The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution

In part two of this two-part episode on The DevOpsHandbook, Second Edition, Gene Kim speaks with coauthors Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble about the past and current state of DevOps. Forsgren and Humble share with Kim their DevOps aha moments and what has been the most interesting thing they’ve learned since the book was released in 2016. Jez discusses the architectural properties of the programming language PHP and what it has in common with ASP.NET. He also talks about the anguish he felt when Mike Nygard’s book, Release It!, was published while he was working on his book, Continuous Delivery. Forsgren talks about how it feels to see the findings from the State of DevOps research so widely used and cited within the technology community. She explains the importance of finding the link between technology performance and organizational performance as well as what she's learned about the importance of culture and how it can make or break an organization. Humble, Forsgren, and Kim each share their favorite case studies in The DevOps Handbook. ABOUT THE GUEST(S) Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble are two of five coauthors of The DevOps Handbook along with Gene Kim, Patrick Debois and John Willis. Forsgren, PhD, is a Partner at Microsoft Research. She is coauthor of the Shingo Publication Award-winning book Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and The DevOps Handbook, 2nd Ed., and is best known as lead investigator on the largest DevOps studies to date. She has been a successful entrepreneur (with an exit to Google), professor, performance engineer, and sysadmin. Her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals. Humble is co-author of Lean Enterprise, the Jolt Award-winning Continuous Delivery, and The DevOps Handbook. He has spent his career tinkering with code, infrastructure, and product development in companies of varying sizes across three continents, most recently working for the US Federal Government at 18F. As well as serving as DORA’s CTO, Jez teaches at UC Berkeley. YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT Projects Jez and Gene worked on together before The DevOps Handbook came out. What life is like for Jez as a site reliability engineer at Google and what he’s learned. The story behind his DevOps aha moment in 2004, working on a large software project involving 70 developers. The architectural properties of his favorite programming language PHP, what it has in common with ASP.NET, and the importance of being able to get fast feedback while building something. The anguish that Jez felt when Mike Nygard’s book, Release It!, came out, wondering if there was still a need for the book he was working on, which was Continuous Delivery. “Testing on the Toilet” and other structures for creating distributed learning across an organization and why this is important to create a genuine learning dynamic. What Dr. Forsgren is working on now as Partner of Microsoft Research. Some of Dr. Forsgren’s goals as we work together on the State of DevOps research and how it feel to have those findings so widely used and cited within the technology community. The importance of finding the link between technology performance and organizational performance and why it probably was so elusive for at least 40 years in the research community. What Dr. Forsgren has learned about the importance of culture, how it can make or break an organization, and the importance of great leadership. RESOURCES Personal DevOps Aha Moments, the Rise of Infrastructure, and the DevOps Enterprise Scenius: Interviews with The DevOps Handbook Coauthors (Part 1 of 2: Patrick Debois and John Willis) The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations, Second Edition, by Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, Jez Humble, and Dr. Nicole Forsgren Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Nudge vs Shove: A Conversation With Richard Thaler The V

