Corporate strategy could be improved by shifting right, moving closer to the week-to-week software cycle to get more familiar with customers and changes in the market. See more on corporate strategy in The Business Bottleneck.
Plus, I discuss bottleneck removal and thinking about policy and governance as human system, not static “laws.”
Mentioned
The Amsterdam bridge inspired font I mentioned, VLNL Berlagebrug.
When you put a new process, like agile, in place, you often realize there was very little process in the first place. Also, kubernetes at the edge, T-Mobile, and as architecture.
00:00 – Staycation.
01:32 – Doing something works better than doing nothing
04:36 – BMC case study
09:03 – ending zombie process
11:21 – lack of management tools
13:59 – example of a management tool
15:09 – three small things on kubernetes
28:31 – Your CTA!
Marc Zottner talks with Coté about large scale application modernization. Also, they discuss the value of starting small and constraining yourself to short time lines. Also: what does the American-speaking French accent sound like?
IT, let alone software development has a poor track record for success in large organizations. And yet: we’ll told software is not critical for enterprise survival. We’ve got to figure out how to de-risk software, then. That’s the topic today.
Platforms are often represented in enterprise architectures, “marchitectures,” or as I like to call them, “burgers.” Today, I walk through some past, great burgers, from CORBA, to J2EE, to Cloud Foundry, and more. In doing so, I over some advice about how to find and care for your burger, especially when it comes to keeping your burger fresh.
Planned on topics
All the great burgers.
We’re talking about distributed applications – an application and the services (“backend,” “middleware,” database, ERP-system, etc.) run as their own application, accessed over an API (usually over a network, but could be on the same box, too).
What is it in service of? Software for large organizations: enterprise architectures.
Industry (defacto) standard: broader knowledge, staff interest, bigger partner/integration ecosystem.
Always sniff out the vision – the implicit/explicit appdev/ALM model; “shift-left”‘ing; enterprise features over “don’t do that” (governance, AD, har, har).
Often times, the way we talk about the benefits of cloud native can kick-up fear for operations people. Coté explains how the automation and standardization that comes with kubernetes, PaaS, and other such changes can actually be very god for ops people.
Jana Werner, Tesco Bank – “Tesco Bank has embarked on a digital transformation journey, and at the heart of it lies a shift of culture and the adoption of modern product development practices. What could go wrong? Everything! Culture, leadership, bureaucracy, route to production, you name it. Yet, with the help of VMware Pivotal Labs, we delivered an amazing product during a time of great need for our customers: a digital gift card allowing volunteers to shop for self-isolating and vulnerable customers, while creating our very first cross-functional Product Team, now scaling out rapidly with enthusiastic people and full exec sponsorship. If you’d like to learn what it takes, what not to do, and how to fast-track your digital transformation, don’t miss this talk.”
BT wants to get better at how their do business, through software. Their strategies are, of course, operational excellence, but also getting software that improves the customer’s experience. This means they need to simplify how business is done, which they did by transforming the way they do software: IT underpins this corporate transformation, Rajesh says.
His approach to telling this story is to talk about how BT questioned some initial assumptions. On some of their initial plans, they pivoted (adapted) when they discovered new needs and realitis. On others, they persisted when they really needed the change. For example, at first, they thought that having a PaaS would be good enough for all development and app needs.
A pivot example: they discovered that more fine grained control was needed for some apps (esp. legacy ones), so they added in kuberntes. Here. PCF/TAS and TKG.
A persist example: security had to move from security by static IP. Because they were moving to AWS and microservices, things needed to be more dynamic. There was no way to achieve their tech-stack transformation otherwise. So, they persisted.
The third area he describes is their approach to removing ops toil from application developer’s agenda. As ever, they want apps developers to focus on…apps! And have time to explore and innovate making the apps better to deliver on customer service goals. (You see several example from Comcast on this with their new TV apps and improving customer service with ChatBots, and even in-home wifi coverage calibration, etc.) He also comments on a discovery, or validation of a predictable state, in my rewording: developers aren’t good at production ops and don’t really realize all the new tasks they’ll need to do – responisbilities they have! – in a DevOps model. So, they had pivot to training them and putting in place tech stuff to make it work better for them.
