tools to enable companies to effectively compete in the new age of digital disruption. He has introduced a new 4 Zone Model to help C-Suite executives and their senior leadership teams maximize the business value of digital technology within their organizations. Client engagements include Amgen, Box, Clorox, FedEx, ICANN, Intuit, Molina Healthcare, SpaceX, Splunk, UBER and VMware. YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
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| (Dispatch from the Scenius) Fabulous Fortunes, Fewer Failures, and Faster Fixes from Functional Fundamentals: Scott Havens’ 2019 DevOps Enterprise Summit Talk with Commentary from Gene Kim | 22 Sep 2021 | 00:38:57 | |
In this episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim shares and gives commentary on Scott Havens’ talk from the 2019 DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas. Havens is a Director of Engineering at Wayfair, where he leads Engineering for the Wayfair Fulfillment Network. He is a leading proponent of applying functional programming principles to technical and organizational design. Previously, Scott was the architect for Walmart's global omnichannel inventory system, unifying availability and replenishment for the largest company in the world by revenue. In his 2019 DevOps Enterprise Summit talk, Havens highlights functional programming and e-commerce systems work. He also talks about what he did to massively simplify those systems while also making them more testable, reliable, cheaper to operate, and easier to change. Finally, he discusses the implications of using functional programming to change how to design systems and systems of systems on a larger scale.
ABOUT THE GUEST Scott Havens is Director of Engineering at Wayfair, where he leads Engineering for the Wayfair Fulfillment Network. Scott cares deeply about scalable data-intensive software systems. He is a leading proponent of applying functional programming principles to technical and organizational design. Previously, Scott was Director of Engineering at Jet.com and was the architect for Walmart’s global omnichannel inventory system, unifying availability and replenishment for the largest company in the world by revenue. In his home life, Scott enjoys good food, good wine, bad movies, and asking his daughter to stop “redecorating” his Minecraft castles, pretty please.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-havens/ Twitter: @ScottHavens Email: scott@sphavens.com
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TIMESTAMPS [00:24] Intro [02:52] Functional programming [07:59] Gene introduces Scott [09:13] Working at Wal-Mart [11:13] Disaster struck [14:10] One common piece of e-commerce website functionality [17:07] The implications of functional programming for system design [21:05] Changing how to design systems and systems of systems [28:55] Using Panther [33:11] How this affects the hot path and cost [36:43] One bite a time [37:52] Contacting Scott [38:13] Outro | |||
| Open Source Software as a Triumph of Information Hiding, Modularity, and Creating Optionality with Dr. Gail Murphy | 02 Sep 2021 | 02:11:59 | |
In this newest episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Dr. Gail Murphy, Professor of Computer Science and Vice President of Research and Innovation at the University of British Columbia. She is also the co-founder, board member, and former Chief Scientist at Tasktop. Dr. Murphy’s research focuses on improving the productivity of software developers and knowledge workers by providing the necessary tools to identify, manage, and coordinate the information that matters most for their work.
During the episode, Kim and Dr. Murphy explore the properties of modularity and information hiding, and how one designs architectures that create them. They also discuss how open source libraries create the incredible software supply chains that developers benefit from everyday, and the surprising new risks they can create.
They discuss the ramifications of system design considerations and decisions made by software developers and why defining software developers’ productivity remains elusive. They further consider open-source software as a triumph of information hiding and how it has created a massively interdependent set of libraries while also enabling incredible co-evolution, which is only made possible by modularity. Listen as Kim and Dr. Murphy discuss how technologists have both succeeded and fallen short on the dream of software being like building blocks, how software development is a subset of knowledge work, and the implications of that insight.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Gail C. Murphy is a Professor of Computer Science and Vice President of Research and Innovation at the University of British Columbia. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), as well as co-founder, board member, and former Chief Scientist at Tasktop.
After completing her BS at the University of Alberta in 1987, she worked for five years as a software engineer in the Lower Mainland. She later pursued graduate studies in computer science at the University of Washington, earning first a MS (1994) and then a PhD (1996) before joining University of British Columbia.
Dr. Murphy’s research focuses on improving the productivity of software developers and knowledge workers by providing the necessary tools to identify, manage, and coordinate the information that matters most for their work. She also maintains an active research group with post-doctoral and graduate students.
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TIMESTAMPS [00:27] Intro [03:52] Meet Dr. Murphy [04:32] Determining where design occurs in software development [10:30] Refactoring [16:08] Defining developer productivity and why it defies explanation [20:26] What is modularity, architecture and why they’re important [28:52] An extreme example [30:51] Information hiding [36:06] The leftpad and mime-magic incidents and SemanticConflict [44:13] The work of André Meyer [47:23] Open source is a triumph of information hiding [52:56] Architectures give different trade offs to different problems [57:25] Relationships between a leader’s roles and responsibilities [1:05:10] BLAS: Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms [1:09:20] Communication paths within an organization [1:16:58] The Mylyn project [1:20:11] Analysis of Dr. David Parnas’ 1972 paper [1:26:23] Falcon missile program and socio-technical congruence [1:31:10] The work of Dr. Carliss Baldwin [1:40:01] How Dr. Baldwin defines modularity [1:47:26] Modularity and open source software [1:51:31] Defining real options [1:53:17] 1 billion dollar rearchitecture project [1:55:29] This work is primarily about making decisions [2:01:58] Open source systems are Darwinian systems [2:06:33] Dr. Murphy’s ideal of software developer’s daily work [2:09:53] How to contact Dr. Murphy [2:11:01] Outro | |||
| Exploring COVID-19 and Just-in-Time Supply Chains, Chaos Engineering, and the Soviet Centrally Planned Economy with Dr. Steve Spear | 05 Aug 2021 | 02:01:00 | |
In this episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Dr. Steven Spear on his critiques of several articles from the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal, and their characterization of the impact of Just-in-Time (JIT) supply chains and the widespread shortages caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic. While the unprecedented health crisis created a widespread shortage of almost everything—from toilet paper to semiconductor chips to raw materials vital for medical materials—with results that impacted everyday life on a global scale, Dr. Spear makes the claim that JIT lessened the severity of shortages, as opposed to causing them. The discussion is informed by Spear’s work on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations and the Toyota Production System, and from his time observing and working directly with a tier-one Toyota supplier. Kim and Spear dive deep into supply chain dynamics and why they are important to society. The discussion delves into how JIT manufacturing not only revolutionized manufacturing but also the entire manufacturing supply chain and how it increased (not decreased) resilience, productivity, efficiency, and prosperity. They also explore the structure and dynamics of these JIT supply chains, as well as the similarities of the famous Netflix Chaos Monkey, famous for helping Netflix build resilient services that can survive even widespread cloud outages and the larger, emerging field of Chaos Engineers (arguably, a subset of resilience engineering). Additionally, they explore Toyota’s manufacturing and how its history helped it become one of the least impacted by the semiconductor shortages. They follow that with an examination of the JIT’s antithesis and how it’s similar to the dynamics found in the Soviet’s centrally planned economy, particularly with its IT structure and dynamic results. Kim and Spear tie these things into the three basic tools of finance: net present value, option theory, and portfolio diversification.
ABOUT THE GUESTS Dr. Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal for HVE LLC, the award-winning author of The High-Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System. A Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, Dr. Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so that they know better and faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple industries including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, US Army rapid equipping, and US Navy readiness.
