May 16, 2024 • 48 mins
In our latest episode of The Hidden Chasm, Rob Shaw shares critical insights on bridging the gap between intent and execution in Agile transformations.
Key takeaways include:
• Intent vs. Execution: Why hope is not enough; the importance of having real conversations about customer and market expectations.
• Technical Excellence: Defining the level of technical quality needed for long-term investments.
• Proactive Conversations: The necessity of starting these discussions early to ensure success.
🧩 Agile transformation requires more than just good intentions. Understand how to align your efforts with market needs and technical excellence, to find your way out of - or avoid entirely - the Hidden Chasm.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bo Motlagh (00:12):
You're about to listen to a recording of our
second episode of The HiddenChasm. You are going to hear
some pops and some audiodisruptions here and there. We
were having some small technicaldifficulties. It's not your
connection or anything likethat. We cleaned it up pretty
well, and I think you're goingto enjoy it.
But just wanted to give you aheads up. Thank you. You're
listening to The Hidden Chasm, adiscussion of how tech debt and
(00:32):
legacy solutions become barriersto growth and innovation for
established SaaS companies. TheHidden Chasm is sponsored by
UnitedFX, where our purpose isto help companies break free
from legacy tech, improveretention, and empower m and a
growth. Learn more atunitedfx.com.
Josh Smith (00:48):
Hey. Welcome to another episode of The Hidden
Chasm where we're exploring thegrowth challenges some high
growth, midsize enterprises faceas they find themselves
struggling to compete, bringproduct to market quickly, and
maintain their customers.
Bo Motlagh (01:00):
That's right. Another episode. We're on a
roll. We're up to 2. So this isfun.
But really excited today to havereally an old friend of ours.
Josh and I have known Rob formany years. We actually worked
together at one point, but RobShaw, who is an agile guru
specifically, he is the VP ofthe agile practice at Clearly
Agile, where he and his team ofbusiness agility and
(01:20):
transformation experts use agileframeworks to empower
organizations to solve complexproblems and succeed in rapidly
evolving markets. Rob, how areyou, man?
Robert Shaw (01:30):
I'm doing well. And it is good seeing you 2 again.
Like, getting the old band backtogether, that is fantastic.
Yeah. Honored to be on in anearly episode.
Excited for
Bo Motlagh (01:41):
today. Yeah. We're excited to have you. Thanks for
joining.
Josh Smith (01:42):
Just wanna remind you that you left us, and you
chose Disney World over us.
Robert Shaw (01:49):
Oh, not quite Disney World. I chose not gray
Pennsylvania skies in thewinter. That was the real
choice. Disney World is justthat was bonus.
Josh Smith (01:57):
Yeah. Yeah. You don't like the Pennsylvania gray
skies? Oh, okay.
Robert Shaw (02:01):
After 40 years, that got a little hard to
handle. So moved on to palmtrees and sunny winters.
Josh Smith (02:08):
I can dig that.
Bo Motlagh (02:09):
Rob, why don't
Robert Shaw (02:09):
you tell us
Bo Motlagh (02:09):
a little bit about what you guys do at Clearly
Agile down there in,
Robert Shaw (02:14):
sunny Florida? What don't we do? So we are a
boutique agile consultancy,which means we're more than just
contractors. Our primary missionis to do the right thing for the
clients who are looking to go onan agile transformation journey.
Beyond just installing aframework or a process, how do
we take them and tweak theirlevel of business agility to
(02:36):
where they get results that tiesthem into the market with a
faster delivery of value andstarts getting better outputs
and outcomes for their customerfrom a holistic standpoint.
We tend to move in more from apartner aspect than a consultant
aspect. We're there to supportthe journey. We do that through
3 main areas, the first onebeing training. So we have a
(02:57):
variety of agile certificationtraining all the way from your
basic scrum alliance trainingthrough the advanced
certifications, all the way upinto multiple multiple scaling
platforms. So being able to justkind of set the stage for making
sure your folks at anorganization understand what it
means to do this.
And then we do a consultingstandpoint. So everything from
(03:19):
coaching all the way to fillingin a certain accountability. So
if it's just coach support,we're there, either from a full
time or a fractional basis. Ifyou need team members with
certain specialties to kindastand in the gap, we've got
that, all the way into DevOpsenablement and support on that
end. And then the last one forthose smaller midsize
(03:41):
organizations, we do this thingwe've been playing with for the
past, I don't know, two and ahalf years, agile team in a box.
Bo Motlagh (03:48):
Okay.
Robert Shaw (03:48):
So we basically have all the pieces figured out,
all the positions. Thedevelopers are ours. They
already know how to worktogether as a team. What we need
to do is point it at whatevervalue you wanna create. So you
don't even have to worry aboutit.
Like, essentially, a team showsup, they're ready to go, and
they already have the hard stufffigured out, just point them at
the value and let them chewthrough it.
Bo Motlagh (04:11):
Very cool. You and I chatted a little while ago, and
I mentioned this hidden chasmthing. You're gonna hear us say
the word chasm a lot. So if youthink of a better one, go ahead.
But with this problem space andthe sort of wall that these
enterprises tend to hit, agiletransformation, a lot of what
you guys do at Clearly Agilecomes up a lot as part of that
(04:34):
journey of something that theyhit.
Robert Shaw (04:36):
You guys gave it a name, which I absolutely love.
We've been searching for what tocall this for probably for me
the last 2 decades because yousee it all the time and you hear
technical debt and technicaldebt and technical debt. Well,
eventually, technical debt hasthis collapse moment where an
organization is like, alright,hit the gas pedal, seize the
(04:56):
market opportunity, and theteam's like, the engine's no
longer hooked up to thetransmission, and the tires
don't turn. I don't know what totell you. I think you guys
nailed it is, ultimately, that'sthat stop at the end where you
realize, like, uh-oh.
We made some wrong decisions,and it's monumental to get back
to a point where we're healthy.We see it. We try to educate. We
(05:18):
try to get people progressivelyon that journey to avoid it. So
many times, organizations bychoice or accident wind up at
the precipice of the chasm,sometimes over the chasm.
I don't know what you call that.In the chasm, over the chasm,
they try the Evel Knievel leapover it and have that Wile E.
Coyote moment about halfwayacross.
Bo Motlagh (05:39):
I like that. We should put that on the site as
an image there, Josh.
Robert Shaw (05:45):
Okay.
Bo Motlagh (05:46):
Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. You've probably seen this.
You've probably consulted at 100of companies at this point.
And I'm guessing you see this Imean, do you have a rough, like,
percentage maybe where you'veseen this across the board, do
you think?
Robert Shaw (05:59):
Oh, in the chasm heading to the chasm, which one
do you wanna metric on?
Bo Motlagh (06:03):
Generally at risk of the chasm. How's that?
Robert Shaw (06:06):
General at risk. Okay. So they've seen the
warning signs, turn left, don'tgo, danger ahead. I mean,
solidly without evenoverthinking, probably 80% of
what we walk into are on somejourney
Bo Motlagh (06:19):
there. And do they know it? That's the interesting
part. When you get there becausethey've called you for their
perspective of the problem, doyou then kinda go, oh, hold on.
Did you know this is happening?
Robert Shaw (06:30):
There's a yes and a no to that. I gotta say, since
we chatted last, I was thinkingabout that. How many are
actually aware? And I thinkthere's two levels of answer to
that question. I think at aproject, small team, small group
silo, no.
I don't think they think aboutit. I don't think they know
about it. I think it's so muchlike heads down, blinders on,
(06:52):
just work, work, work, work,work. It's like this notion of
we'll just defer that, or we'llsave time or I need to get this
person off my back. They operatevery much with that tunnel
vision on.
At more of an enterprise levelor a portfolio level. I think
there's an awareness to it. Ithink there's an awareness that
it exists. I think a lot oforganizations know they're in
(07:15):
trouble, but I don't think theyknow how to get out of it. I
don't think there's a connectionbetween turn the wheel or pump
the brakes or take a differentroute.
Generally, I I would say there'sa broad awareness, but head
scratching on NowWatch. What doyou guys see with you're in that
solution space? So what are youseeing? Something different or
about the same?
Bo Motlagh (07:36):
I guess what I would say is they know something's
wrong. What we've seen and fromwhat we've talked to and
transparently, we probablyhaven't spoken to hundreds of
companies like you have, butwe're speaking to a lot now.
What we normally see is thatthese early warning signs that
get them confused andfrustrated, and then they start
the process of, well, let'stackle it. And I'm being vague
(07:57):
because I don't want to ask youwhat the warning signs you saw
were to compare them. But ingeneral, the reaction that we
see normally is the executiveswill be hyper focused on one of
those things.
And it's like, I just need tofix this and then everything
will be okay. Then you begin topeel back that onion and you go,
yes, you do need to fix that.But the reason this is broken is
because this chain of thingsthat goes way deeper than you
(08:19):
realize. And so there's alwaysthis sort of educational process
to help them understand thepeople process technology behind
that.
Robert Shaw (08:26):
Yeah. It's interesting too on there.
There's 2 flavors. I don't have2 2 flavors. It's a better way
to enter into that.
Because I think there is thathyperfocus moment where they're
trying to solve the problem infront of them, and they don't
realize they need to step backup and look at the problem from
a broader thing. Because thepath they're on doesn't have a
solution. What they need is tostep back and look at the
(08:48):
broader number of paths in frontof them and go, oh, let's
explore some of these otherpaths. But the big thing that's
in there, and I think largerorganizations suffer more than
your midsize or smallerorganizations, is expectations.
I think in larger organizations,there's this expectation that
somebody on my team, somebody inthe organization is working to
(09:10):
figure it
Bo Motlagh (09:12):
out. Yeah.
Robert Shaw (09:13):
And I don't think it matters, like, what level of
leadership you're at. We seethis anytime we start up a new
project is there's anexpectation that the team is
managing technical debt, andthey they have a solid technical
approach, and they understandwhat the customer needs and the
market needs and what theproduct expect there there's,
like, this assumption. And thenthey get 3, 6, 9 months into it,
and they're like, wait. Hold on.We didn't get that?
(09:35):
Who had eyes on that? I findthat fascinating that the
awareness is there. They knowit's there, but there's this
disconnect between how toapproach it, how to solve it,
and who even owns it Yeah. In alot of organizations.
Josh Smith (09:48):
Could that relate at all to the bystander effect?
Have you ever heard of thebystander effect?
Robert Shaw (09:54):
No. What is it?
Josh Smith (09:55):
I use an actual real life example. When I was growing
up, it was in the middle of thenight, and I only heard about
this in the morning. Streetsaway, someone in their car had
gotten accident. Terrible, butthey were alive, and they were
lying outside of the car. It waslate at night and everybody
heard it, but nobody found himuntil the morning.
Sun had to come up. He was rightthere on the street because
(10:17):
every single person, whenquestioned, they all thought
someone else was gonna call myname one.
Robert Shaw (10:23):
Absolutely. I love that. By the way, I'm gonna
borrow that. I'm doing atraining Monday, Tuesday. I'm
gonna figure out how to workthat in.
I like that. So for those thatare agile literate, there's this
thing called the definition ofdone. And the definition of done
is at a team level and it it canon scaling, you can live at an
enterprise product level. Whatis it? It's the definition or
the gateway into production.
When does it mean to actually bedone with something? It's all
(10:45):
the technical pinnings, thecorrect architecture. We've done
the design, the reporting. It'sthe golden ticket into
production. When organizationsset out on that, I don't think
they pause and have thatconversation of what does the
market actually expect.
They approach it with hope thatthe teams are gonna do the right
thing, hope that my people aregonna do the right thing. Was it
Frank Tate that used to say hopeis not a strategy? I think it
(11:07):
was Frank that used to say that.That echoes through my head all
the time.