He has some fantastic framing: "instead of letting [developers] grapple with operating model choices, we adopted a more human-centric approach to educating teams."
He touches briefly on some portfolio modernization strategy. The benefits of doing, I think, were that they spent their time wisely, modernizing apps that were feasible and valuable to modernize instead of all of them. I could use more detail here, but I think the point is made – I mean it’s a five or six minute talk, so it’s fine. For a lot more, check out the ever excellent Rohit explaining this kind of portfolio app modernization analysis.
BT business – Fixed line, mobile TV, and networking.
Goals:
Lead in converged activity by simplifying business.
Build scalable platforms for growth.
Creating leaner business models.
IT underpins this corporate transformation.
"The challenges arise from our ways of working, process, account policies, security postures, and even we inventory software assests."
Three challenges and how they worked with them:
Strategy.
A PaaS, PCF/TAS with Spring – time to deploy from 2 months to 2 minutes. Also, microservices.
But, people wanted kubernetes for finer grain control, and needs for non/fuzzy cloud-native apps. Used TKG for this.
Listening to devteam
Security.
Moved from static IP to static IP, public IP addresses.
AWS networking needs, i.e., elastic IPs and REST endpoints.
People.
"They also were not fully aware of the [new] shared responsibilities of managing infrastructure as code, or how their roles changed when adopting the cloud."
E.g., with a more DevOps approach, "their responsibilities did not end with a cf push."
Enterprise architects looked through portfolio to bucket apps into legacy, strategic, SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS to plan out the way of working, priorities, app modernization tasks.
Drives concensous on "application treatment" and how to educate teams on their roles and new skills.
Also, this eliminates scope overlap in our budgets and app modernization plans, allowing the PaaS team to focus on executation, [instead of work that wasn’t applicable to the various apps strategies and bucketing].
Rajesh: "What really happens is you’ve got to tease out what is containerizable"
"To overcome this challenge, BT has established a platform team, dedicated to helping application teams identify these containerizable elements and find the best environment in which to host them, be it in the public cloud or on a platform-as-a-service (PaaS)."
Rajesh: "You have to handhold them, otherwise they will take the biggest unit they can handle, put that into a Docker container and then lo and behold you’ve got the same monster on better infrastructure — that doesn’t solve your business problem."
"This is a constant tussle," he admits, "where people want Kubernetes by default, but I think you’ve got to be a bit more prescriptive in the beginning to developers and then as you see them maturing, have them make those independent choices."
"the next task is to scale it out via documentation and word of mouth buzz, both for in-house engineers and with external partners."
Rajesh: "If you look at how standards are democratized, you’ve got enterprise architecture that looks at the overall architecture standards and policies, then you have solution architects, who are a level down and are specific to a product, and finally we have distinguished engineers — we call them expert engineers — who are also key influencers for other developers, who look up to them."
I started a new, I don’t know, streaming thing today. I’m trying out live streaming every Tuesday and Thursday at 11am Amsterdam time. It was nice – but we’ll see if it matters.
Air France KLM modernized their payments service recently, EPASS. This is a 12 year old system that provides the backend for processing purchasing airline tickets (and other things, I guess) from numerous front-ends: the web, mobile app, and social apps as well. The system was difficult to scale, it required manually adding new servers and had a long development cycle. As more and more people want to interact with Air France KLM through software (phones, online, in WhatsApp, or whatever other “channel”), they want to be able to evolve their software quickly. They want to use software as a core innovation tool for improving customer experience and, thus, business. So, here we see one of their first experiences modernizing their backend and transforming how they do software.
Talk presented by Oya Ünlü Duygulu and Patrick Zijlstra.
Highlights
-Rick in intro: transformed payments platform in 6 weeks.
– [Corporate vision] is to provide good, “our purpose as an airline group is create memorable experiences for our passengers.
– So, they want to (1.) focus on customer centricity, (2.) innovation, and, (3.) efficiencies in our processes.
