The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution

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.

• Twitter: @mtnygard
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mtnygard/
• Website: https://www.michaelnygard.com/

You’ll Learn About:

• Admiral Rickover’s work with the Naval Nuclear Reactor Core
• Building great architecture for generality.
• Architecture as an organizing logic and means of software construction.
• Toyota Production System’s ability to drive down the cost of change through architecture
• Clojure programming language
• Cynefin framework
• How to know if a code is simpler or more complex

RESOURCES

• Cynefin framework
• Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz
• "Why software development is an engineering discipline," presentation by Glenn Vanderburg at O'Reilly Software Architecture Conference
• "10+ Deploys Per Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation," presentation by John Allspaw
• "Architecture Without an End State," presentation by Michael T. Nygard at YOW! 2012
• "Spec-ulation Keynote," presentation by Rich Hickey
• re-frame (re-frame is the magnificent UI framework which both Mike and I love using and hold in the highest regard — by no means should the "too many notes" comment be construed that re-frame has too many notes!)
• "Fabulous Fortunes, Fewer Failures, and Faster Fixes from Functional Fundamentals," presentation by Scott Havens at DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas, 2019
• "Clojure for Java Programmers Part 1," presentation by Rich Hickey at NYC Java Study Group
• Simple Made Easy presentation by Rich Hickey at Strange Loop 2011
• Love Letter To Clojure (Part 1) by Gene Kim
• The Idealcast, Episode 5: The Pursuit of Perfection: Dominant Architectures, Structure, and Dynamics: A Conversation With Dr. Steve Spear
• LambdaCast podcast hosted by David Koontz

TIMESTAMPS

[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

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.

• [00:03] Intro
• [00:52] Meet Mik Kersten
• [02:35] The Flow Framework
• [03:24] Working at Xerox PARC
• [05:29] Epiphany #1: Software architecture and the value stream
• [06:15] Epiphany #2: How Nokia lost the market it created
• [08:57] Epiphany #3: Software innovation and tools for transformation
• [12:33] Carlota Perez and tech revolutions
• [14:39] BMW, Lean principles
• [18:30] Optimizing business value flow in IT
• [22:24] How Microsoft excelled where Nokia couldn't
• [25:10] Flow efficiency and moving towards a connected value network
• [27:42] How they're applying flow framework at Tasktop
• [29:49] Business advice for developers
• [31:22] Finding Dr. Mik Kersten
• [32:02] Outro

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.

Visit Mik’s Website

• Ways to optimize business value flow for IT
• How fragmented value streams kill productivity.
• The role proxy metrics and silos play in derailing software transformations.
• Why project management and cost centered is the wrong model for transforming a business.

• Slides to Mik Kersten’s Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework
• The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data by Gene Kim
• Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework by Mik Kersten
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
• Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez
• “Project To Product: Beyond the Turning Point,” presentation by Mik Kersten at DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas, 2019
• “How Value Stream Networks Will Transform IT and Business,” presentation by Mik Kersten at DevOps Enterprise Summit London, 2...

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/

YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

• Key concepts from the book, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
• The genesis of the joint special operations command
• How the principles, practices, outcomes and leaderships relate to the DevOps community

RESOURCES

• Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell
• Cynefin framework

TIMESTAMPS

[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

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.

YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT

• Why defining software developers’ productivity remains elusive and how developers talk about what factors make them feel productive.
• The value of modularity and how one can achieve it.
• Ways to decompose software that can have surprising outcomes for even small systems.
• How open-source software is a triumph of information hiding, creating a massively interdependent set of libraries that also enable incredible co-evolution, which is only made possible by modularity.
• How we have exceeded and fallen short of the 1980s dream of software being like building blocks, where we can quickly create software by assembling modules, and what we have learned from the infamous leftpad and mime-magic incidents in the last two years.
• Why and how, in very specific areas, the entire software industry has standardized on a set of modules versus in other areas, where we continue to seemingly go in the opposite direction.
• A summary of some of the relevant work of Dr. Carliss Baldwin, the William L. White Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Dr. Baldwin studies the process of design and its impact of design architecture on firm strategy, platforms, and business ecosystems.
• How software development is a subset of knowledge work and the implications of that insight.

RESOURCES

• Dr. Mik Kersten on The Idealcast
• Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework by Mik Kersten
• Tasktop
• The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data by Gene Kim
• Fred Brooks
• The Mythical Man-Month
• On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules by Dr. D.L. Parnas
• Comparison of embedded computer systems on board the Mars rovers
•