I talked with Kerry Schaffer last week about building the business case for platform engineering, more broader, platforms. She’s worked at OneMagnify for awhile building and running their platform, so she has a lot of experience to draw on. There’s all the usual money stuff, making sure you’ve got the capabilities, and so forth, but what she spends a lot of time discussing, for a business case, is developer happiness. We also discuss internal marketing and getting more women in tech.

LogoffI missed last Saturday. So I’ve set this one to just auto-send on Saturday morning. I’ll add stuff during the week. We’ll see how that works!

Pricing determines your business modelFirst, check out this post on pricing from Jason - it’s great! The two things I’ve seen infrastructure and developer tools product people ignore too much are: the need for customers to use the tool in minutes, self-service pricing as a feature and strategy driver. Sellers think of pricing as the money they want to make, often justified to the buyer ROI spreadsheets. Instead, they should think of pricing as the constraints they’re using to determine overall strategy and product feature set.

I haven’t watched this talk of mine in awhile, but looking at it again, it’s basically the secrets of how I get stuff done in large organizations. Or, rather, don’t get stuff done so I can stay sane and get stuff done. Like all good advice, I don’t follow it consistently. Just today, I violatedthe avoid assigning yourself homework one. There’s a shorter version for y’all impatient people. I should update this talk and give it again.

Updates to the VMware app runtimesIf you’re into platform engineering, the two VMware platforms have some announcements today that you’ll be interested in: Tanzu Application Platform v1.5 - There’s faster ways to get it installed, security improvements, tighter integration with Spring Boot apps, and a lot more. Rita gives some highlights: “Enhanced IDE support for Visual Studio Code & IntelliJ; Automated developer namespace provisioning; Tanzu Application Platform on AWS QuickStart, now for multicluster deployments; Seamless Spring Boot app migration; End-to-end app security capabilities, including TLS auto-configuration out of the box, External Secrets Operator support, new scanner integration for Trivy OSS vulnerability scanner by Aqua Security, and more.

Midjourney: two programmers (a man and a woman) analyizing how to improve their code, one sits in front of a computer typeing, the other is hunched over the desk pointing at the screen, in the style of 1980s corporate clip artMuch like financial debt, technical debt is helpful when managed responsibly, but like real debt, tech debt can also stop growth and innovation in its tracks. My colleague Bryan Ross has a piece out on tech debt with five ways to address is.

Suggested episode soundtrack: IncrativeOps: Better Living by Changing Less - Talk IdeaHere’s a talk I’m thinking of doing for a DevOpsDays keynote this fall. Now more than ever it's critical that you change how your work. Macroeconomic headwinds are creating an existential crisis for enterprises that must migrate from old ways of working to cloud native cultures. Software is eating the world. You've certainly heard all of this for past ten years, probably at least once in the past ten minutes DevOps has always been about dramatic changes to improve IT.

LogoffJust pictures today.

Midjourney: currency symbols, such as dollar signs ($), euros (€), and pounds (£) riding harley motorcycles in the sky through the cloud going crazy leaving a trail of chaos behind them, in the style of Robert CrumbWhen complaining is candor, and when candor is compellingLeaders often hear complaining when what they’re actually getting is feedback, “candor” even. Or maybe it just is complaining. How can you figure out the difference?

Cut the “what I did this summer” slidesFlick through a typical strategy document, and you will often be impressed – awed, even – by the intricacies of logic and articulacy of argument within. Yet on reaching the end, you may feel a sense of emptiness. You go back through the document; there are justifications, targets, sweeping conclusions. Something is missing. ‘That all sounds splendid,’ you think, ‘but what are you actually going to do?