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TIMESTAMPS [00:37] Intro [09:07] What Dr. Spear found objectionable in the NYT article [13:41] How JIT increased resilience of the supply chain [17:18] What are supply chains and what makes it so complex [24:11] The economic impact of inventory and recapture [28:17] The impact created by mass adoption of JIT practices [42:00] JIT vs lean manufacturing [44:46] How Toyota could handle the semiconductor shortage [51:19] An example of the resilience of Toyota’s supply chain and manufacturing capabilities [57:03] How to motivate everyone to mobilize [1:02:12] What happened with Netflix’s chaos monkey and EYE-shin mattress factory plant [1:08:13] Twitter feedback [1:09:37] The link between experimentation at the EYE-shin plant and low cost of change [1:17:30] Four characters of simplification, standardization, stabilization and synchronization [1:20:46] The 2002 West Coast Port Lockout [1:33:43] What triggered this conversation [1:38:57] The opposite of JIT [1:43:11] Three finance theories [1:50:45] How the Soviet’s centrally planned economy compares with the four characteristics [1:58:23] A misunderstanding of JIT [2:05:15] Outro | |||
| Unleashing Human Creativity To Deliver 8K+ COVID Vaccines Per Day and Improve the Overall Healthcare System with Trent Green | 10 Jun 2021 | 01:39:22 | |
In March of 2021, Gene Kim visited the mass vaccination site at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, which has been described by the press as a logistical masterpiece where over 465,000 Oregonians have been vaccinated as of May 2021. After a three-hour tour of the site, Gene Kim sat down with Trent Green, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Legacy Health and one of the organizers of the mass vaccination operation. Kim and Green discuss firsthand what it looks like to vaccinate 8,000 people a day and the strategic level of planning it took to produce and operate the mass vaccination clinic. Green reveals what those first few days of operation were like and how the site was able to increase distribution from 2,000 vaccines per day to 8,000 per day. Lastly, he discusses the lessons he learned during the rollout process and how those lessons can inform how to improve the overall health care system. Also joining the conversation is Dr. Steve Spear, who has helped the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative create its “Perfecting Patient Care System” and has worked on a few pilot programs with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
ABOUT THE GUESTS Trent Green, COO of Legacy Health, focusing on innovation in Legacy Health’s hospital operations and service lines, and responsible for Legacy Laboratory Services, Legacy Imaging Services and Unity Center. Green oversees the OHSU Knight-Legacy Health Cancer Collaborative, the LifeFlight partnership, as well as other ventures that directly impact hospital operations. Prior to his most recent role, Green served as Legacy Health’s senior vice president, chief strategy officer, and president of Legacy Medical Group. He brings more than 20 years of experience in leading health care organizations, with specific strengths and accomplishments in clinic and hospital operations, strategic planning, business development, marketing, mergers and acquisitions, and finance.
Green’s notable achievements include advancing a re-imagined Master Facility Plan for the Legacy Emanuel and Randall Children’s Hospital campus; navigating a complex regulatory situation at Unity Center by providing decisive leadership and a unified approach to problem-solving, resulting in the successful restoration of status, cultural alignment, best in system performance on medication administration practices, and accelerated incident review and mitigation implementation practices. He also led and developed several of Legacy’s most transformational initiatives, including the PacificSource joint venture, Silverton Health affiliation, Legacy-GoHealth urgent care joint venture, and the OHSU Knight–Legacy Health Cancer Collaborative, among others.
Dr. Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal for HVE LLC, the award-winning author of The High-Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System. A Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, Dr. Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so that they know better and faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple industries including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, US Army rapid equipping, and US Navy readiness.
YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
RESOURCES
TIMESTAMPS [00:20] Intro [04:39] Meet Trent Green [06:19] Key leadership positions in a healthcare organizations [07:52] Meet Steve Spear and his work in the healthcare industry [11:13] The early days of the operations [14:02] The major milestones from increasing distribution [20:42] Steve’s thoughts on an organization’s ability to adapt [24:42] The DevOps Enterprise Summit videos and journal [25:35] Continuation of Steve’s thoughts [26:56] The path of good ideas and barriers [32:04] Trent’s role at the vaccination site [36:15] The strategic level of planning [39:19] Two interviews with Dr. Patrick Cawley and Eroom's law [47:31] Gene’s firsthand observations at the vaccination site [54:40] Fast vs. slow integrated problem-solving styles [1:01:58] Lesson learned in the vaccination process [1:09:50] Uncovering constraints [1:22:25] Cost of change goes down, frequency of change goes up [1:25:46] Becoming an effective coach [1:30:19] Gene adds additional context [1:36:57] Contacting Trent Green [1:38:05] Outro | |||
| Patterns of Generative Cultures: How They Can Be Destroyed and the Importance of Trust with Dr. Ron Westrum | 20 May 2021 | 01:43:19 | |
In the second part of this two-part episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim continues his conversation with Dr. Ron Westrum, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University and creator of the Westrum organization typology model.
