Coté
Speaking
I speak a lot at conferences, internal events, and meetings here and there for work. Most the talks I give are listed on my sessionize profile page, but you can always ask for something new. You can see a selection of recordings of my past talks here. Some of the slides are available if you like to collect such stuff. Usually, I’m talking on the topic of doing better software at large organizations. Many of these talks are based on and draw from my books.
Here are few of the talks I’ve been giving recently:
(1) Lessons Learned from 8 Years of Building & Running Developer Platforms
platform engineering, platform as a product
Here is a shorter, 15 minute version.
Platform engineering may sound like the latest buzzword, but the truth is, we’ve been at this for years—long before Kubernetes was the answer to everything. Whether you’re in DevOps, SRE, or what we now call “platform engineering,” you know the drill: everyone wants Kubernetes up and running, with a platform built on top. Meanwhile, you’re just celebrating getting a decent build pipeline in place!
Building and running developer platforms isn’t new—it’s been happening for over a decade. This talk dives into the lessons learned along the way, from product managing the platform and earning developer trust to re-skilling ops teams and attracting users. Using examples from organizations like Mercedes-Benz, the US Air Force, major insurance companies, and banks, we’ll explore the best (and worst) practices for building successful platforms developers actually use.
See my platform page for more platform related stuff.
(2) We Built It, and No One Came: How to Market Your Internal Developer Platform
You’ve built the perfect platform, but those pesky developers aren’t using it. Sound familiar? Over the years, I’ve heard this story countless times. More often than not, it boils down to one thing: the platform team forgot to market it. Branding, t-shirts, platform advocacy, community management, even staffing for marketing—it’s all part of the game. I get it: you see the word “marketing” and cringe. But here’s the truth—if you want a successful platform in a large organization, you need it.
Thankfully, there’s a rich history of companies figuring this out. In this talk, I’ll demystify what platform and product marketing really mean, sharing practical tactics and lessons learned from organizations like Mercedes-Benz, ING, BT, Garmin, and others. Learn how to get developers not just using, but loving, your platform.
(3) Escaping the Legacy Trap
76% of executives say they’re too invested in legacy systems to modernize. That’s because older applications and services often stifle business innovation, leaving organizations stuck in a legacy trap. Escaping the legacy trap isn’t just about rewriting apps; it’s about changing how you build and run software.
This talk covers the strategies and tactics organizations use to modernize their applications–beyond simply rewriting code. You’ll learn how to:
- Use portfolio analysis with SWIFT and apply the Seven Rs to prioritize which apps to modernize.
- Introduce platforms and platform engineering to modernize operations and better support developers.
- Establish practices like platform engineering to ensure your organization doesn’t fall back into the legacy trap.
Packed with real-world examples and actionable advice, this session will show you how to escape the legacy trap and help your organization thrive with modern, innovative software.
See my legacy trap page for recordings of this talk and related stuff.
(4) Developer productivity is waste
We’ve become developer productivity obsessed, worse, developer productivity METRICS obsessed. How often do we deploy apps? How many story points did we complete? What’s our MTTR? What’s the network admins eNPS? An obsession with developer productivity is good at small doses, but it becomes a distraction when taken too far. And, besides, who is this focus on productivity really benefit? In this talk, I’ll first give an overview of the latest in developer productivity metrics. Second, I’ll go over some techniques to avoid descending into metrics madness. Finally, I’ll go over what we should be paying more attention to instead of productivity.
Given at DevOpsDays Amsterdam 2024 and NDC Oslo 2024.
(5) Low Growth DevOps, or, After the Death of DevOps
DevOps spread has leveled out, it’s no longer a fast growing mindset and set of accompanying tools. Some surveys show that 70% of people are still not automating their builds, let along production deployment. DevOps companies are facing growth challenges. It can feel like we’re yet again re-discovering the early days of DevOps instead of evolving it to the next stage. Is this bad? Is it good? Is it expected? This talk is an analysis of slowing DevOps growth and what it means for you.
Given at DevOpsDays Antwerp 2024.
(6) Platform Engineering for Private Cloud
“Platform engineering” is the art of building and managing the infrastructure that powers your applications: a mix of cloud, a handful of DevOps, a pinch of SRE, and a thick glaze of product management. While it’s “nothing new,” many organizations are just starting to practice it—and for good reason. But what happens when your platform is running on private cloud?
With around 50% of enterprise apps still running on private clouds, platform engineering for private platforms is surprisingly under-discussed. This talk dives into real-world examples and stories from large organizations tackling this challenge. The hurdles often lie in adapting platform engineering to existing IT stacks and processes—most organizations can’t simply start from scratch, nor would they want to abandon what’s currently driving revenue.
If you support your organization’s apps, platform engineering is something you’ll probably be doing soon. Come learn how your peers are navigating these challenges and share your own experiences.
(7) The confusing case of cloud app domicilicity
We’re nearly two decades into cloud. Where have all the apps gone? You’d think it’d be simple to answer that question: probably all in the cloud, right? It turns out the answer is elusive. I’ve tried for years! It could be as much as 70%, or as low as 30%. Maybe. Those numbers could be hokum. These are apps you manage and write, you should know where they tend to live. This talk will go over my latest investigations into this mystery with no goal other than gather up the clues and wire them up with red crazy board string. I’ll then speculate how that newly updated crazy board can drive how you think about what about it, if anything.
(8) Building the AI Magic Bullet - Enterprise Style
“Everyone’s frantically baking AI into their enterprise apps like it’s the secret sauce that’ll fix everything from technical debt to the broken coffee machine. But shipping useful AI applications isn’t about picking this quarter’s hottest model - it’s about building a system that lets your teams figure out what AI is actually good for before the budget runs out.
This talk covers how to create the conditions for AI success: a platform that automates governance while accelerating development. Using examples from companies like Mercedes-Benz, learn how to build guardrails that let teams explore AI’s potential without unleashing a shadow IT apocalypse. Because in the end, the real magic isn’t in the model - it’s in creating an environment where teams can fail fast, learn faster, and ship something worth running in production.”
Bio and picture
Here is a short bio of me:
Michael Coté studies how large organizations get better at building software to run better and grow their business. His books Changing Mindsets, Monolithic Transformation, and The Business Bottleneck cover these topics. He’s been an industry analyst at RedMonk and 451 Research, done corporate strategy and M&A, and was a programmer. He also co-hosts several podcasts, including Software Defined Talk. His daily-ish newsletter is at newsletter.cote.io.
Here are two pictures, feel free to use whichever you think is appropriate:
