The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution
 

The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution

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Multiple award-winning CTO, researcher, and bestselling author, Gene Kim hosts technology and business leaders to explore the dangerous, shifting digital landscape. Gain insights and solutions to help your enterprise thrive in an evolving business world.

Episodes

The Pursuit of Perfection: Dominant Architectures, Structure, and Dynamics: A Conversation With Dr. Steve Spear

Wednesday Jul 15, 2020

Wednesday Jul 15, 2020

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:

  • Explore how Steve’s mental model of dominate architectures, structure and dynamics can explain why organizations behave the way they do
  • The conditions for organizational-wide learning that allows the achievement of amazing goals and to dominate in the marketplace
  • How fast feedback creates opportunities to self correct and improve in real time
  • The characteristics of a dynamic learning organization

Episode Timeline:

  • [00:08] Intro
  • [00:21] Meet Dr. Steve Spear
  • [04:47] Introducing the late-Dr. Clay Christensen
  • [05:50] Working at a Tier 1 Toyota supplier’s plant floor
  • [09:56] Steve’s dissertation and Dr. Clay Christensen
  • [15:00] Dr. Clay Christensen’s involvement with Steve’s work
  • [19:19] Creating a feedback generating experiment beyond Toyota
  • [30:07] Why dominant architectures are important
  • [33:22] The steering column example
  • [36:28] What happens when the problems change?
  • [41:45] The role structure and dynamics play with dominant structures
  • [45:00] Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World 
  • [51:41] The parallels in the commercial world
  • [53:02] Change of dynamics in team of teams examples
  • [1:02:07] The importance of bad news
  • [1:14:44] Learning the dynamics within the US Naval reactor core
  • [1:23:59] Reflecting on the discussion with Steve
  • [1:26:11] How The Rickover Program achieved its goals
  • [1:27:53] Conditions that suppress signals
  • [1:36:57] Relating this to the COVID-19 pandemic
  • [1:41:11] Finding Dr. Steve Spear
  • [1:43:04] Outro

Resources:

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(Dispatch from the Scenius) Elisabeth Hendrickson’s 2014 and 2015 DOES Talks on Feedback Loops, with Commentary from Gene Kim

Wednesday Jun 17, 2020

Wednesday Jun 17, 2020

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:

  • [00:00] Intro
  • [00:22] Meet Elisabeth Hendrickson and her DevOps Enterprise Summit Presentation
  • [01:02] Elisabeth’s presentation intro
  • [02:02] Silicon Valley 1999
  • [05:43] Quality is getting worse
  • [06:42] Steamer round table and System of Effects Diagram
  • [07:54] Theory: Increase quality by throwing more testers at the problem
  • [08:49]The existence of QA created more bugs
  • [10:20] Feedback Cycles
  • [15:01] Shrodinger’s Cat and Fragile not Agile
  • [18:43] Creating visibility around Feedback Cycles
  • [26:19] Kolb’s learning cycle
  • [28:03] How team’s branch and merge
  • [32:20] Polluted feedback
  • [33:40]WordCount Simulation
  • [36:33] Better visibility
  • [37:42] Takeaways
  • [40:56] The illusion of speed over real progress
  • [47:11] Outro 

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.

Visit Elisabeth’s website

Twitter

LinkedIn

 

YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT

  • Feedback loops.
  • Feedback and opinion are different things.
  • Beware of polluted feedback streams.
  • WordCount simulation.
  • Fighting feedback entropy takes enormous energy.
  • Meetings are easy; getting real work done is hard.
  • Tools and test frameworks are foundational: the devs who build them have to be better than average.
  • Becoming a learning organization.

RESOURCES

 

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Achieving Better Outcomes Through Structure: A Conversation with Elisabeth Hendrickson

Wednesday Jun 10, 2020

Wednesday Jun 10, 2020

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.

Visit Elisabeth’s website

Twitter

LinkedIn

 

YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT

  • How to build software in a more efficient way
  • Elisabeth’s mental model of balance, structure and flow
  • How Conway’s law applies to Elisabeth’s model
  • Elisabeth’s WordCount Simulation 

 

Episode Timeline:

  • [00:09] Intro
  • [00:15] Meet Elisabeth Hendrickson
  • [04:14] “Better Testing - Worst Quality?”
  • [04:54] “Managing the Proportion of Testers to (Other) Developers”
  • [08:25] How to get great testing behaviors
  • [13:29] How structure enables developers to work on features
  • [16:08] Applying principle to non-functional requirements
  • [18:43] Conway’s law and Inverse Conway Maneuver
  • [27:43] Elisabeth’s model on balance, structure and flow
  • [31:01] MIT’s Beer Game
  • [36:41] The WordCount Simulation
  • [44:54] Becoming a good partner
  • [50:03] Drawing lines as a leader
  • [55:39] The Five Ideals
  • [57:33] Stuck in a cost center
  • [1:05:44] It’s all about feedback
  • [1:10:50] The Phoenix Project’s Sarah’s background
  • [1:19:09] Who is your first team?
  • [1:28:07] Finding Elisabeth Hendrickson
  • [1:28:29] Outro

 

RESOURCES

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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

Thursday Apr 30, 2020

Thursday Apr 30, 2020

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:

  • [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 

 

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.  

 

Visit Mik’s Website

 

YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT

  • 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.






RESOURCES

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Digital Disruption, The Five Ideals: Peter Moore and Dr. Mik Kersten

Tuesday Apr 28, 2020

Tuesday Apr 28, 2020

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.  

Visit Mik’s Website

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. 

Visit Peter’s Website

YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT

  • How DevOps and digital disruption will bring in the Age of Software and Data.
  • A way to organize your technology portfolio and free its future from the pull of the past
  • The about First Ideal, the “lunch factor, and what is required to unleash developer productivity
  • About the Second Ideal, flow, and the conditions that allow developers to be orders of magnitude more productive than the competition
  • About the Fifth Ideal, core vs. context, and ensuring that context doesn’t starve core 
  • About Sarah Moulton, the SVP of Retail Operations, who we must either work with, or compete with

RESOURCES

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