Bo Motlagh (11:10):
Hi, Frank, if you're listening.
Robert Shaw (11:12):
Yeah. Frank, hi. Your words mattered. We
understood.
Josh Smith (11:15):
Oh, and for the audience, he is a significant m
and a strategist now of sorts.Right?
Robert Shaw (11:20):
Yep. A lot of wisdom in that, man. But I think
that's kind of at the crux of itis the intent is there, hope is
there, but the real conversationnever happens. What do the
customers want? What does themarket want?
What's the expectation? What'stheir tolerance for pain? For
this product, is it throw away?We only need it for a couple
months. We can go run fast.
Or is it an investment into ourbread and butter for the next 5
(11:44):
years, 7 years, 10 years? Thatchanges what goes into that
intentional definition of done.And so many times when we walk
in with clients, they're like,well, what is it? Well, the team
figured it out. Well, you sureyou wanna do that?
I mean, they're smart people,but you're banking a $60,000,000
investment into a new enterpriseplatform, and you just told me
you've had zero conversationabout what level of technical
(12:07):
excellence and how you wannadesign it and the architecture
and the patterns and the qualityand building it in 0
conversations. Is that whatyou're telling me? And since you
frame it that way, yes. Like,yeah, sheepishly. But I think a
lot of organization, it's not ahard conversation to start or
just start earlier.
(12:28):
If that's the one thing we wantorganizations to do from an
agile perspective, start havingthat conversation more. It's
missing. It's absent. Yes.There's a whole lot of complex
stuff that happens afterward,but that's the starting point
that seems now I don't know.
Oh, we're agile. Well, what doesthat mean? We skip over that. We
just start sprinting and we'llfigure it out and they'll get it
and just get it out tomorrow.No.
(12:48):
No. You still need that. Right?It doesn't go away in agile
organizations. It doesn't goaway in agile development.
You still do that. It's stillimportant. Yeah. It's still
relevant.
Bo Motlagh (12:59):
Coming back to those early warning signs, I'm
thinking I know that we've beenseeing sort of a common thread,
and I guess I'm curious when youstart, what are the things that
you immediately pick up on interms of those hyper focused
elements that the executivesmight be asking about or that
you start to see these arethings that are happening in the
organization, either from anorganizational structure
(13:20):
perspective, interactions orjust technology might notice.
But what are the businessindicators that you've noticed
are there that ultimatelypredict or really illustrate the
hidden chasm concept?
Robert Shaw (13:33):
Hold on. So the business indicators or general
indicators? Because that is 2separate questions.
Bo Motlagh (13:38):
So pick 1 and then let's do the other afterwards
because I'd be curious what youwould say.
Robert Shaw (13:42):
So business indicators. Probably the most
prominent one for me is theculture of chasing squirrels.
Squirrels with dollar sign.Chasing squirrels. Squirrels
with dollar signs on their back.
You're in an organization thatseems to be driven by chasing
revenue. And And then when newrevenue comes up, they pivot and
they chase the next one and thenext one and the next one.
Bo Motlagh (14:02):
One off.
Robert Shaw (14:03):
One off. Yeah. And what you tend to see is without
that binding strategy, you startto see the technical approach
fracture because the team is inwhiplash mode. Their jobs are to
keep their head above water andjust deliver. And it loses
continuity of what is ourproduct, our solution, our value
(14:26):
stream, our path, our purpose.
It doesn't mean that doesn'tever change or that it doesn't
pivot inside of there. What yousee is that start to fracture,
and it becomes competitioninside the organization chasing
the biggest promise of dollarsin business, which means
technical excellence suffers,and then you start to see it
fracture at the team level.Because what does the team do?
(14:47):
The team responds I'm gonna usethe word cut corners because I
don't think most engineers wantto cut corners. Most of them
want to be professionals.
It's survival mode. I think forme, that is the earliest tell
that I see in organizations. Youstart seeing that behavior
happening above, and it has antipattern effects down at the team
(15:07):
level that you won't see formonths because it doesn't happen
the first time you do it. Youdon't see impacts the second
time you do it. Heck, you don'teven see impacts the 3rd, 4th,
5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, the 1styear, 2 years you do it.
Right. What you're gonna realizeis 2 years, 24 months, 36 months
down the road, stuff ain'tworking. And it's not something
(15:27):
they did last week, last sprint,last month. It's something the
organization started to do yearsbefore.
Bo Motlagh (15:33):
What about you were making a distinction between
that and general in indicators.Did you have a thought there?
Robert Shaw (15:39):
Yeah. So you start to see the teams behaving like
factories or treated likefactories. So it goes a little
bit back to, like, FrederickTaylor's scientific rules of
management Mhmm. Back at theindustrial age. Right?
You have managers. Managers getpaid to get smart, be smart. And
how do we take the craftsmanshipout?
Josh Smith (15:58):
Yeah. And if you're not managed and left to your own
devices, only bad things willhappen.
Robert Shaw (16:02):
Only bad things could happen. Right? We don't
want craftsman or expertise. Wejust need human cogs in the
machine. And I think there'sstill a holdover.
Even in fairly decent agileorganizations, there is still
this holdover that you can stilljust plug people into the cock.
Right? You can structure themthat way. And you start to see
the mindset of it's a factoryit's a feature factory. And you
(16:27):
see backlogs heavily weighted,teams get told what to do versus
having real conversations aboutwhat is achievable, you see very
little prioritization or crossprioritization across
stakeholders.
And you start to just to seepush, push, push, push, push,
push, push, push. Well, whenyou're pushing that much in, the
stuff like refactoring,technical improvements, focusing
(16:48):
on continuous integrationdelivery, continuous testing,
good practices, building qualityversus testing quality mindset.
All that stuff, there's only somuch before that stuff starts
overflowing out in there. So Ithink at the business level, you
see some business behaviors, butat the team level, you see them
at the tail end of that, like,just what's a factory? We put
(17:10):
our wish list in and magically,stuff comes out the other end
and just keep pushing features,features, features, features,
features, and it's notsustainable.
It's not sustainable for thelong term, and I guess,
eventually, you wind up at theThelma and Louise moment at the
chasm.
Josh Smith (17:23):
I've got several questions. My first one, I
guess, is by the time anorganization comes to you. Of
course, we're talking about anissue, and you could tell me
otherwise, where by the time itcomes to you, they have found
out that they've rooted it outto, okay. Now this is more like
a technical problem. This is atechnology.
This is an engineering issue.And, of course, they're looking
at it from, I'm assuming, anoperational perspective to bring
(17:47):
you all in. But that's a companywhere assuming they figured out
it's a technological problem.When you get in, do you ever get
an ear to the patterns on thetypes of things that they had
thought was the problem beforethey got to the tech before they
realized it was the technology?
Robert Shaw (18:05):
That's really gonna depend on how self aware they
are, Josh. You know, sometimes,one of the first things we do in
the consulting world is we doour own discovery. We come in.
We sit down. We understand howyou guys create value.
What do you want this to looklike that's different? All that
consultant jargon. But we'realso observing and assessing.
And even if they're not selfaware, like, I talked to person
(18:27):
a and they're like, ourproblems, a, b, and c. And you
get to talk to person 2.
And, oh, it's a, b, and c,obviously. And then you talk to
person 3, 4, 5, and 6, andthey're like, our problems are
a, b, c, and d. Alright. Doy'all talk? Because I spoke to 7
different people, and you alljust told me the exact same
thing.
You know you're shootingyourself in the foot. I think
(18:48):
sometimes having a consultant inand hold the mirror up where
they have to look into it andthey have to talk about it is
the trigger that gets them tosee it. Because I think a lot of
them would just blissfullycomplain and keep going down the
paths they're on. So do theyknow? Yeah.
I think individually, multiplepeople will know, and multiple
(19:09):
people can articulate it. Ithink the forcing function of
here is a mirror that's intendedfor change, gives either people
permission to talk about itopenly or it coalesces people
around the common problems and,like, all of a sudden, there's
freedom to figure out how tosolve it. So I don't know if
that answered your question ornot, but that's kinda just the
(19:30):
pattern that we see. Rarelysurprises anybody. Even if we
roll the findings up, we go backup to the leadership team.
They'll often look at it andthey're like, oh, yeah. We knew
that. Okay. Okay?
Josh Smith (19:38):
That helps me because I have some hypotheses
about it's more of a question.Do companies attempt to look out
at the signals that areoccurring in sales, in revenue,
in support, and immediatelythink the problems exist in
those areas. And then it's notuntil later that they start
(19:58):
pulling the string and that itstarts to lead into technology.
Bo Motlagh (20:02):
This is something we've been a little bit of is
some of the early indicators ata C level and a board level that
we've heard is our retention isslipping and we're under heavy
competition and we're not surewhy we can't keep up. And we're
interested in M and A because wewant to derisk, but we can't
figure out how to actually doany of these integrations. And
it becomes this, is it a salesproblem? Is it a dev problem?
(20:25):
What's going on?
Do we need new engineers? Or arethey just not good? They're
actually probably really greatfor having gotten you this far.
Robert Shaw (20:32):
So you pull the word support into there, and
that goes back to an indicatorearly indicator that just didn't
go into, but I think that is oneto talk about. Looking at what
your blowback rate is fromsupport versus the ratio of
value you deliver, I think isimportant. For however you score
value on the output standpoint.There's output. Right?
(20:53):
We produce 5 things, 10 things.We deliver 10 features. Right?
That number is irrelevant. It'sa pace.
The value that that has to thecustomer, the impact that that
has to the business is what youwanna track. Right? And then you
can score that. You cancategorize that. There's ways to
put numbers and metrics to that.
Right? Now out of that valueyou've produced, over time, what
(21:14):
is your percentage of reworkthat comes back through the door
that actually requiresdevelopment intervention. And
when in that process do you findit. Right? So if you have a high
degree of in team found issuesbefore it goes out the door, you
may have a quality problem, butyour team is also finding it.
That's not bad. However, if yourteam is finding a lot and stuff
(21:37):
is getting out into the wild andyour customers are finding it,
that's a red flag. Right? Ifthat number is skewed heavily
that direction, that's somethingthat you need to address, and it
probably has some sort oftechnical underpinning to it
pointing towards the castle.Why?
The system that you have inplace that builds, validates,
(21:57):
tests, and verifies what you'reputting out has holes in in it.
Stuff is getting out into thewild, and that could be because
of architectural fragility,approach, systems that need to
be updated. It could be yourCICD pipeline and how you have
that structured. There's a lotof things in there. But a lot of
times, what we see is, wellwell, devs aren't working fast
enough, so they see it as avolume problem, not a technical
(22:20):
problem, or the devs get yelledat for having a quality issue.
And meanwhile, they're standingthere going, dude, we're like
we've been saying this. Like,stop. Slow down. We need to fix
this. So not that that exists.
A lot of times we have to exposeit when we go into clients. I'm
not gonna name names, but wework for a prominent Fortune 100
(22:40):
global company in our clientportfolio. Alright. Not gonna
name their name. We have alsoworked with a top restaurant
group in the United States.
These are large, massiveenterprise organizations. Nobody
in both of those will everlooked at that ratio of value
per due to the rate of blowback.And it wasn't until we just took
(23:01):
the spotlight and said, alright.Well, that's one of the things
we can track. Let's just seewhat the data tells us.
We didn't have an opinion on it.We didn't say it was good or
bad. We just came up with themetric for the ratio, and we
exposed it. And it was by thetime we got, like, 3 months in,
4 months in tracking it, they'relike, oh, something's not right
there. Oh, why do you say that?
(23:22):
What are some things that cancontribute? Well, it could be
the developer is not workinghard. It could be. Is there
anything else it could be?Right?