– “Digital” as the primary channel is on the rise. People want to interact through apps and such. So, KLM needs to meet the customers there… “As an airline, we want to be where our passengers are” (~3:00)
– Some examples of digital features: “‘About 10 percent of the ideas actually end up on the market. A recent example of this is the hand baggage check in the KLM app. Through augmented reality travelers can see whether their hand luggage meets the set dimensions. This function went live last month. ‘ Six months ago, a 3D rendering of the business class seats was also shown when checking in online. ‘This with the idea of stimulating the sale of these chairs.”
– For example, listening and interacting with customers in social media [something I’ve done many times – it’s great to chat with someone (or a bot?) in WhatsApps, Twitter, etc. instead of a phone call]. (~3:40) Social media is now “our closest connection to passengers.” And in China: “For instance, Chinese travelers rely immensely on mobile devices. How can these personal devices be used for authentication – identity management, payment etc. to streamline the journey wherever possible? In China, the whole landscape is different, and we need to ensure we aren’t relying overtly on drawing customers only to our touch-points.”
– (~3:10) merged together KLM and Air France backends to get less complexity in the back-end and a unified experience in the front-end for customers. Social media is now “our closest connection to passengers.”
– The use SAFe release trains (which they call “release planes”), mapped to customer value journeys, e.g., sales, paid products, or airport.
– In the digital department, they have about than 50 product teams.
– Planning every three months, come together get a roadmap from the business, and all the teams plan together. Then they start sprinting bi-weekly.
– Also shared services and practices team.
– Their /goals:
– (~5:50) “We are designing our products focused on time to market, innovation, robustness, and security.”
– Focusing on getting CI/CD in place.
– Also, reducing complexity and speeding up business value [realization], so we are moving towards a microservices architecture.
– [Business stuff:] EPASS handles payments from many places, created 12 years ago. Wanted to modernize [not sure why]. They worked with Pivotal Labs on modernization for a six wee project.
– EPASS app – made 12 years ago, handles about 37,000 payments transactions per day. Takes care of all online revenue.
– Six week engagement with Pivotal Labs. This brought expertiese from the outside, combined with their existing skills.
– “Six weeks is very ambitious for such a project, but getting this expertise from Pivotal and their dedication we made a success story at the end.”
– Modernization road-map for EPASS.
– We want to speed up with release cycles, which was then one month. [Move to single piece work-flow: whenever a user story is ready, then it can go live.]
– In six weeks, all the could focus on was transforming the app and moving it to the new platform [PCF]. But, they could also modernize their skills by adding in TDD and pair programming.
– Switches to Patrick.
– (~10:55) – they go over their way of working.
– Inception to set expectations. Outception to look back at what was achieved. Some blocker removal meetings. And the usual agile meetings.
– Two teams: one does modernization, the other delivers business features.
– Worked in one week iterations.
– Doing pair programming. “We noticed that this really increases the code quality that we deliver.”
– (~12:30) EPASS architecture. Was hosted on bare-metal Tomcat server. To scale, had to add new server and put EPASS software on it. This was becoming a hassle and fixing that was a motivation to move to VMware Tanzu.
– (~14:00) new architecture – five different components. Three in Tanzu Application Service.
– After, the majority of things were put in VMware Tanzu…
– [Picked some small things at first to test stuff out, hardcoded secrets but later fixed that – used CredHub – in long term will move to Vault.]
– (~16:00) Used Spring Boot, adding health check [this is good to highlight, that it gets instrumented/observable “for free”].
– “It was invigorating working to work with the Pivotal experts and now there’s more confidence in the team to continue.”
– Used Bamboo, added in automation stuff for deployment…
– Problems: networking problems
– Benefits: response times improved by 10%; “all the power for scaling is within the product team itself” instead of having to work with other groups, file tickets, etc. Also, time to patch is within 72 hours (3 days).
– (~21:08) “The experience was very positive. It was invigorating to work with the Pivotal experts. And, now there’s more confidence within the team to continue to improve the application.”
– The projects have been finished for a few months. No more components in bare-metal Tomcat.
– “From the organization side, there is no more fear of big changes. If such an old application as EPASS can transform, then it’s possible for any application.”