In this episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Scott Havens, who is the Director of Engineering at Wayfair, where he leads Engineering for the Wayfair Fulfillment Network. Havens is a leading proponent of applying functional programming principles to technical and organizational design. Previously, Havens was the architect for Walmart's global omnichannel inventory system, unifying availability and replenishment for the largest company in the world by revenue. Havens shares his views on what makes great architecture great. He details what happened when an API call required 23 other synchronous procedures calls to return a correct answer. He discusses the challenges of managing inventory at Wal-Mart, how one implements event sourcing patterns on that scale, and the functional programming principles that it depends upon. Lastly, he talks about how much category theory you need to know to do functional programming and considerations when creating code in complex systems. Before listening to this interview, please listen to Episode 22, which provides Scott Havens's 2019 DevOps Enterprise Summit talk with commentary from Gene Kim. ABOUT THE GUEST(S) Scott Havens is a Director of Engineering at Wayfair, where he leads Engineering for the Wayfair Fulfillment Network. Scott cares deeply about scalable data-intensive software systems; he is a leading proponent of applying functional programming principles to technical and organizational design. Previously, Havens was a Director of Engineering at Jet.com and was the architect for Walmart's global omnichannel inventory system, unifying availability and replenishment for the largest company in the world by revenue. In his home life, Havens enjoys good food, good wine, bad movies, and asking his daughter to stop "redecorating" his Minecraft castles, pretty please. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-havens/ Twitter: @ScottHavens Email: scott@sphavens.com YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT His views on what makes great architectures great The details on what happened when an API call requires 23 other synchronous procedures calls to return a correct answer How one implements event sourcing patterns on a large scale, using Wal-Mart as an example, and the functional programming principles it depends upon The challenges of managing inventory at Wal-Mart How much category theory to know to do functional programming RESOURCES Currying Function composition (computer science) Idempotence Love Letter To Clojure: And A Datomic Experience Report - Gene Kim Side effect (computer science) Functional Geekery Episode 129 – Eric Normand Theory of Functional Programming skill Ruby Conf 12 - Boundaries by Gary Bernhardt Functional Design in Clojure Podcast - Ep 021: Mutate the Internet Lean Summit 2013 - Art Byrne - What does it take to Lead a Lean Turnaround? Thoughts On Functional Programming Podcast - 3 Examples Of Algebraic Thinking CORECURSIVE #050 - Portal Abstractions with Sam Ritchie: How abstract algebra solves data engineering Adam Grant’s tweet about coding TIMESTAMPS [00:24] Intro [02:23] Meet Scott Havens [03:48] How architecture fits in functional programming [04:48] Event source systems at Wal-Mart [19:45] The effects and behaviors [22:36] Duality of code and data [26:13] Currying [32:34] How the 23 service teams’s world change [40:56] Hallmarks of great architecture [51:10] How he replaced the dominant architecture at Wal-Mart [56:46] Configurations and speculations with couplings [1:03:51] How can simple systems suffer from problems like this [1:09:11] Idempotence, Clojure and side effect [1:17:01] Issues with switching to event-driven asynchronous architectures [1:25:15] Vast scale in which these organizations operate in [1:29:54] A moment that showed Scott the effects of what he helped create [1:33:51] Onboarding new engineers to the new system [1:45:11] Working in the Windows 3.1 multicast networking group [1:47:32] Reflection on Moda Operandi experience [1:52:11] A

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 Disru

In March of 2021, Gene Kim visited the mass vaccination site at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, which has been described by the press as a logistical masterpiece where over 465,000 Oregonians have been vaccinated as of May 2021. After a three-hour tour of the site, Gene Kim sat down with Trent Green, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Legacy Health and one of the organizers of the mass vaccination operation. Kim and Green discuss firsthand what it looks like to vaccinate 8,000 people a day and the strategic level of planning it took to produce and operate the mass vaccination clinic. Green reveals what those first few days of operation were like and how the site was able to increase distribution from 2,000 vaccines per day to 8,000 per day. Lastly, he discusses the lessons he learned during the rollout process and how those lessons can inform how to improve the overall health care system. Also joining the conversation is Dr. Steve Spear, who has helped the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative create its “Perfecting Patient Care System” and has worked on a few pilot programs with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. ABOUT THE GUESTS Trent Green, COO of Legacy Health, focusing on innovation in Legacy Health’s hospital operations and service lines, and responsible for Legacy Laboratory Services, Legacy Imaging Services and Unity Center. Green oversees the OHSU Knight-Legacy Health Cancer Collaborative, the LifeFlight partnership, as well as other ventures that directly impact hospital operations. Prior to his most recent role, Green served as Legacy Health’s senior vice president, chief strategy officer, and president of Legacy Medical Group. He brings more than 20 years of experience in leading health care organizations, with specific strengths and accomplishments in clinic and hospital operations, strategic planning, business development, marketing, mergers and acquisitions, and finance. Green’s notable achievements include advancing a re-imagined Master Facility Plan for the Legacy Emanuel and Randall Children’s Hospital campus; navigating a complex regulatory situation at Unity Center by providing decisive leadership and a unified approach to problem-solving, resulting in the successful restoration of status, cultural alignment, best in system performance on medication administration practices, and accelerated incident review and mitigation implementation practices. He also led and developed several of Legacy’s most transformational initiatives, including the PacificSource joint venture, Silverton Health affiliation, Legacy-GoHealth urgent care joint venture, and the OHSU Knight–Legacy Health Cancer Collaborative, among others. 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, Dr. Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so that they know better and faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple industries including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, US Army rapid equipping, and US Navy readiness. Visit Steve Spear's Website YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT Green’s role as the Chief Operating Officer, how it compares to the Chief Medical Officer, and what are the other key leadership roles in a healthcare organization The strategic level of planning, human creativity, and problem-solving it took to produce and operate the mass vaccination clinic as efficient as possible Green’s role and the various leadership roles at the vaccination clinic What the first days of operations at the vaccination site were like The major milestones Green saw as distribution increased from 2,000 vaccines per day to 8,000 vaccines per day Fast versus slow in