Because Right. A lot of timesthat first reaction is gonna
point it to the wrong problem.And it wasn't until we started
walking down that path did weget to the levers that were
actually underneath that? Youknow, is it structural? Is it
(23:44):
architectural?
Is it build? Is it like, whereare you not making the
investment you need to makethat's causing this? Right? What
you saw as devs not working is asymptom. It's not appropriate.
Yeah. Alright. Sometimes it's aproblem. More likely than not,
it's not the problem. It's thesymptom.
So I think once they see it,then panic mode sets in.
Bo Motlagh (24:05):
Okay. Yeah.
Robert Shaw (24:06):
The hair's on fire. We're gonna crash and burn. How
do we get out of it? And that'salways the interesting one
because organizations have a tonof different reactions. But,
usually, it's a process to justto get them to understand what
it is and and where they'reheaded and to get that in front
of the right people.
Bo Motlagh (24:23):
I think that makes a lot of sense. And you're
basically defining KPIs thatthey can use to measure. And
then once you've measured it,you go, see, I wasn't just
making this up. You're leavingall of this on the table. These
are the issues, and it becomessomething that they can begin to
grasp.
I've always found the moment,especially when it's financial
data, that usually getsattention quite a bit faster.
Robert Shaw (24:44):
When is it not financial data, though? People
are always like, Agile is aprocess for speed. It's an
economic mindset. Every time youhave a choice to spend team,
dollar, and time on somethingthat adds value or subtracts
value from your organization,choose wisely.
Bo Motlagh (24:58):
Right. I'm curious when you think about you
mentioned a few of the leversyou pull in order to start
righting the ship here. So speakmore about that. Okay. You've
made it clear to them from aleadership perspective.
And actually, this is a questionis especially for you guys
because you're coming in as anagile practice. And
traditionally, a lot ofexecutives may not recognize
(25:18):
that that's a systemicorganizational thing. They might
sort of view that. I'm sure yourun into this. You're going to
work with my product teams,right, or my dev teams.
And so do you sometimes findthat there's an expansion of
footprint that needs to occur inorder to help actually right the
ship? And how does thatconversation usually go?
Robert Shaw (25:37):
Oh, geez.
Bo Motlagh (25:38):
Like, I really need to talk to you, mister
executive, even though you mightnot realize that I do.
Robert Shaw (25:42):
So this should be no surprise to you or your
listeners. Agility comes intoorganizations basically 2 ways,
top down or bottom up. So it's agrassroots that's a little bit
harder of an effort. A lot oftimes, it's a small experiment
that was given permission aslong as you don't talk to the
layers above it. But the minuteyou start pressing on that or if
you press on that in the wrongway, you're always using agile
(26:05):
language and you're trying toget the executives to do scrum.
Like, that doesn't work. That'snot what they're worried about.
So somewhere on there, there's apivot to draw them into the
conversation to understand ifthe team is playing by these
rules, these are the rules thathelp the business can use to
help them to generate valuebetter. Mhmm. And by the way,
(26:26):
here's kind of the expandedpicture of business agility.
It's not just team agility.There's technical excellence.
There's dev and operationsexcellence. There's
architectural excellence.There's product and portfolio
management that drivesdecisions.
So a a lot of times in thatbottom up model, it's slower,
(26:46):
but you start working your waykind of across that broader
spectrum by pulling people intobusiness conversations, outcome
conversations, not agileconversations.
Bo Motlagh (26:57):
Right? Right.
Robert Shaw (26:58):
The other one when it comes in from top down,
that's usually a little bitbetter because our first
conversation is usually based ona why for agile versus a what
for agile. Moving to agilebecause you wanna do events,
frameworks, ceremonies, you justwanna do scrum because it's what
everyone else is doing is wrong.You're not gonna succeed on
that. You're gonna get resultsyou don't wanna do. On that one
(27:21):
there, we usually have some sortof leadership here.
We have usually done some sortof leadership training. We have
some sort of executive actionteam that's responsible for the
results of the transformation.Right? And their designees who
are empowered to do that. So inthat model there, they have the
hard conversations upfront.
(27:41):
We have a compelling reason whyor why in the organization, and
we're tracking back to thosemetrics, those KPIs for them.
That lets us have betterconversations. It really depends
on, is it the uphill slog? Arewe rolling the boulder up the
hill? Or do we have blessing andapproval going in and they want
it?
Yeah. It doesn't mean they takeaction or can take action or is
(28:03):
now the right time, but the newstends to go a little bit better
that way.
Bo Motlagh (28:07):
We did this together when we were at our company
together, the 3 of us. We see itcome up a lot with companies.
It's the platform playconversation. The reason we even
started looking at the hiddenchasm and became interested in
it is because we started from wewere interested in building
platforms. That's what ourcareer, as you remember, was
really about.
(28:28):
And so we were building thesebroad enterprise integration
platforms and interested inthat. And we began to see that
very often the platform conceptwas a reaction to something,
some of the elements of thehidden chasm. And so these
things are coupled. So how oftendo you find yourself having the
platform conversation, whateverthat may mean to your customer
(28:49):
at that time?
Robert Shaw (28:50):
So it's not 0. It's probably not 50% at the start.
It's not an early conversation.Typically, somewhere mid stream,
they have that panic momentwhere they realize, oh, we're
still legacy monolithic, blahblah blah. All of the sins of
the past are there.
And the pendulum starts to goway the other direction quickly.
(29:12):
Right? Oh, now it's a platform.We can't afford to
rearchitecture. We can't afforda platform because they still
think of it in terms ofmultiyear initiatives and big
banking delivery.
I mean, I don't know. 40% of thetime, about halfway, it usually
comes up in some way, shape, orform. Usually very knee jerk
(29:33):
followed by gnashing of teethand some panic of like, oh, this
is too big or how do we juststabilize the boat? I think
that's not bad. Then you couldstart to have a little more
conversation about, oh, okay.
Is it all on fire? Is it all onfire at the same level? And if
we just take a step back, isthere any way where we could
(29:54):
start systematically puttingthings in place as an in place
replacement as part of thatstrategy? Does it have to be all
or nothing, Or can we startbreaking things up a little more
systematically, a little morelogically, and carving things
out to replace it over time?Just make it part of your
technical strategy so you don'thave to go dark for 3 years to
do this.
I think it's a learning moment.
Bo Motlagh (30:16):
Right.
Robert Shaw (30:16):
I don't know what you guys see, but I find most
organizations, most, not all,most, only need to hit that once
in their lifetime.
Josh Smith (30:24):
I have a question, but I'll respond to what you
mentioned because you saidsomething that I've never heard
before, but now kind of makessense that the word platform in
itself or thinking of this thechanges that the organization
needs to make as one monolithicthing and giving a name to it,
platform, is a response to amindset that needs to shift
(30:44):
Yeah. Which means that whencompanies start to say platform,
platform, and panic about thisbig thing, that is a signal that
they recognize the problem thatneeds to be solved, but they're
thinking of it in legacy mindsetterms.
Robert Shaw (31:01):
Yeah. Absolutely. So, Josh, complete this
sentence. Alright? So we'll trythis and we can edit this out if
this fails horribly.
But word association, completethe sentence for me.
Bo Motlagh (31:10):
I love it.
Robert Shaw (31:10):
Alright. Today, we're starting our next big
adventure of Vex Dig initiative.Today, we're proud to announce
the kickoff of our platform
Josh Smith (31:19):
2.0. 1.0.
Robert Shaw (31:23):
Project.
Josh Smith (31:24):
Project. Oh, I spelled that one.
Robert Shaw (31:27):
Awesome. Right? Platform project. Oh. It gets
into project based thinkingversus product based thinking.
If we think of terms of project,it's big bang, single
deliverable, funding, lots oftime, lots of people, but a
project never really ends, doesit? If you have a project and
you work on a project and youhave people on a project and it
(31:48):
has an end date, is that theonly value you ever deliver
there? Right? There's gonna beenhancements. There's gonna be
support.
There's gonna be updates.There's gonna be maintenance.
Project doesn't end. What youreally start shifting is no.
What you have is a stream ofvalue in your organization
that's attached to revenue andcustomers.
That stream of value has 1 ormore products in your solution.
(32:12):
As an organization, stop fundingprojects, start funding the
stream of value. And what lifecycle are you in? Are you in
emerging growth? Are you in rand d?
Are you in ramp up acceleration?Are you in extracting revenue
where it's a little more flat?Or is it getting closer towards
end of life where there's norevenue left to extract on? If
(32:33):
you start shifting even just alittle bit to that approach, you
could still fund projects, Iguess, within that structure if
you wanted to. But within there,that means that there's a
business life cycle and economicdecision to be made for it.
If it's a 5, 10 year productsolution, that means, like any
car, house, or product that youown, things are gonna start
wearing out, and you need toreplace things periodically. And
(32:56):
I think if just that littlepivot puts things like platform
a little less scary, it's anarchitectural pivot. Part of our
architectural pivot means wehave to carve out something out
of a monolithic application toreplace it, but it starts to
stand alone. And then can wereplace something else? I mean,
yeah.
Okay. Is there refactoring? Yes.But on the product level, your
(33:19):
strategy is to extract revenueout of this thing for the next
10 years. So if that's still theplan, can you do that as it
currently is?
No. Okay. Well, what's themiddle ground? Because you can't
go dark for 3 years and justreplace it. What is the middle
ground that steps you along thatjourney?
Bo Motlagh (33:35):
Well, one, I think that's a really interesting
take. I think a lot of the timewell, there's a distinction here
that's probably important, whichis very often when we're saying
the word platform, especiallythese companies, it's that
vision casting, it's thatreaction you're talking about.
It's often coupled with acommercial concept of platform,
which is very different than thething from a platform concept on
(33:58):
the back end that's going tohelp you evolve and get better.
Right? So I always sort ofdifferentiate them between
whatever your commercial productstrategy is, whether that's a
platform or not, great.
We can talk about, like yousaid, how to carve that up into
value streams that we caniteratively deliver. But when we
talk about behind the scenes,how do we think about this?
That's not a project to yourpoint. Right? That's tools and
(34:21):
strategy.
And so when we talk about thatand and I've had customers that
this comes up with, we'retargeting 6 months or however
long for this platform. And myresponse is why not just say
it's here and start adopting thestrategies and let's iteratively
start evolving because it's notsome destination. It's not like
once you've done that, you'redone. And I think it's a really
important piece. And honestly, Ithink I've certainly been guilty
(34:44):
of it because you get caught upin it because it is a lot of
stuff.
It's a lot of tools. If youdecide you want to build it
yourself, it can feel like amassive investment that you want
to then own and be like, well,of course, it's ours and it's a
destination, but it's not. It'snot really your business.
Robert Shaw (34:58):
There are 2 nuggets of wisdom, but I was chopping at
the bit just because as you weresaying it is so if platform is
your play
Bo Motlagh (35:04):
Yeah.
Robert Shaw (35:04):
How on earth are you going to future proof the
technology that's coming outover the next 3 to 5 years in a
vacuum today to predict thefuture 5 years out? You can't do
that. And anybody who tells youyou can do that is I don't know.
Maybe they can do it. Maybe theyhave a crystal ball that I don't
have.
But every time I hear that theplatform play, the platform is a
(35:24):
thing, it's gonna take us 3years to build, and we're gonna
design it today using thetechnology we have today, using
what's available to us todayversus saying our platform is
there to support the revenuestream, and what are the pieces,
elements, and components,whether we build by integrate or
partner to solve that businessequation. Right? They're they're
(35:46):
2 completely different mindsets.And I think you were pulling on
the second one of it's notalways roll your own. And Mhmm.
At times, you're gonna be ableto need to pull something else
out, and off the shelf is fine,As long as it does what you need
it to do or it can be configuredto do what you need it to do. I
think there's a mindset in oldarchitecture world of, like, oh,
no. I have to have it all onpaper and connect all the dots,
(36:07):
and it has to be perfect forsomething 5 years out.