– “So more and more and more applications will be moving to TAS [Tanzu Application Service].”
The panel I put together and moderated for this year’s SpringOne. It turned out really well. Here’s the abstract:
When you’re trying to improve how your organization does software, how do you change what managers and executives do? We hear a lot about how developers and operators change, the composition of product teams, and always about Kubernetes. But there’s very little conversation about transforming management. This panel of managers will discuss what managers’ and executives’ roles new and old look like, managing managers, and how individual managers can manage their careers when their role changes.
The panelests: Neville George, Manager at Comcast; Jon Osborn, IT Executive at Bell Tracy, Ltd.; Jana Werner, Head of Transformation at Tesco Bank
Five self-checks executives should do to make sure they’re transforming how they’re managing. Check out the free books mentioned at cote.pizza. Come hear first accounts of THE_DIGITALS at Spring One, Sep 2nd & 3rd, all online, & all free. Register now!
Transcript
So when you’re transforming your organization, it’s important not to lose sight of this. You’re transforming yourself, the manager and the executive, the people who are doing that organizational transformation. Here’s 5 things you should check on to kind of be a dipstick if you will. If you’re changing yourself one the format of your meeting should change. You’re not only getting status updates of what’s happening, but you’re learning how the product has changed new understandings of the customer.
An getting a sense of how the product is helping the business. You should also be changing the people you talk with. You’re not just talking with your direct reports, but you’re talking with product managers and other people. Maybe even audit people as you’re trying to clear the way for automating more of compliance. You should be thinking about how the things you measure change not only technical metrics. Time to close bugs and.
Time to deploy, but metrics about how your software is improving the way your business functions. Things like customer satisfaction, revenue, the time it takes to fill out a mortgage application, and the time it takes to refill a prescription. You should also be encountering customers a lot more end users having that same empathy for what people are doing with the software that you want your developer teams to be having.
And finally, you should be delegating a lot more. Instead of using your meetings and your managerial position to make all of the decisions or to make the crucial decisions. Many of the decisions are pushed down to the actual teams who have weekly, daily familiarity with the business in the software, and they’re the ones that should be more and more making decisions that you probably were more comfortable making in the past. So if you look at those.
Kind of go through those every now and then. Make sure that they’ve changed from your pre transformation time to see if you yourself are actually changing.
Transforming to a more agile way of doing software might be easier in times of crisis, and probably a better approach. For more, check out my book, The Business Bottleneck for more & hear tales of thriving at SpringOne Platform, this September 2nd and 3rd.
Whatever you want to call it, “legacy” software is a problem. In one of our recent surveys, 76% of executives said they are too invested in legacy applications to change how they do software. It can seem hard, but fixing that blocker is possible. As with all things in software, there is no quick fix, it just takes discipline, work, and time. In this episode, Coté talks with VMware Tanzu’s Rohit Kelapure who’s been working in application modernization for years. He goes over the initial portfolio analysis and thinking that the Pivotal Labs application modernization teams walk customers through.
Developers often know what’s slowing them down better than executives. So, like, if you’re a manager, don’t let that happen. Go check on what’s actually going on in the organization instead of just what’s going on in your status meetings. Get the more details and free books mentioned at cote.pizza.
And, for more of these tiny videos, see the full playlist. They’re, you know, fun!
This presentation explains why getting better at software is important and can help improve your business. It presents the product model of software development, in contrast to the typical project model. It then describes three common barriers to change and how some organizations overcome them. There are three case studies of real-world, large organizations used throughout as well to illustrate the major ideas.
Check out this recording of a recent talk of mine. Here’s the abstract:
Many Government organizations are getting better at software development, deployment and management by using techniques like DevOps, agile development, and product management. Cloud native technologies are making organizations’ software supply chains more efficient and reliable. Our substantial experience with open-source technology and continuous deployment approaches, offers a powerful accelerator for contact tracing and integrated citizen response solutions. Improvement is fragile, and scaling up in large organizations is difficult. This talk will discuss bottlenecks, challenges, and how Government agencies and organizations are succeeding.
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