In the first part of this two-part episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Dr. Ron Westrum, Emeritus Professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. His work on organizational culture and his contribution of the Westrum organizational typology model have been instrumental in understanding what makes a high-performing organization across industries. For decades, he has studied complex organizations from medicine to aviation to the nuclear industry. In part one of their conversation, Kim and Westrum talk about the stark contrast between NASA’s highly experimental culture of the Apollo space program versus the highly compliance-driven culture of the US Space Shuttle program, and Westrum’s opinions on how to bring that experimental culture back. They also discuss the origins of the Westrum organizational typology model and some of the insights that led to it. Finally, Westrum shares what organizations should do when things go wrong in complex systems. ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Ron Westrum is Emeritus Professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He holds a B.A. (honors) from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Westrum is a specialist in the sociology of science and technology and complex organizations. He has written three books, Complex Organizations: Growth, Development and Change; Technologies and Society: The Shaping of People and Things, and Sidewinder: Creative Missile Design at China Lake. He has also written about fifty articles and book chapters. His work on organizational culture has been valuable for the aviation industry and to medical safety, as well as to other areas of endeavor. He has been a consultant to NASA, the National Research Council, and the Resilience Core Group. He is currently at work on a book on information flow cultures. YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT Why much of the body of knowledge around safety culture came from sociology as opposed to psychology. How Westrum views the stark contrast in NASA between the highly experimental culture of the Apollo space program versus what has been characterized as a highly compliance-driven culture of the US Space Shuttle program. Insightful and useful opinions on what would be required to bring that experimental culture back in NASA. The origins of the Westrum organization typology model and some of the insights that led to it. Why Westrum views the notion of a technical maestro important to get the desired outcomes. What Westrum thinks should ideally happen when things go wrong in complex systems. RESOURCES State of DevOps Reports Westrum organizational culture The study of information flow: A personal journey by Ron Westrum Sidewinder: Creative Missile Design at China Lake by Ron Westrum Complex Organizations: Growth, Development and Change by Ron Westrum Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies by Charles Perrow Crew resource management or cockpit resource management (CRM) The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents by David Beaty Naked Pilot: The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents by David Beaty United Airlines Flight 232 Cockpit Voice Recorder Database Captain Al Haynes' 1991 lecture at NASA Ames Research Center It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by Michael Abrashoff Apollo 13 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster Space Shuttle Columbia disaster CBS News article: "Readdy says 'no rationale' for spy satellite inspection" Apollo 13 (1995) - Square Peg in a Round Hole Scene Health inequalities among British civil servants: the Whitehall II study by Jane Ferrie, Martin J Shipley, George Davey Smith, Stephen A Stansfeld and Michael G Marmot Facing Ambiguous Threats by Michael Roberto, Richard M.J. Bohmer, and Amy C. Edmondson DevOps Enterprise Summit Virtual Nasa Cut or Delayed Safety Spending by Stuart Diamond Mars Curiosity Rover Landing Space 2015 How Apple Is Organized for Innovation by Joel M. Podolny and Morten T. Hansen Arthur Squires The Tend