Bo Motlagh (36:11):
I've done that. Yeah.
Robert Shaw (36:12):
We've all done that. I can't think of any
single one of us that grew up inproducing software in the
nineties and early 2000 thathasn't done that.
Josh Smith (36:20):
We're gonna name this episode bread and butter
because you're circling back tosomething you said initially,
this threshold where you, as anagile partner, have to assist
extrapolate now veryintentionally when you build
something between what are youbuilding that we use the phrase
(36:43):
secret sauce. What is the secretsauce? What is the bread and
butter? What is the core valuethat you want to narrow and
focus your internal engineeringstaff on versus what are the
things that you havetraditionally up to this date
been maintaining and managingthat is a capability or service
that is now so common thatyou've seen so many companies
(37:07):
building these things over andover. And maybe at some point,
it was for lack of it existenceand ubiquity, it's something
that they can get off the shelf.
But having to at least have themstart to think about separating
those 2.
Robert Shaw (37:20):
So two things, I think this is where you're
going, Josh. Follow-up questionif you want to. It gets down
into this concept of preservingoptions as you start to move
stuff forward. Alright? There isnot a singular solution.
Everything is not a nail.Everything doesn't need a
hammer. And, by the way, even ifyou were do do that, there's
(37:41):
probably 20 hammers on the rackthat you could choose from to
pin on the nail in. So it's notsingular. It's not a lock in now
approach.
What we try to get in withorganizations and teams is
preserving options. Can you makea minimum investment to explore
an integrated solution versusbuilding the solution? And
(38:03):
what's your decision point? Ifyou just made a small
investment, grand scheme ofthings, it's probably gonna take
you a while. What are the 1, 2,or 3 small investments that you
need to proof of concept,evaluate, get feedback on to
move that forward.
Out of those, the best in breedwill probably move forward. And
then what's your next evaluationcriteria? So one, getting out of
(38:23):
linear single lock in, singlepoint, single arrow thinking. I
think the second thing on thatis it's similar, but just
getting design thinkingconversations started in the
organization. I mean, designthinking has two sides to it.
When we're thinking about whatour business strategy is, what
our product strategy is, if weset that a year ago, it's
(38:45):
probably time to pick our headsup out of the groundhog or
prairie dog hole and take a lookaround. Is the market still the
market? Has anything changed inthe market? Are we still chasing
down the customers we wanted?Has it pivoted?
Is our strategy still right?What else is out there that we
don't know about? Alright. Andthen let's come back and consume
that. It's either gonna confirmthat we're on the right path, or
(39:06):
it's gonna tell us that themarket has moved from where we
thought it was.
The second side of that is onceyou have that, then it's back to
that solution option. There'smore than one way to build
things. It doesn't always haveto be super UX heavy, pixel
perfect, whiz bang, the greatestthing ever, but doesn't always
have to be that 5 line, youknow, that UX thing. It could be
(39:27):
maybe 5 lines of code that getsthe data that adds value to the
customer. You could figure outif they like it, then make it
better, make it pretty, enhanceit.
So there's options. Right? It'sall design thinking is all about
those learning how to listen,correlate, and get options into
play.
Josh Smith (39:43):
There's probably another podcast between us
around that because as a priorscaled agile practice consultant
and, of course, UX leader, thosein the UX community, they would
see that as like a oxymoron. But
Bo Motlagh (39:58):
Wait. Didn't Rob train and
Robert Shaw (39:59):
verify you?
Josh Smith (39:59):
Yeah. No. Well, as a scaled Agilist, you did, Rob,
which you were in that room too,though. Yeah. But
Robert Shaw (40:05):
Oh, you went on to get your SPC then?
Josh Smith (40:07):
I went on yeah. Yes. So I got that, but I was always
looking for tie ins to figureout where we could deepen the
relationship between design andand the and the general
frameworks. And the thing that Ikept getting back to is what you
discussed, which was assumevariability, preserve options
through set based design. Mhmm.
(40:28):
When I saw that, I'm like, oh mygosh. That's the technical speak
for design thinking. That's it.They do the same thing. They
just use different terms.
And I was like, how do I screenthis out to make sure that folks
understand that it's not like anexclusive thing?
Robert Shaw (40:40):
I think that starts with making sure that you have
some level of product managementin your approach, not just
project management, but productmanagement. Do you have a
vision? Do you have a strategy?Is there somebody who's watching
the market that that's gonnapull that flexibility in and
that alignment in for theorganization? Right?
Back to that first thing I said.Right? Without that, the teams
are just making it up. Yourorganization is disconnected.
(41:02):
They're running in differentdirections with scissors.
You get what you get. You don'tget upset. Or you could choose a
different path. Right? Here's astrategy that we're heading to,
and in there are options.
Out of those options, when isthe best one to move forward? At
what level of technicalexcellence? It's a mindset
shift. It's an organizationalshift. And it's not always
rapid, but it's worth taking.
Bo Motlagh (41:23):
We've covered a lot of ground, which has been
amazing. I guess one sort offinal thought here is what
advice would you give to a SaaSleader who is maybe listening to
this or has seen some otherthings or just is aware in
general that there's a problem,but effectively finding
themselves either on their wayto the chasm or in the chasm.
What advice would you givesomebody that's be coming to
(41:46):
that realization?
Robert Shaw (41:47):
Break the cycle of it can wait. But in all honesty,
that is the one thing that wesee is analysis, paralysis, or
afraid to take a step in anydirection because it's so big
and so vast. And whenever we seethat pattern we have clients. I
mean, not every client alwaysdoes everything that we want.
Right?
Imagine that. We have clientsthat still they get all this
(42:08):
advice. Like, no. We're gonnastay the course. Okay.
That failure to choose to take astep. When we reengage or
revisit that client 6 months, 9months, a year later, 2 years
later, guess where they are?Same problem, no progress, no
improvement to the system thatbuilds, validates, deploys, and
integrates the system. Noimprovements in building
quality, no improvements inthere, and there's still
(42:30):
angsting about this loomingcliff or they're in the throes
of it. Honestly, take a step.
Pick a step, pick a direction,and just start even if it's
small. Don't stay put. Don't digyour feet in. Start. Typically,
clients that start walking, wecome back.
6 months later, it's not solved,but they've put a dent in it. A
(42:52):
year later, it might not besolved, but they put an even
bigger dent in it. So movement,I think, is the biggest thing.
What's the Tony Robbins line onthere? Make a decision and then
take massive action towards thator something along those lines.
I just probably completelybotched it, but I think that's
true.
Bo Motlagh (43:10):
It's not good.
Robert Shaw (43:11):
Yeah. It's close enough. Right? Make a decision
towards doing something, thenstart taking action towards it
because that's the way it'sgonna change. Don't give
yourself the opportunity to lookback a year from now and go,
where are we?
Exactly the same place withmaybe some lesser different
people because they gotfrustrated and left, but we
still have the same problem. Sotake a step. Start walking. 1
foot in front of the other.
Josh Smith (43:32):
And I'm so sorry, but I do have, like, a question
Yeah.
Robert Shaw (43:35):
Yeah. Go for it. Okay.
Josh Smith (43:36):
It's the last one. And maybe you can answer it,
Rob. Maybe maybe you can. Thisthe hidden chasm, this is about
looking at the problem kind of,I hate the word, but I'm gonna
use it holistically andSystemic. Yes.
Oh.
Robert Shaw (43:50):
You use the word holistically. This is gonna be
good.
Josh Smith (43:52):
I have money. I gotta put money in the tip jar
or money in the jar for usingthat word. So from your
perspective as an Agile partner,facing this issue of the
mounting tech debt, approachingit from your perspective as an
Agile partner. If you couldchoose 1 partner type of
partner, you can make them up tojoin you on this journey to
(44:13):
address an area that'sunderserved, that may be outside
of Agile Partnership, anadditional area to join you
along the way. What would thatbe?
Robert Shaw (44:21):
Wow. Out of all the choices, I get to pick 1.
Honestly, somebody who has seenthe solution options underneath
there that understands, like, isit data sharing? Is it
information sharing? Right?
Because from my world, thetechnology stacks are vast. The
architectural design patternsare vast. The data storage
(44:42):
options are vast. Take a flavor.I don't always know what that
client is going to be in.
I'm no longer a technical guy. Iused to dabble, but it's been
oh, I mean, what? At 8 years,probably since I've opened up an
IDE in any way, shape, or form.I do it occasionally. Yeah.
I've done it occasionally forfun. So I think somebody that
(45:04):
has an outside viewer lens ofwhat the problem is and has seen
how to make some of thoseconnections, 1, from an
architectural standpoint and 2,from an integrated solution
validation standpoint. I thinkthere's 2 avenues. You have your
CICD pipeline. You need to havethat buttoned up.
And then you have your platformside of, here's the spaghetti
(45:25):
mess, and it's all on the plate.Where's a partner that can come
in and start pulling on theindividual threads and help me
make sense of it? Right?Somebody that could do both or
somebody that can do each ofthose are probably who I'd want
on my side going through that.
Bo Motlagh (45:38):
Awesome. Rob. Thank you so much for joining us here,
man. This has been a really funconversation. Before we sign
off, I just want to give you themic here.
Tell people where they can learnmore about Clearly Agile and get
in touch if they need any helpand really just plug anything
else that you think you'd likethe world to know about.
Robert Shaw (45:55):
So let's do these in order. So one, LinkedIn,
coach Rob FL on LinkedIn. That'sme. I tend to be social. I'm not
a stranger.
Just connect. Happy to talk allthings agile anytime. Clearly,
agile.com. If there's somethingthat we can do from a consultant
standpoint, a getting the righttalent standpoint or a team in a
box standpoint,clearlyagile.com. Come find us
(46:18):
there.
Alright. And then Clearly Agileowns a training arm, which is
the Brain Trust Group. That is aplace to go for all of your
agile certifications from scrumalliance certifications all the
way up to the scalingcertifications and a lot of
things in between. We have afantastic talent network of just
top notch trainers. More thanjust a class, we try to make it
(46:39):
fun, interactive, and engaging.
All of that is coming togetherunder, I don't know if I could
share this yet, a thing calledthe Agile Network.
Bo Motlagh (46:45):
Here we go.
Robert Shaw (46:45):
Yeah. May 10th, that is gonna be launching. But
I think there's so much badinformation that's out there
today that it was this idea thatwas born around, let's get the
best thought leaders in thespace together under one
platform regardless of who theywork for.
Bo Motlagh (47:01):
Under one roof?
Robert Shaw (47:02):
Under one roof. Let's get the top Agilist
thought leaders in the world.They are all over. We have them
from Europe and the UnitedStates under one roof, under one
platform as a place to buildcommunity knowledge and how to
get this conversation out tomore people about there are
better ways of doing it, and youmay not be seeing it even though
(47:23):
you're doing Agile. So that isMay 10th.
That's coming out,theagilenetwork.com. It's gonna
be awesome.
Bo Motlagh (47:30):
Very, very cool.
Robert Shaw (47:31):
So that's it. Shameless plugs.
Bo Motlagh (47:33):
That's great.
Robert Shaw (47:34):
It's humility causes me to say that. It's a
shameless plug. No. I enjoythis. Anytime Anytime we can get
together and chat, fantastic.
Bo Motlagh (47:41):
Absolutely. We don't always have to record it either,
but this is fun. So check outClearly Agile. Check out all of
the other amazing things thatRob is up to right now. Reach
out to him and come back formore episodes.
Thank you for listening. We'regonna be continuing to look for
different perspectives on TheHidden Chasm and explore this,
so join us on that journey. Thishas been fun. Thanks, Rob.
Josh Smith (47:59):
Thanks, Ron.