In part two of their conversation, Kim and Westrum talk about generative cultures and why Westrum thinks they are more important now than it they were a hundred years ago. Westrum also shares his observations on the increasing number of functional specialities in organizations. He discusses the challenges that arise from having matrixed organizations and the tools to overcome these challenges.
Finally, Westrum previews the new book he’s working on about information flow within organizations.
ABOUT THE GUEST Ron Westrum is Emeritus Professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He holds a B.A. (honors) from Harvard University and a Ph.D in Sociology from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Westrum is a specialist in the sociology of science and technology, and on complex organizations. He has written three books, Complex Organizations: Growth, Development and Change; Technologies and Society: The Shaping of People and Things, and Sidewinder: Creative Missile Design at China Lake. He has also written about fifty articles and book chapters. His work on organizational culture has been valuable for the aviation industry and to medical safety, as well as to other areas of endeavor. He has been a consultant to NASA, the National Research Council, and the Resilience Core Group. He is currently at work on a book on information flow cultures.
YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
RESOURCES
TIMESTAMPS
[00:00] Intro [02:39] Why generative cultures are more important now [14:50] Exposing latent pathogens [19:39] Gene’s thoughts and a few corrections [28:59] The increase in silos [34:53] How Westrum would organize the organization [40:42] Why matrix organizations are fundamentally unstable and how to cope [44:57] LaunchDarkly and DevOps Enterprise Summit Virtual [46:47] Matrix organizations and how to help increase likelihood of success [57:26] Building the Boeing 777 [1:06:24] Where generative characteristics came from [1:11:10] Bridging the world of R&D to the world of operations [1:14:58] Team of Teams example [1:20:09] General George C. Marshall [1:24:35] Other mechanisms Westrum has seen in high performing teams [1:32:30] Westrum’s new book [1:38:53] What DevOps has helped Westrum [1:39:47] Contacting Admiral Richardson [1:41:36] Outro | |||
| The Sociology and Typologies of Organizations, and Technical Maestros with Dr. Ron Westrum | 06 May 2021 | 01:49:51 | |
In the first part of this two-part episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Dr. Ron Westrum, Emeritus Professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. His work on organizational culture and his contribution of the Westrum organizational typology model have been instrumental in understanding what makes a high-performing organization across industries. For decades, he has studied complex organizations from medicine to aviation to the nuclear industry.
In part one of their conversation, Kim and Westrum talk about the stark contrast between NASA’s highly experimental culture of the Apollo space program versus the highly compliance-driven culture of the US Space Shuttle program, and Westrum’s opinions on how to bring that experimental culture back. They also discuss the origins of the Westrum organizational typology model and some of the insights that led to it. Finally, Westrum shares what organizations should do when things go wrong in complex systems.
ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Ron Westrum is Emeritus Professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He holds a B.A. (honors) from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Westrum is a specialist in the sociology of science and technology and complex organizations. He has written three books, Complex Organizations: Growth, Development and Change; Technologies and Society: The Shaping of People and Things, and Sidewinder: Creative Missile Design at China Lake. He has also written about fifty articles and book chapters. His work on organizational culture has been valuable for the aviation industry and to medical safety, as well as to other areas of endeavor. He has been a consultant to NASA, the National Research Council, and the Resilience Core Group. He is currently at work on a book on information flow cultures.
YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
RESOURCES
TIMESTAMPS
[00:00] Intro [04:01] Meet Ron Westrum [07:19] Why prominent figures in the safety field come from sociology [08:38] Observations about the work on airline safety [11:17] How Ron’s work is relevant and why culture is important [16:56] Apollo 13 and Space Shuttle Columbia disaster [23:15] Westrum organization typology model [24:38] United Airlines Flight 232 [34:45] Understanding the dynamics of generative organizations [41:57] Three western typologies beyond the table [50:16] The Whitehall II study [53:05] What the word generative means to Ron [55:31] The two NASAs and how he would drive out fear [58:44] LaunchDarkly and DevOps Enterprise Summit Virtual [1:00:37] What Ron imagines would cause a different outcome as NASA [1:08:40] It matters who’s at the top [1:12:18] The technological maestro concept [1:16:38] How the technological maestro concept applies [1:26:20] How these characteristics can be learned [1:28:51] Building a community of good judgment [1:33:39] The role of CNO [1:35:27] How organizations learn and adapt generative capabilities [1:42:01] What should ideally happen when something goes wrong [1:45:41] Information flow, organization’s nervous system, and management [1:48:01] Contacting Admiral Richardson [1:49:06] Outro
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| Leadership, Radical Delegation, And Integrated Problem Solving with Admiral John Richardson | 22 Apr 2021 | 01:24:54 | |
In the second part of this two-part episode of The Idealcast Gene Kim and Admiral John Richardson, former Chief of Naval Operations, continue their discussion on the importance of leadership in large, complex organizations, especially enabling leadership training early in one’s career, and exploring why he views it as so important. Admiral Richardson also shares why radical delegation is needed more than ever, and provides tools and techniques for enabling it. Kim and Admiral Richardson discuss the important characteristics needed to integrate problems solving into an organization. And finally, they talk about the nature of the US Naval Reactors that are responsible for the safe and reliable operations of the US Naval Propulsion Program, why that warrants the command of a 4-star admiral, and what should ideally happen when accidents occur in complex systems. Also joining the conversation is Dr. Steve Spear, who has written extensively about the US Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program program in his book The High-Velocity Edge.
ABOUT THE GUESTS Admiral John Richardson served as the Chief of Naval Operations for four years, which is the professional head of the US Navy. While in the Navy, Richardson served in the submarine force and commanded the attack submarine USS Honolulu in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for which he was awarded the Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Inspirational Leadership Award. He also served as the Director of Naval Reactors, responsible for the design, safety, certification, operating standards, material control, maintenance, disposal, and regulatory oversight of over 100 nuclear power plants operating on nuclear-powered warships deployed around the world. Since his retirement in August 2019, he has joined the boards of several major corporations and other organizations, including Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company, and Exelon, a Fortune 100 company that operates the largest fleet of nuclear plants in America and delivers power to over 10 million customers. Dr. Steve Spear (DBA MS MS) is principal for HVE LLC, the award-winning author of The High-Velocity Edge, and patent holder for the See to Solve Real Time Alert System. A Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, Dr. Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so that they know better and faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple industries including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, US Army rapid equipping, and US Navy readiness.
YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
RESOURCES
TIMESTAMPS [00:00] Intro [01:24] Toughing up the training [09:37] Feedback from the fleet [11:00] Discussions with the instructors [14:03] A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority [18:07] Designing for the next place [28:18] Reducing the cost of change [35:22] Configurations for failure or success [39:55] Tools for integration [47:39] How structure affects the dynamics of how organizations work [51:59] Gene reflects on integrated problem solving [57:28] Two domains of activities to use the slow communication paths [1:00:42] If these mental models resonate with Admiral Richardson [1:02:31] What point does the center get involved [1:07:47] Why the delegation for the nuclear reactor core is important [1:14:00] What happens when complex systems go wrong [1:20:37] Contacting Admiral Richardson | |||