In the first episode of Season 2 of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Admiral John Richardson, who served as Chief of Naval Operations for four years, the top officer in the Navy. Before that, Admiral Richardson served as director of the US Naval Reactors, which is comprehensively responsible for the safe and reliable operation of the US Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion program. In part one of this two-part conversation, Kim and Admiral Richardson explore how the Department of Defense and the armed services can lead the way to respond effectively to the digital disruption agenda. Admiral Richardson discusses how he operationalized creating a high velocity learning dynamic across the entire US Navy. He also presents his theories on how we need to balance compliance and creativity. And finally, he presents some amazing examples of how to strip away the barnacles from processes, those layers of controls and supervision that may have crept in over the decades. Also joining the conversation is Dr. Steve Spear, who has written extensively about the US Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program program in his book The High-Velocity Edge. ABOUT THE GUESTS Admiral John Richardson served as the Chief of Naval Operations for four years, which is the professional head of the US Navy. While in the Navy, Richardson served in the submarine force and commanded the attack submarine USS Honolulu in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for which he was awarded the Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Inspirational Leadership Award. He also served as the Director of Naval Reactors, responsible for the design, safety, certification, operating standards, material control, maintenance, disposal, and regulatory oversight of over 100 nuclear power plants operating on nuclear-powered warships deployed around the world. Since his retirement in August 2019, he has joined the boards of several major corporations and other organizations, including Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company, and Exelon, a Fortune 100 company that operates the largest fleet of nuclear plants in America and delivers power to over 10 million customers. 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, Dr. Spear’s work focuses on accelerating learning dynamics within organizations so that they know better and faster what to do and how to do it. This has been informed and tested in practice in multiple industries including heavy industry, high tech design, biopharm R&D, healthcare delivery and other social services, US Army rapid equipping, and US Navy readiness. Visit Steve Spear's Website YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT Why high-velocity learning was so important to Admiral Richardson when he was the Chief of Naval Operations. How Admiral Richardson operationalized creating a high velocity learning dynamic across the entire US Navy. His views on the need to balance compliance and creativity. Specific advice on what leaders must do when the balance tilts too much toward compliance and has taken away people’s ability to unleash their full creative potential. Examples of how to strip away the barnacles from processes. Why radical delegations are so important. How Admiral Richardson came to believe that creating leadership communities and connections are essential. Where software competencies must show up in modern organizations. RESOURCES Dr. Steve Spear’s episodes on The Idealcast Part 1, summit presentations, and Part 2. The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition by Steven J. Spear. The Boeing Company Exelon BWX Technologies, Inc. Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 7 Tao Te Ching - Chapter 17 Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority v. 1 A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority v. 2 The Air Forc

This episode of The Idealcast features the second part of Gene Kim’s interview with Team of Teams coauthor and CrossLead CEO David Silverman and CrossLead Head of R&D Jessica Reif. In this episode, they take up the topic of how internal marketplaces are structures that can connect mid-level leaders to each other, helping allocate scarce resources to where they're needed most, which enables the further unlocking of capacities. They discuss challenges around the cost of change and the new skills that mid-level leaders need in order to survive and thrive in an era where being functionally excellent in one’s own silo is not enough. They further talk about the similarities between special operations and agile, especially comparing and contrasting terms that further concretize concepts the agile and DevOps community have held for years but struggled to name. And finally, they discuss where we go from here. 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/ Jess Reif Jessica Reif is the Director of Research & development for CrossLead Inc, where she leverages the latest management research to develop new approaches to increasing business agility for CrossLead’s clients. She leads CrossLead’s education efforts and has developed training programs that have been delivered to over 20,000 leaders. Previously, Jessica served as a Product Delivery Manager for applied machine learning and engineering teams at Oracle Data Cloud, where her role was to facilitate agile development among a team-of-teams. Jessica holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In her free time, she enjoys golfing, baking, and hiking. Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jess_Reif Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-reif/ Website: https://www.crosslead.com/ YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT How internal marketplaces are structures that can connect mid-lev

In this episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim sits down with Team of Team’s coauthor and CEO of Crosslead, David Silverman, and Director of Research and Development at CrossLead, Jessica Reif, for a two-part interview. In Team of Teams, David and his coauthors explained how the Joint Special Forces Task Force in Iraq was struggling to achieve its mission, and how they turned it into a success. Their experience led to a deep and critical rethinking of almost everything in US military services and in the commercial industry. Now at CrossLead, David works with Jessica Reif to continue researching and codifying these practices into their management framework. In Part 1 of the interview, Gene and his guests discuss the structure and dynamics of the transformation described in Team of Teams and how these leadership characteristics are needed today in the new ways of working. This leadership framework reinforces the concepts of common purpose, shared consciousness, empowerment, and trust within organizations to help teams work together more effectively in complex environments, particularly when they have to continuously adapt to change. Stay tuned for Part 2. 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/ Jess Reif Jessica Reif is the Director of Research & development for CrossLead Inc, where she leverages the latest management research to develop new approaches to increasing business agility for CrossLead’s clients. She leads CrossLead’s education efforts and has developed training programs that have been delivered to over 20,000 leaders. Previously, Jessica served as a Product Delivery Manager for applied machine learning and engineering teams at Oracle Data Cloud, where her role was to facilitate agile development among a team-of-teams. Jessica holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In her free ti