Bo Motlagh (48:01):
You've been listening to The Hidden Chasm,
brought to you by UnitedFX. Ifanything in our conversation
resonated with you today, pleasereach out. We'd love to hear
from you. Email us at podcast atunitedeffects.com, or simply
visit us atunitedeffects.comorthehiddenchasm.com.
Thanks for listening.
You're about to listen to a recording of our
second episode of The HiddenChasm. You are going to hear
some pops and some audiodisruptions here and there. We
were having some small technicaldifficulties. It's not your
connection or anything likethat. We cleaned it up pretty
well, and I think you're goingto enjoy it.
But just wanted to give you aheads up. Thank you. You're
listening to The Hidden Chasm, adiscussion of how tech debt and
(00:32):
legacy solutions become barriersto growth and innovation for
established SaaS companies. TheHidden Chasm is sponsored by
UnitedFX, where our purpose isto help companies break free
from legacy tech, improveretention, and empower m and a
growth. Learn more atunitedfx.com.
Josh Smith (00:48):
Hey. Welcome to another episode of The Hidden
Chasm where we're exploring thegrowth challenges some high
growth, midsize enterprises faceas they find themselves
struggling to compete, bringproduct to market quickly, and
maintain their customers.
Bo Motlagh (01:00):
That's right. Another episode. We're on a
roll. We're up to 2. So this isfun.
But really excited today to havereally an old friend of ours.
Josh and I have known Rob formany years. We actually worked
together at one point, but RobShaw, who is an agile guru
specifically, he is the VP ofthe agile practice at Clearly
Agile, where he and his team ofbusiness agility and
(01:20):
transformation experts use agileframeworks to empower
organizations to solve complexproblems and succeed in rapidly
evolving markets. Rob, how areyou, man?
Robert Shaw (01:30):
I'm doing well. And it is good seeing you 2 again.
Like, getting the old band backtogether, that is fantastic.
Yeah. Honored to be on in anearly episode.
Excited for
Bo Motlagh (01:41):
today. Yeah. We're excited to have you. Thanks for
joining.
Josh Smith (01:42):
Just wanna remind you that you left us, and you
chose Disney World over us.
Robert Shaw (01:49):
Oh, not quite Disney World. I chose not gray
Pennsylvania skies in thewinter. That was the real
choice. Disney World is justthat was bonus.
Josh Smith (01:57):
Yeah. Yeah. You don't like the Pennsylvania gray
skies? Oh, okay.
Robert Shaw (02:01):
After 40 years, that got a little hard to
handle. So moved on to palmtrees and sunny winters.
Josh Smith (02:08):
I can dig that.
Bo Motlagh (02:09):
Rob, why don't
Robert Shaw (02:09):
you tell us
Bo Motlagh (02:09):
a little bit about what you guys do at Clearly
Agile down there in,
Robert Shaw (02:14):
sunny Florida? What don't we do? So we are a
boutique agile consultancy,which means we're more than just
contractors. Our primary missionis to do the right thing for the
clients who are looking to go onan agile transformation journey.
Beyond just installing aframework or a process, how do
we take them and tweak theirlevel of business agility to
(02:36):
where they get results that tiesthem into the market with a
faster delivery of value andstarts getting better outputs
and outcomes for their customerfrom a holistic standpoint.
We tend to move in more from apartner aspect than a consultant
aspect. We're there to supportthe journey. We do that through
3 main areas, the first onebeing training. So we have a
(02:57):
variety of agile certificationtraining all the way from your
basic scrum alliance trainingthrough the advanced
certifications, all the way upinto multiple multiple scaling
platforms. So being able to justkind of set the stage for making
sure your folks at anorganization understand what it
means to do this.
And then we do a consultingstandpoint. So everything from
(03:19):
coaching all the way to fillingin a certain accountability. So
if it's just coach support,we're there, either from a full
time or a fractional basis. Ifyou need team members with
certain specialties to kindastand in the gap, we've got
that, all the way into DevOpsenablement and support on that
end. And then the last one forthose smaller midsize
(03:41):
organizations, we do this thingwe've been playing with for the
past, I don't know, two and ahalf years, agile team in a box.
Bo Motlagh (03:48):
Okay.
Robert Shaw (03:48):
So we basically have all the pieces figured out,
all the positions. Thedevelopers are ours. They
already know how to worktogether as a team. What we need
to do is point it at whatevervalue you wanna create. So you
don't even have to worry aboutit.
Like, essentially, a team showsup, they're ready to go, and
they already have the hard stufffigured out, just point them at
the value and let them chewthrough it.
Bo Motlagh (04:11):
Very cool. You and I chatted a little while ago, and
I mentioned this hidden chasmthing. You're gonna hear us say
the word chasm a lot. So if youthink of a better one, go ahead.
But with this problem space andthe sort of wall that these
enterprises tend to hit, agiletransformation, a lot of what
you guys do at Clearly Agilecomes up a lot as part of that
(04:34):
journey of something that theyhit.
Robert Shaw (04:36):
You guys gave it a name, which I absolutely love.
We've been searching for what tocall this for probably for me
the last 2 decades because yousee it all the time and you hear
technical debt and technicaldebt and technical debt. Well,
eventually, technical debt hasthis collapse moment where an
organization is like, alright,hit the gas pedal, seize the
(04:56):
market opportunity, and theteam's like, the engine's no
longer hooked up to thetransmission, and the tires
don't turn. I don't know what totell you. I think you guys
nailed it is, ultimately, that'sthat stop at the end where you
realize, like, uh-oh.
We made some wrong decisions,and it's monumental to get back
to a point where we're healthy.We see it. We try to educate. We
(05:18):
try to get people progressivelyon that journey to avoid it. So
many times, organizations bychoice or accident wind up at
the precipice of the chasm,sometimes over the chasm.
I don't know what you call that.In the chasm, over the chasm,
they try the Evel Knievel leapover it and have that Wile E.
Coyote moment about halfwayacross.
Bo Motlagh (05:39):
I like that. We should put that on the site as
an image there, Josh.
Robert Shaw (05:45):
Okay.
Bo Motlagh (05:46):
Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. You've probably seen this.
You've probably consulted at 100of companies at this point.
And I'm guessing you see this Imean, do you have a rough, like,
percentage maybe where you'veseen this across the board, do
you think?
Robert Shaw (05:59):
Oh, in the chasm heading to the chasm, which one
do you wanna metric on?
Bo Motlagh (06:03):
Generally at risk of the chasm. How's that?
Robert Shaw (06:06):
General at risk. Okay. So they've seen the
warning signs, turn left, don'tgo, danger ahead. I mean,
solidly without evenoverthinking, probably 80% of
what we walk into are on somejourney
Bo Motlagh (06:19):
there. And do they know it? That's the interesting
part. When you get there becausethey've called you for their
perspective of the problem, doyou then kinda go, oh, hold on.
Did you know this is happening?
Robert Shaw (06:30):
There's a yes and a no to that. I gotta say, since
we chatted last, I was thinkingabout that. How many are
actually aware? And I thinkthere's two levels of answer to
that question. I think at aproject, small team, small group
silo, no.
I don't think they think aboutit. I don't think they know
about it. I think it's so muchlike heads down, blinders on,
(06:52):
just work, work, work, work,work. It's like this notion of
we'll just defer that, or we'llsave time or I need to get this
person off my back. They operatevery much with that tunnel
vision on.
At more of an enterprise levelor a portfolio level. I think
there's an awareness to it. Ithink there's an awareness that
it exists. I think a lot oforganizations know they're in
(07:15):
trouble, but I don't think theyknow how to get out of it. I
don't think there's a connectionbetween turn the wheel or pump
the brakes or take a differentroute.
Generally, I I would say there'sa broad awareness, but head
scratching on NowWatch. What doyou guys see with you're in that
solution space? So what are youseeing? Something different or
about the same?
Bo Motlagh (07:36):
I guess what I would say is they know something's
wrong. What we've seen and fromwhat we've talked to and
transparently, we probablyhaven't spoken to hundreds of
companies like you have, butwe're speaking to a lot now.
What we normally see is thatthese early warning signs that
get them confused andfrustrated, and then they start
the process of, well, let'stackle it. And I'm being vague
(07:57):
because I don't want to ask youwhat the warning signs you saw
were to compare them. But ingeneral, the reaction that we
see normally is the executiveswill be hyper focused on one of
those things.
And it's like, I just need tofix this and then everything
will be okay. Then you begin topeel back that onion and you go,
yes, you do need to fix that.But the reason this is broken is
because this chain of thingsthat goes way deeper than you
(08:19):
realize. And so there's alwaysthis sort of educational process
to help them understand thepeople process technology behind
that.
Robert Shaw (08:26):
Yeah. It's interesting too on there.
There's 2 flavors. I don't have2 2 flavors. It's a better way
to enter into that.
Because I think there is thathyperfocus moment where they're
trying to solve the problem infront of them, and they don't
realize they need to step backup and look at the problem from
a broader thing. Because thepath they're on doesn't have a
solution. What they need is tostep back and look at the
(08:48):
broader number of paths in frontof them and go, oh, let's
explore some of these otherpaths. But the big thing that's
in there, and I think largerorganizations suffer more than
your midsize or smallerorganizations, is expectations.
I think in larger organizations,there's this expectation that
somebody on my team, somebody inthe organization is working to
(09:10):
figure it
Bo Motlagh (09:12):
out. Yeah.
Robert Shaw (09:13):
And I don't think it matters, like, what level of
leadership you're at. We seethis anytime we start up a new
project is there's anexpectation that the team is
managing technical debt, andthey they have a solid technical
approach, and they understandwhat the customer needs and the
market needs and what theproduct expect there there's,
like, this assumption. And thenthey get 3, 6, 9 months into it,
and they're like, wait. Hold on.We didn't get that?
(09:35):
Who had eyes on that? I findthat fascinating that the
awareness is there. They knowit's there, but there's this
disconnect between how toapproach it, how to solve it,
and who even owns it Yeah. In alot of organizations.
Josh Smith (09:48):
Could that relate at all to the bystander effect?
Have you ever heard of thebystander effect?
Robert Shaw (09:54):
No. What is it?
Josh Smith (09:55):
I use an actual real life example. When I was growing
up, it was in the middle of thenight, and I only heard about
this in the morning. Streetsaway, someone in their car had
gotten accident. Terrible, butthey were alive, and they were
lying outside of the car. It waslate at night and everybody
heard it, but nobody found himuntil the morning.
Sun had to come up. He was rightthere on the street because
(10:17):
every single person, whenquestioned, they all thought
someone else was gonna call myname one.
Robert Shaw (10:23):
Absolutely. I love that. By the way, I'm gonna
borrow that. I'm doing atraining Monday, Tuesday. I'm
gonna figure out how to workthat in.
I like that. So for those thatare agile literate, there's this
thing called the definition ofdone. And the definition of done
is at a team level and it it canon scaling, you can live at an
enterprise product level. Whatis it? It's the definition or
the gateway into production.
When does it mean to actually bedone with something? It's all
(10:45):
the technical pinnings, thecorrect architecture. We've done
the design, the reporting. It'sthe golden ticket into
production. When organizationsset out on that, I don't think
they pause and have thatconversation of what does the
market actually expect.
They approach it with hope thatthe teams are gonna do the right
thing, hope that my people aregonna do the right thing. Was it
Frank Tate that used to say hopeis not a strategy? I think it
(11:07):
was Frank that used to say that.That echoes through my head all
the time.
Bo Motlagh (11:10):
Hi, Frank, if you're listening.
Robert Shaw (11:12):
Yeah. Frank, hi. Your words mattered. We
understood.
Josh Smith (11:15):
Oh, and for the audience, he is a significant m
and a strategist now of sorts.Right?
Robert Shaw (11:20):
Yep. A lot of wisdom in that, man. But I think
that's kind of at the crux of itis the intent is there, hope is
there, but the real conversationnever happens. What do the
customers want? What does themarket want?
What's the expectation? What'stheir tolerance for pain? For
this product, is it throw away?We only need it for a couple
months. We can go run fast.
Or is it an investment into ourbread and butter for the next 5
(11:44):
years, 7 years, 10 years? Thatchanges what goes into that
intentional definition of done.And so many times when we walk
in with clients, they're like,well, what is it? Well, the team
figured it out. Well, you sureyou wanna do that?
I mean, they're smart people,but you're banking a $60,000,000
investment into a new enterpriseplatform, and you just told me
you've had zero conversationabout what level of technical
(12:07):
excellence and how you wannadesign it and the architecture
and the patterns and the qualityand building it in 0
conversations. Is that whatyou're telling me? And since you
frame it that way, yes. Like,yeah, sheepishly. But I think a
lot of organization, it's not ahard conversation to start or
just start earlier.
(12:28):
If that's the one thing we wantorganizations to do from an
agile perspective, start havingthat conversation more. It's
missing. It's absent. Yes.There's a whole lot of complex
stuff that happens afterward,but that's the starting point
that seems now I don't know.
Oh, we're agile. Well, what doesthat mean? We skip over that. We
just start sprinting and we'llfigure it out and they'll get it
and just get it out tomorrow.No.
(12:48):
No. You still need that. Right?It doesn't go away in agile
organizations. It doesn't goaway in agile development.
You still do that. It's stillimportant. Yeah. It's still
relevant.
Bo Motlagh (12:59):
Coming back to those early warning signs, I'm
thinking I know that we've beenseeing sort of a common thread,
and I guess I'm curious when youstart, what are the things that
you immediately pick up on interms of those hyper focused
elements that the executivesmight be asking about or that
you start to see these arethings that are happening in the
organization, either from anorganizational structure
(13:20):
perspective, interactions orjust technology might notice.
But what are the businessindicators that you've noticed
are there that ultimatelypredict or really illustrate the
hidden chasm concept?
Robert Shaw (13:33):
Hold on. So the business indicators or general
indicators? Because that is 2separate questions.
Bo Motlagh (13:38):
So pick 1 and then let's do the other afterwards
because I'd be curious what youwould say.
Robert Shaw (13:42):
So business indicators. Probably the most
prominent one for me is theculture of chasing squirrels.
Squirrels with dollar sign.Chasing squirrels. Squirrels
with dollar signs on their back.
You're in an organization thatseems to be driven by chasing
revenue. And And then when newrevenue comes up, they pivot and
they chase the next one and thenext one and the next one.
Bo Motlagh (14:02):
One off.
Robert Shaw (14:03):
One off. Yeah. And what you tend to see is without
that binding strategy, you startto see the technical approach
fracture because the team is inwhiplash mode. Their jobs are to
keep their head above water andjust deliver. And it loses
continuity of what is ourproduct, our solution, our value
(14:26):
stream, our path, our purpose.
It doesn't mean that doesn'tever change or that it doesn't
pivot inside of there. What yousee is that start to fracture,
and it becomes competitioninside the organization chasing
the biggest promise of dollarsin business, which means
technical excellence suffers,and then you start to see it
fracture at the team level.Because what does the team do?
(14:47):
The team responds I'm gonna usethe word cut corners because I
don't think most engineers wantto cut corners. Most of them
want to be professionals.
It's survival mode. I think forme, that is the earliest tell
that I see in organizations. Youstart seeing that behavior
happening above, and it has antipattern effects down at the team
(15:07):
level that you won't see formonths because it doesn't happen
the first time you do it. Youdon't see impacts the second
time you do it. Heck, you don'teven see impacts the 3rd, 4th,
5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, the 1styear, 2 years you do it.
Right. What you're gonna realizeis 2 years, 24 months, 36 months
down the road, stuff ain'tworking. And it's not something
(15:27):
they did last week, last sprint,last month. It's something the
organization started to do yearsbefore.
Bo Motlagh (15:33):
What about you were making a distinction between
that and general in indicators.Did you have a thought there?
Robert Shaw (15:39):
Yeah. So you start to see the teams behaving like
factories or treated likefactories. So it goes a little
bit back to, like, FrederickTaylor's scientific rules of
management Mhmm. Back at theindustrial age. Right?
You have managers. Managers getpaid to get smart, be smart. And
how do we take the craftsmanshipout?
Josh Smith (15:58):
Yeah. And if you're not managed and left to your own
devices, only bad things willhappen.
Robert Shaw (16:02):
Only bad things could happen. Right? We don't
want craftsman or expertise. Wejust need human cogs in the
machine. And I think there'sstill a holdover.
Even in fairly decent agileorganizations, there is still
this holdover that you can stilljust plug people into the cock.
Right? You can structure themthat way. And you start to see
the mindset of it's a factoryit's a feature factory. And you
(16:27):
see backlogs heavily weighted,teams get told what to do versus
having real conversations aboutwhat is achievable, you see very
little prioritization or crossprioritization across
stakeholders.
And you start to just to seepush, push, push, push, push,
push, push, push. Well, whenyou're pushing that much in, the
stuff like refactoring,technical improvements, focusing
(16:48):
on continuous integrationdelivery, continuous testing,
good practices, building qualityversus testing quality mindset.
All that stuff, there's only somuch before that stuff starts
overflowing out in there. So Ithink at the business level, you
see some business behaviors, butat the team level, you see them
at the tail end of that, like,just what's a factory? We put
(17:10):
our wish list in and magically,stuff comes out the other end
and just keep pushing features,features, features, features,
features, and it's notsustainable.
It's not sustainable for thelong term, and I guess,
eventually, you wind up at theThelma and Louise moment at the
chasm.
Josh Smith (17:23):
I've got several questions. My first one, I
guess, is by the time anorganization comes to you. Of
course, we're talking about anissue, and you could tell me
otherwise, where by the time itcomes to you, they have found
out that they've rooted it outto, okay. Now this is more like
a technical problem. This is atechnology.
This is an engineering issue.And, of course, they're looking
at it from, I'm assuming, anoperational perspective to bring
(17:47):
you all in. But that's a companywhere assuming they figured out
it's a technological problem.When you get in, do you ever get
an ear to the patterns on thetypes of things that they had
thought was the problem beforethey got to the tech before they
realized it was the technology?
Robert Shaw (18:05):
That's really gonna depend on how self aware they
are, Josh. You know, sometimes,one of the first things we do in
the consulting world is we doour own discovery. We come in.
We sit down. We understand howyou guys create value.
What do you want this to looklike that's different? All that
consultant jargon. But we'realso observing and assessing.
And even if they're not selfaware, like, I talked to person
(18:27):
a and they're like, ourproblems, a, b, and c. And you
get to talk to person 2.
And, oh, it's a, b, and c,obviously. And then you talk to
person 3, 4, 5, and 6, andthey're like, our problems are
a, b, c, and d. Alright. Doy'all talk? Because I spoke to 7
different people, and you alljust told me the exact same
thing.
You know you're shootingyourself in the foot. I think
(18:48):
sometimes having a consultant inand hold the mirror up where
they have to look into it andthey have to talk about it is
the trigger that gets them tosee it. Because I think a lot of
them would just blissfullycomplain and keep going down the
paths they're on. So do theyknow? Yeah.
I think individually, multiplepeople will know, and multiple
(19:09):
people can articulate it. Ithink the forcing function of
here is a mirror that's intendedfor change, gives either people
permission to talk about itopenly or it coalesces people
around the common problems and,like, all of a sudden, there's
freedom to figure out how tosolve it. So I don't know if
that answered your question ornot, but that's kinda just the
(19:30):
pattern that we see. Rarelysurprises anybody. Even if we
roll the findings up, we go backup to the leadership team.
They'll often look at it andthey're like, oh, yeah. We knew
that. Okay. Okay?
Josh Smith (19:38):
That helps me because I have some hypotheses
about it's more of a question.Do companies attempt to look out
at the signals that areoccurring in sales, in revenue,
in support, and immediatelythink the problems exist in
those areas. And then it's notuntil later that they start
(19:58):
pulling the string and that itstarts to lead into technology.
Bo Motlagh (20:02):
This is something we've been a little bit of is
some of the early indicators ata C level and a board level that
we've heard is our retention isslipping and we're under heavy
competition and we're not surewhy we can't keep up. And we're
interested in M and A because wewant to derisk, but we can't
figure out how to actually doany of these integrations. And
it becomes this, is it a salesproblem? Is it a dev problem?
(20:25):
What's going on?
Do we need new engineers? Or arethey just not good? They're
actually probably really greatfor having gotten you this far.
Robert Shaw (20:32):
So you pull the word support into there, and
that goes back to an indicatorearly indicator that just didn't
go into, but I think that is oneto talk about. Looking at what
your blowback rate is fromsupport versus the ratio of
value you deliver, I think isimportant. For however you score
value on the output standpoint.There's output. Right?
(20:53):
We produce 5 things, 10 things.We deliver 10 features. Right?
That number is irrelevant. It'sa pace.
The value that that has to thecustomer, the impact that that
has to the business is what youwanna track. Right? And then you
can score that. You cancategorize that. There's ways to
put numbers and metrics to that.
Right? Now out of that valueyou've produced, over time, what
(21:14):
is your percentage of reworkthat comes back through the door
that actually requiresdevelopment intervention. And
when in that process do you findit. Right? So if you have a high
degree of in team found issuesbefore it goes out the door, you
may have a quality problem, butyour team is also finding it.
That's not bad. However, if yourteam is finding a lot and stuff
(21:37):
is getting out into the wild andyour customers are finding it,
that's a red flag. Right? Ifthat number is skewed heavily
that direction, that's somethingthat you need to address, and it
probably has some sort oftechnical underpinning to it
pointing towards the castle.Why?
The system that you have inplace that builds, validates,
(21:57):
tests, and verifies what you'reputting out has holes in in it.
Stuff is getting out into thewild, and that could be because
of architectural fragility,approach, systems that need to
be updated. It could be yourCICD pipeline and how you have
that structured. There's a lotof things in there. But a lot of
times, what we see is, wellwell, devs aren't working fast
enough, so they see it as avolume problem, not a technical
(22:20):
problem, or the devs get yelledat for having a quality issue.
And meanwhile, they're standingthere going, dude, we're like
we've been saying this. Like,stop. Slow down. We need to fix
this. So not that that exists.
A lot of times we have to exposeit when we go into clients. I'm
not gonna name names, but wework for a prominent Fortune 100
(22:40):
global company in our clientportfolio. Alright. Not gonna
name their name. We have alsoworked with a top restaurant
group in the United States.
These are large, massiveenterprise organizations. Nobody
in both of those will everlooked at that ratio of value
per due to the rate of blowback.And it wasn't until we just took
(23:01):
the spotlight and said, alright.Well, that's one of the things
we can track. Let's just seewhat the data tells us.
We didn't have an opinion on it.We didn't say it was good or
bad. We just came up with themetric for the ratio, and we
exposed it. And it was by thetime we got, like, 3 months in,
4 months in tracking it, they'relike, oh, something's not right
there. Oh, why do you say that?
(23:22):
What are some things that cancontribute? Well, it could be
the developer is not workinghard. It could be. Is there
anything else it could be?Right?
Because Right. A lot of timesthat first reaction is gonna
point it to the wrong problem.And it wasn't until we started
walking down that path did weget to the levers that were
actually underneath that? Youknow, is it structural? Is it
(23:44):
architectural?
Is it build? Is it like, whereare you not making the
investment you need to makethat's causing this? Right? What
you saw as devs not working is asymptom. It's not appropriate.