In the latest Dispatch from the Scenius, Gene Kim provides original commentary on Michael Nygard’s 2016 DevOps Enterprise Summit presentation Tempo, Maneuverability, and Initiative DevOps has been and continues to be part of a larger shift in organizational structure, system architecture, infrastructure, and process design. In order to be successful, each of these must change together to achieve a high tempo. In this presentation, Nygard talks about maneuverability and how to get teams, and teams of teams, working toward a common objective. And he provides principles and patterns for how large organizations can overcome the pitfalls they so often face. In this presentation, Nygard provides several real-life examples of failed and successful transformation efforts through a lens of tempo, maneuver warfare, and initiative. 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: John Boyd’s energy maneuverability theory and maneuver warfare Architect elevator Edge of Instability Disposable infrastructure Horizontal and vertical integrity RESOURCES Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (Pragmatic Programmers) by Michael T. Nygard Architect Elevator by Gregor Hohpe Gregor Hohpe’s presentation at SummerSOC 2019 DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas - Virtual TIMESTAMPS [00:07] Intro [01:20] Mike Nygard’s speech [02:29] A story of despair and hope [03:55] Gene explains the joke [04:15] Back to Mike’s story [09:17] Military concept: manoeuvrability [14:12] Architect Elevator [16:50] Edge of Instability [17:55] DevOps Enterprise Summit 2020 [19:32] War of attrition [20:47] Disposable infrastructure [22:59] Studying tempo [24:57] Horizontal and vertical integrity [28:52] What is the intent [32:44] Gene’s last observations [36:46] Outro

In this bonus follow-up interview, Gene Kim and Dr. Steve Spear dig into what makes for great leadership today, including the importance of distributed decision-making and problem-solving. They showcase the real advantages of allowing more decisions to be made by the people closest to the work, who are the most suited to solve them. Dr. Spear also shares his personal accounts of the honorable Paul O’Neill, the late CEO of Alcoa who built an incredible culture of safety and performance during his tenure. And Kim and Spear dive deeper into the structure and dynamics of the famous MIT beer game. ABOUT THE GUEST 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: Distributed decision-making Developing group leader core Safety culture at ALCOA The need for specialization in an increasingly complex world MIT beer game Feedback builds trust Episode Timeline: [00:10] Intro [01:36] Limitations of the leader [08:03] Taking the Moses example to the assembly line at Toyota [11:12] Developing group leader core [13:32] Back to the Moses problem [14:19] Gene’s two thoughts [16:01] Planet Money’s SUMMER SCHOOL 2: Markets & Pickles [18:38] An Excerpt from The DevOps Handbook [20:57] Paul O’Neill’s job to set standards [22:35] Elements of rugged topography [23:37] Sponsored ad: DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas - Virtual [24:39] Setting context [25:30] The structure and resulting dynamics [28:00] Call it out early and often [30:45] Making everyone feel responsible [36:51] Safety culture at ALCOA [37:33] “If there’s a failure, it’s my failure” [38:52] Topography of the problem [42:27] Applying to the car example [46:50] Benefits of specialization in modern medicine [50:37] Complexity will keep increasing as time goes by or is it reduced? [52:31] The need for specialization will continue to grow [53:22] MIT Beer Game through the lens of structure and dynamics [1:00:14] Feedback builds trust [1:01:21] Dirty Harry’s final scene [1:03:08] Outro Resources: SUMMER SCHOOL 2: Markets & Pickles on Planet Money Paul O'Neill interview worker safety at ALCOA Paul

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

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 Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott The four quadrants of Radical Candor Ruinous Empathy Manipulative Insincerity Obnoxious Aggression Radical Candor Dangerous Company: The Consulting Powerhouses and the Businesses They Save and Ruin by James O’Shea Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing by Elisabeth Hendrickson Better Testing, Worse Quality? by Elisabeth Hendrickson Managing Proportions of Testing to (Other) Developers by Dr. Cern Kaner, Elisabeth Hendrickson, and Jennifer Smith-Brok When NASA Lost a Spacecraft Due to a Metric Math Mistake by Ajay Harish Lockheed: New Carrier Hook for F-35 by Dave Majumdar Conway's law Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System by Steven Spear and H. Kent Bowen The WordCount Simulation by Elisabeth Hendrickson "The Beer Game" by Prof. John D. Sterman

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.