Yeah. Alright. Sometimes it's aproblem. More likely than not,
it's not the problem. It's thesymptom.
So I think once they see it,then panic mode sets in.
Bo Motlagh (24:05):
Okay. Yeah.
Robert Shaw (24:06):
The hair's on fire. We're gonna crash and burn. How
do we get out of it? And that'salways the interesting one
because organizations have a tonof different reactions. But,
usually, it's a process to justto get them to understand what
it is and and where they'reheaded and to get that in front
of the right people.
Bo Motlagh (24:23):
I think that makes a lot of sense. And you're
basically defining KPIs thatthey can use to measure. And
then once you've measured it,you go, see, I wasn't just
making this up. You're leavingall of this on the table. These
are the issues, and it becomessomething that they can begin to
grasp.
I've always found the moment,especially when it's financial
data, that usually getsattention quite a bit faster.
Robert Shaw (24:44):
When is it not financial data, though? People
are always like, Agile is aprocess for speed. It's an
economic mindset. Every time youhave a choice to spend team,
dollar, and time on somethingthat adds value or subtracts
value from your organization,choose wisely.
Bo Motlagh (24:58):
Right. I'm curious when you think about you
mentioned a few of the leversyou pull in order to start
righting the ship here. So speakmore about that. Okay. You've
made it clear to them from aleadership perspective.
And actually, this is a questionis especially for you guys
because you're coming in as anagile practice. And
traditionally, a lot ofexecutives may not recognize
(25:18):
that that's a systemicorganizational thing. They might
sort of view that. I'm sure yourun into this. You're going to
work with my product teams,right, or my dev teams.
And so do you sometimes findthat there's an expansion of
footprint that needs to occur inorder to help actually right the
ship? And how does thatconversation usually go?
Robert Shaw (25:37):
Oh, geez.
Bo Motlagh (25:38):
Like, I really need to talk to you, mister
executive, even though you mightnot realize that I do.
Robert Shaw (25:42):
So this should be no surprise to you or your
listeners. Agility comes intoorganizations basically 2 ways,
top down or bottom up. So it's agrassroots that's a little bit
harder of an effort. A lot oftimes, it's a small experiment
that was given permission aslong as you don't talk to the
layers above it. But the minuteyou start pressing on that or if
you press on that in the wrongway, you're always using agile
(26:05):
language and you're trying toget the executives to do scrum.
Like, that doesn't work. That'snot what they're worried about.
So somewhere on there, there's apivot to draw them into the
conversation to understand ifthe team is playing by these
rules, these are the rules thathelp the business can use to
help them to generate valuebetter. Mhmm. And by the way,
(26:26):
here's kind of the expandedpicture of business agility.
It's not just team agility.There's technical excellence.
There's dev and operationsexcellence. There's
architectural excellence.There's product and portfolio
management that drivesdecisions.
So a a lot of times in thatbottom up model, it's slower,
(26:46):
but you start working your waykind of across that broader
spectrum by pulling people intobusiness conversations, outcome
conversations, not agileconversations.
Bo Motlagh (26:57):
Right? Right.
Robert Shaw (26:58):
The other one when it comes in from top down,
that's usually a little bitbetter because our first
conversation is usually based ona why for agile versus a what
for agile. Moving to agilebecause you wanna do events,
frameworks, ceremonies, you justwanna do scrum because it's what
everyone else is doing is wrong.You're not gonna succeed on
that. You're gonna get resultsyou don't wanna do. On that one
(27:21):
there, we usually have some sortof leadership here.
We have usually done some sortof leadership training. We have
some sort of executive actionteam that's responsible for the
results of the transformation.Right? And their designees who
are empowered to do that. So inthat model there, they have the
hard conversations upfront.
(27:41):
We have a compelling reason whyor why in the organization, and
we're tracking back to thosemetrics, those KPIs for them.
That lets us have betterconversations. It really depends
on, is it the uphill slog? Arewe rolling the boulder up the
hill? Or do we have blessing andapproval going in and they want
it?
Yeah. It doesn't mean they takeaction or can take action or is
(28:03):
now the right time, but the newstends to go a little bit better
that way.
Bo Motlagh (28:07):
We did this together when we were at our company
together, the 3 of us. We see itcome up a lot with companies.
It's the platform playconversation. The reason we even
started looking at the hiddenchasm and became interested in
it is because we started from wewere interested in building
platforms. That's what ourcareer, as you remember, was
really about.
(28:28):
And so we were building thesebroad enterprise integration
platforms and interested inthat. And we began to see that
very often the platform conceptwas a reaction to something,
some of the elements of thehidden chasm. And so these
things are coupled. So how oftendo you find yourself having the
platform conversation, whateverthat may mean to your customer
(28:49):
at that time?
Robert Shaw (28:50):
So it's not 0. It's probably not 50% at the start.
It's not an early conversation.Typically, somewhere mid stream,
they have that panic momentwhere they realize, oh, we're
still legacy monolithic, blahblah blah. All of the sins of
the past are there.
And the pendulum starts to goway the other direction quickly.
(29:12):
Right? Oh, now it's a platform.We can't afford to
rearchitecture. We can't afforda platform because they still
think of it in terms ofmultiyear initiatives and big
banking delivery.
I mean, I don't know. 40% of thetime, about halfway, it usually
comes up in some way, shape, orform. Usually very knee jerk
(29:33):
followed by gnashing of teethand some panic of like, oh, this
is too big or how do we juststabilize the boat? I think
that's not bad. Then you couldstart to have a little more
conversation about, oh, okay.
Is it all on fire? Is it all onfire at the same level? And if
we just take a step back, isthere any way where we could
(29:54):
start systematically puttingthings in place as an in place
replacement as part of thatstrategy? Does it have to be all
or nothing, Or can we startbreaking things up a little more
systematically, a little morelogically, and carving things
out to replace it over time?Just make it part of your
technical strategy so you don'thave to go dark for 3 years to
do this.
I think it's a learning moment.
Bo Motlagh (30:16):
Right.
Robert Shaw (30:16):
I don't know what you guys see, but I find most
organizations, most, not all,most, only need to hit that once
in their lifetime.
Josh Smith (30:24):
I have a question, but I'll respond to what you
mentioned because you saidsomething that I've never heard
before, but now kind of makessense that the word platform in
itself or thinking of this thechanges that the organization
needs to make as one monolithicthing and giving a name to it,
platform, is a response to amindset that needs to shift
(30:44):
Yeah. Which means that whencompanies start to say platform,
platform, and panic about thisbig thing, that is a signal that
they recognize the problem thatneeds to be solved, but they're
thinking of it in legacy mindsetterms.
Robert Shaw (31:01):
Yeah. Absolutely. So, Josh, complete this
sentence. Alright? So we'll trythis and we can edit this out if
this fails horribly.
But word association, completethe sentence for me.
Bo Motlagh (31:10):
I love it.
Robert Shaw (31:10):
Alright. Today, we're starting our next big
adventure of Vex Dig initiative.Today, we're proud to announce
the kickoff of our platform
Josh Smith (31:19):
2.0. 1.0.
Robert Shaw (31:23):
Project.
Josh Smith (31:24):
Project. Oh, I spelled that one.
Robert Shaw (31:27):
Awesome. Right? Platform project. Oh. It gets
into project based thinkingversus product based thinking.
If we think of terms of project,it's big bang, single
deliverable, funding, lots oftime, lots of people, but a
project never really ends, doesit? If you have a project and
you work on a project and youhave people on a project and it
(31:48):
has an end date, is that theonly value you ever deliver
there? Right? There's gonna beenhancements. There's gonna be
support.
There's gonna be updates.There's gonna be maintenance.
Project doesn't end. What youreally start shifting is no.
What you have is a stream ofvalue in your organization
that's attached to revenue andcustomers.
That stream of value has 1 ormore products in your solution.
(32:12):
As an organization, stop fundingprojects, start funding the
stream of value. And what lifecycle are you in? Are you in
emerging growth? Are you in rand d?
Are you in ramp up acceleration?Are you in extracting revenue
where it's a little more flat?Or is it getting closer towards
end of life where there's norevenue left to extract on? If
(32:33):
you start shifting even just alittle bit to that approach, you
could still fund projects, Iguess, within that structure if
you wanted to. But within there,that means that there's a
business life cycle and economicdecision to be made for it.
If it's a 5, 10 year productsolution, that means, like any
car, house, or product that youown, things are gonna start
wearing out, and you need toreplace things periodically. And
(32:56):
I think if just that littlepivot puts things like platform
a little less scary, it's anarchitectural pivot. Part of our
architectural pivot means wehave to carve out something out
of a monolithic application toreplace it, but it starts to
stand alone. And then can wereplace something else? I mean,
yeah.
Okay. Is there refactoring? Yes.But on the product level, your
(33:19):
strategy is to extract revenueout of this thing for the next
10 years. So if that's still theplan, can you do that as it
currently is?
No. Okay. Well, what's themiddle ground? Because you can't
go dark for 3 years and justreplace it. What is the middle
ground that steps you along thatjourney?
Bo Motlagh (33:35):
Well, one, I think that's a really interesting
take. I think a lot of the timewell, there's a distinction here
that's probably important, whichis very often when we're saying
the word platform, especiallythese companies, it's that
vision casting, it's thatreaction you're talking about.
It's often coupled with acommercial concept of platform,
which is very different than thething from a platform concept on
(33:58):
the back end that's going tohelp you evolve and get better.
Right? So I always sort ofdifferentiate them between
whatever your commercial productstrategy is, whether that's a
platform or not, great.
We can talk about, like yousaid, how to carve that up into
value streams that we caniteratively deliver. But when we
talk about behind the scenes,how do we think about this?
That's not a project to yourpoint. Right? That's tools and
(34:21):
strategy.
And so when we talk about thatand and I've had customers that
this comes up with, we'retargeting 6 months or however
long for this platform. And myresponse is why not just say
it's here and start adopting thestrategies and let's iteratively
start evolving because it's notsome destination. It's not like
once you've done that, you'redone. And I think it's a really
important piece. And honestly, Ithink I've certainly been guilty
(34:44):
of it because you get caught upin it because it is a lot of
stuff.
It's a lot of tools. If youdecide you want to build it
yourself, it can feel like amassive investment that you want
to then own and be like, well,of course, it's ours and it's a
destination, but it's not. It'snot really your business.
Robert Shaw (34:58):
There are 2 nuggets of wisdom, but I was chopping at
the bit just because as you weresaying it is so if platform is
your play
Bo Motlagh (35:04):
Yeah.
Robert Shaw (35:04):
How on earth are you going to future proof the
technology that's coming outover the next 3 to 5 years in a
vacuum today to predict thefuture 5 years out? You can't do
that. And anybody who tells youyou can do that is I don't know.
Maybe they can do it. Maybe theyhave a crystal ball that I don't
have.
But every time I hear that theplatform play, the platform is a
(35:24):
thing, it's gonna take us 3years to build, and we're gonna
design it today using thetechnology we have today, using
what's available to us todayversus saying our platform is
there to support the revenuestream, and what are the pieces,
elements, and components,whether we build by integrate or
partner to solve that businessequation. Right? They're they're
(35:46):
2 completely different mindsets.And I think you were pulling on
the second one of it's notalways roll your own. And Mhmm.
At times, you're gonna be ableto need to pull something else
out, and off the shelf is fine,As long as it does what you need
it to do or it can be configuredto do what you need it to do. I
think there's a mindset in oldarchitecture world of, like, oh,
no. I have to have it all onpaper and connect all the dots,
(36:07):
and it has to be perfect forsomething 5 years out.
Bo Motlagh (36:11):
I've done that. Yeah.
Robert Shaw (36:12):
We've all done that. I can't think of any
single one of us that grew up inproducing software in the
nineties and early 2000 thathasn't done that.
Josh Smith (36:20):
We're gonna name this episode bread and butter
because you're circling back tosomething you said initially,
this threshold where you, as anagile partner, have to assist
extrapolate now veryintentionally when you build
something between what are youbuilding that we use the phrase
(36:43):
secret sauce. What is the secretsauce? What is the bread and
butter? What is the core valuethat you want to narrow and
focus your internal engineeringstaff on versus what are the
things that you havetraditionally up to this date
been maintaining and managingthat is a capability or service
that is now so common thatyou've seen so many companies
(37:07):
building these things over andover. And maybe at some point,
it was for lack of it existenceand ubiquity, it's something
that they can get off the shelf.
But having to at least have themstart to think about separating
those 2.
Robert Shaw (37:20):
So two things, I think this is where you're
going, Josh. Follow-up questionif you want to. It gets down
into this concept of preservingoptions as you start to move
stuff forward. Alright? There isnot a singular solution.
Everything is not a nail.Everything doesn't need a
hammer. And, by the way, even ifyou were do do that, there's
(37:41):
probably 20 hammers on the rackthat you could choose from to
pin on the nail in. So it's notsingular. It's not a lock in now
approach.
What we try to get in withorganizations and teams is
preserving options. Can you makea minimum investment to explore
an integrated solution versusbuilding the solution? And
(38:03):
what's your decision point? Ifyou just made a small
investment, grand scheme ofthings, it's probably gonna take
you a while. What are the 1, 2,or 3 small investments that you
need to proof of concept,evaluate, get feedback on to
move that forward.
Out of those, the best in breedwill probably move forward. And
then what's your next evaluationcriteria? So one, getting out of
(38:23):
linear single lock in, singlepoint, single arrow thinking. I
think the second thing on thatis it's similar, but just
getting design thinkingconversations started in the
organization. I mean, designthinking has two sides to it.
When we're thinking about whatour business strategy is, what
our product strategy is, if weset that a year ago, it's
(38:45):
probably time to pick our headsup out of the groundhog or
prairie dog hole and take a lookaround. Is the market still the
market? Has anything changed inthe market? Are we still chasing
down the customers we wanted?Has it pivoted?
Is our strategy still right?What else is out there that we
don't know about? Alright. Andthen let's come back and consume
that. It's either gonna confirmthat we're on the right path, or
(39:06):
it's gonna tell us that themarket has moved from where we
thought it was.
The second side of that is onceyou have that, then it's back to
that solution option. There'smore than one way to build
things. It doesn't always haveto be super UX heavy, pixel
perfect, whiz bang, the greatestthing ever, but doesn't always
have to be that 5 line, youknow, that UX thing. It could be
(39:27):
maybe 5 lines of code that getsthe data that adds value to the
customer. You could figure outif they like it, then make it
better, make it pretty, enhanceit.
So there's options. Right? It'sall design thinking is all about
those learning how to listen,correlate, and get options into
play.
Josh Smith (39:43):
There's probably another podcast between us
around that because as a priorscaled agile practice consultant
and, of course, UX leader, thosein the UX community, they would
see that as like a oxymoron. But
Bo Motlagh (39:58):
Wait. Didn't Rob train and
Robert Shaw (39:59):
verify you?
Josh Smith (39:59):
Yeah. No. Well, as a scaled Agilist, you did, Rob,
which you were in that room too,though. Yeah. But
Robert Shaw (40:05):
Oh, you went on to get your SPC then?
Josh Smith (40:07):
I went on yeah. Yes. So I got that, but I was always
looking for tie ins to figureout where we could deepen the
relationship between design andand the and the general
frameworks. And the thing that Ikept getting back to is what you
discussed, which was assumevariability, preserve options
through set based design. Mhmm.
(40:28):
When I saw that, I'm like, oh mygosh. That's the technical speak
for design thinking. That's it.They do the same thing. They
just use different terms.
And I was like, how do I screenthis out to make sure that folks
understand that it's not like anexclusive thing?
Robert Shaw (40:40):
I think that starts with making sure that you have
some level of product managementin your approach, not just
project management, but productmanagement. Do you have a
vision? Do you have a strategy?Is there somebody who's watching
the market that that's gonnapull that flexibility in and
that alignment in for theorganization? Right?
Back to that first thing I said.Right? Without that, the teams
are just making it up. Yourorganization is disconnected.
(41:02):
They're running in differentdirections with scissors.
You get what you get. You don'tget upset. Or you could choose a
different path. Right? Here's astrategy that we're heading to,
and in there are options.
Out of those options, when isthe best one to move forward? At
what level of technicalexcellence? It's a mindset
shift. It's an organizationalshift. And it's not always
rapid, but it's worth taking.
Bo Motlagh (41:23):
We've covered a lot of ground, which has been
amazing. I guess one sort offinal thought here is what
advice would you give to a SaaSleader who is maybe listening to
this or has seen some otherthings or just is aware in
general that there's a problem,but effectively finding
themselves either on their wayto the chasm or in the chasm.
What advice would you givesomebody that's be coming to
(41:46):
that realization?
Robert Shaw (41:47):
Break the cycle of it can wait. But in all honesty,
that is the one thing that wesee is analysis, paralysis, or
afraid to take a step in anydirection because it's so big
and so vast. And whenever we seethat pattern we have clients. I
mean, not every client alwaysdoes everything that we want.
Right?
Imagine that. We have clientsthat still they get all this
(42:08):
advice. Like, no. We're gonnastay the course. Okay.
That failure to choose to take astep. When we reengage or
revisit that client 6 months, 9months, a year later, 2 years
later, guess where they are?Same problem, no progress, no
improvement to the system thatbuilds, validates, deploys, and
integrates the system. Noimprovements in building
quality, no improvements inthere, and there's still
(42:30):
angsting about this loomingcliff or they're in the throes
of it. Honestly, take a step.
Pick a step, pick a direction,and just start even if it's
small. Don't stay put. Don't digyour feet in. Start. Typically,
clients that start walking, wecome back.
6 months later, it's not solved,but they've put a dent in it. A
(42:52):
year later, it might not besolved, but they put an even
bigger dent in it. So movement,I think, is the biggest thing.
What's the Tony Robbins line onthere? Make a decision and then
take massive action towards thator something along those lines.
I just probably completelybotched it, but I think that's
true.
Bo Motlagh (43:10):
It's not good.
Robert Shaw (43:11):
Yeah. It's close enough. Right? Make a decision
towards doing something, thenstart taking action towards it
because that's the way it'sgonna change. Don't give
yourself the opportunity to lookback a year from now and go,
where are we?
Exactly the same place withmaybe some lesser different
people because they gotfrustrated and left, but we
still have the same problem. Sotake a step. Start walking. 1
foot in front of the other.
Josh Smith (43:32):
And I'm so sorry, but I do have, like, a question
Yeah.
Robert Shaw (43:35):
Yeah. Go for it. Okay.
Josh Smith (43:36):
It's the last one. And maybe you can answer it,
Rob. Maybe maybe you can. Thisthe hidden chasm, this is about
looking at the problem kind of,I hate the word, but I'm gonna
use it holistically andSystemic. Yes.
Oh.
Robert Shaw (43:50):
You use the word holistically. This is gonna be
good.
Josh Smith (43:52):
I have money. I gotta put money in the tip jar
or money in the jar for usingthat word. So from your
perspective as an Agile partner,facing this issue of the
mounting tech debt, approachingit from your perspective as an
Agile partner. If you couldchoose 1 partner type of
partner, you can make them up tojoin you on this journey to
(44:13):
address an area that'sunderserved, that may be outside
of Agile Partnership, anadditional area to join you
along the way. What would thatbe?
Robert Shaw (44:21):
Wow. Out of all the choices, I get to pick 1.
Honestly, somebody who has seenthe solution options underneath
there that understands, like, isit data sharing? Is it
information sharing? Right?
Because from my world, thetechnology stacks are vast. The
architectural design patternsare vast. The data storage
(44:42):
options are vast. Take a flavor.I don't always know what that
client is going to be in.
I'm no longer a technical guy. Iused to dabble, but it's been
oh, I mean, what? At 8 years,probably since I've opened up an
IDE in any way, shape, or form.I do it occasionally. Yeah.
I've done it occasionally forfun. So I think somebody that
(45:04):
has an outside viewer lens ofwhat the problem is and has seen
how to make some of thoseconnections, 1, from an
architectural standpoint and 2,from an integrated solution
validation standpoint. I thinkthere's 2 avenues. You have your
CICD pipeline. You need to havethat buttoned up.
And then you have your platformside of, here's the spaghetti
(45:25):
mess, and it's all on the plate.Where's a partner that can come
in and start pulling on theindividual threads and help me
make sense of it? Right?Somebody that could do both or
somebody that can do each ofthose are probably who I'd want
on my side going through that.
Bo Motlagh (45:38):
Awesome. Rob. Thank you so much for joining us here,
man. This has been a really funconversation. Before we sign
off, I just want to give you themic here.
Tell people where they can learnmore about Clearly Agile and get
in touch if they need any helpand really just plug anything
else that you think you'd likethe world to know about.
Robert Shaw (45:55):
So let's do these in order. So one, LinkedIn,
coach Rob FL on LinkedIn. That'sme. I tend to be social. I'm not
a stranger.
Just connect. Happy to talk allthings agile anytime. Clearly,
agile.com. If there's somethingthat we can do from a consultant
standpoint, a getting the righttalent standpoint or a team in a
box standpoint,clearlyagile.com. Come find us
(46:18):
there.
Alright. And then Clearly Agileowns a training arm, which is
the Brain Trust Group. That is aplace to go for all of your
agile certifications from scrumalliance certifications all the
way up to the scalingcertifications and a lot of
things in between. We have afantastic talent network of just
top notch trainers. More thanjust a class, we try to make it
(46:39):
fun, interactive, and engaging.
All of that is coming togetherunder, I don't know if I could
share this yet, a thing calledthe Agile Network.
Bo Motlagh (46:45):
Here we go.
Robert Shaw (46:45):
Yeah. May 10th, that is gonna be launching. But
I think there's so much badinformation that's out there
today that it was this idea thatwas born around, let's get the
best thought leaders in thespace together under one
platform regardless of who theywork for.
Bo Motlagh (47:01):
Under one roof?
Robert Shaw (47:02):
Under one roof. Let's get the top Agilist
thought leaders in the world.They are all over. We have them
from Europe and the UnitedStates under one roof, under one
platform as a place to buildcommunity knowledge and how to
get this conversation out tomore people about there are
better ways of doing it, and youmay not be seeing it even though
(47:23):
you're doing Agile. So that isMay 10th.
That's coming out,theagilenetwork.com. It's gonna
be awesome.
Bo Motlagh (47:30):
Very, very cool.
Robert Shaw (47:31):
So that's it. Shameless plugs.
Bo Motlagh (47:33):
That's great.
Robert Shaw (47:34):
It's humility causes me to say that. It's a
shameless plug. No. I enjoythis. Anytime Anytime we can get
together and chat, fantastic.
Bo Motlagh (47:41):
Absolutely. We don't always have to record it either,
but this is fun. So check outClearly Agile. Check out all of
the other amazing things thatRob is up to right now. Reach
out to him and come back formore episodes.
Thank you for listening. We'regonna be continuing to look for
different perspectives on TheHidden Chasm and explore this,
so join us on that journey. Thishas been fun. Thanks, Rob.
Josh Smith (47:59):
Thanks, Ron.
Bo Motlagh (48:01):
You've been listening to The Hidden Chasm,
brought to you by UnitedFX. Ifanything in our conversation
resonated with you today, pleasereach out. We'd love to hear
from you. Email us at podcast atunitedeffects.com, or simply
visit us atunitedeffects.comorthehiddenchasm.com.
Thanks for listening.
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