July 3, 2023 • 27 mins
Join Eveline Oehrlich and Adam Frank, VP of Product Management and Design at Armory, to discuss Observability, Developer happiness and experience, and Continuous integration vs. continuous deployment.
Adam Frank is passionate about all things product and design. He creates, influences, and greatly improves end-to-end experiences. He is helping Armory expand and grow by building top-shelf product, marketing and design teams that deliver a simple message with a simple experience.
He has over 15 years of product and development experience, specializing in building products and strategies for complex problems that enable digital transformations and organizational change to ensure growth and scale for world businesses.
He is also a DevOps Institute Ambassador, and an Advisor for Financial Services and Technology as part of Emissary.io.
The Humans of DevOps Podcast is incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.
Adam Frank is passionate about all things product and design. He creates, influences, and greatly improves end-to-end experiences. He is helping Armory expand and grow by building top-shelf product, marketing and design teams that deliver a simple message with a simple experience.
He has over 15 years of product and development experience, specializing in building products and strategies for complex problems that enable digital transformations and organizational change to ensure growth and scale for world businesses.
He is also a DevOps Institute Ambassador, and an Advisor for Financial Services and Technology as part of Emissary.io.
The Humans of DevOps Podcast is incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Narrator (00:02):
You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing thehumans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning,or the skil framework.
Adam Frank (00:16):
You know, I've seen a lot of developer advocates,
within companies really kind ofstart to look internally. One
who is kind of walks in thoseshoes of a developer is
certainly going to have the bestbest foot forward.
Eveline Oehrlich (00:33):
Welcome to humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Evelyn early Chief ResearchOfficer at DevOps Institute. Our
podcast title today is cloudnative observability developer
happiness. Yes, you can, or Oh,my, if that sounds a little bit
like the Dorsey at Kansas, it isfor a reason, because I have
(00:57):
with me, a gentleman who hasincredible knowledge across
many, many topics, and I wantedto talk to Him about everything.
But I know we only have about2025 minutes. So today, we have
with us Adam Frank. He's asenior vice president for
product and marketing at armory.Hello, Adam.
Adam Frank (01:17):
Thank you so much for having me on.
Eveline Oehrlich (01:19):
Yes, excited. Like I said, I'm very excited.
So before we get started, Iwanted to share with the
audience a little bit on yourbackground. So Adam is
passionate about all thingsproduct and design, he creates
influences and greatly improvesend to end or e to e, I just
(01:40):
heard somebody say thatexperiences, he is helping
armory expand and grow bybuilding top shelf product
marketing and design teams thatdeliver a simple message with a
simple experience. He has over15 years of product and
development experience,specializing, sorry for that
specializing in buildingproducts and strategies for
(02:02):
complex problems, problems thatenable digital transformations,
and organizational change toensure growth and scale for
businesses of the world. Now,Adam is also a DevOps Institute
ambassador, and I believe youare still advisor for financial
services and technology as partof a misery that IO, is that
(02:24):
correct? That is correct.Excellent. Well, welcome again.
And thank you for having thetime or taking the time on your
end. I know you are very, verybusy. So I really appreciate it.
And I know our listeners areappreciating it as well.
Adam Frank (02:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me. That's quite the
intro there as well.
Eveline Oehrlich (02:46):
Yes, of course. And I'm actually
surprised, you know, we haven'tactually, I am an ambassador, of
course, as well. But I'm alsoChief Research Officer, we
haven't really met in person. Socongratulations on being an
ambassador, and thank you forall of your work. Hopefully, we
get to meet in person at somepoint, because now we can, we
will see. The first thingreally, what is the take of
(03:12):
being an ambassador? And how hasthat helped you as kind of a
little bit of a want to get alittle bit more insight on what
ambassadors do to our audience?Tell us a little bit about your
role.
Adam Frank (03:24):
Sure, sure. So like you said, back in 2020, is
really where I was introduced tothe DevOps Institute. Helen Bill
was the first person that Iinteracted with, and she is
absolutely lovely, she is fullof energy. And she really
advocates for the community. Soher energy just kind of spilled
onto me to advocate for thecommunity as well. So it's
(03:47):
really about sharing theknowledge sharing the
experiences, the number ofcourses that the DevOps
Institute has been coming outwith lately, and being able to
consult on those courses,provide inputs, ideas, even
right some of the courses, themodules, the chapters, wherever
they may be, and reallycollaborate with that community
to produce something that willhopefully help other members
(04:11):
that are very interested in thetopic or trying to learn. I
think that's the impetus of allof this is that really sharing
knowledge to help others learnand grow within the vast, vast
community that we have in andaround DevOps and it in in
general. So it's, it's, it'sfantastic to be an ambassador. I
very much enjoyed it. And it'sreally helped me both from a
(04:35):
networking point of view andunderstand other people's
perspectives, but also helpunderstand other problems and
things that people are facing aswell to come up with and you
know, kind of ideate aroundsolutions to those problems,
along with keeping up withtrends and things of that
nature. It's been it's been awonderful ride so far.
Eveline Oehrlich (04:53):
Great. Well, thank you for sharing that. And
yes, shout out to Helen. She isabsolutely wonderful. She has
Add that that Nick for gettingpeople connected and excited. I
love working with her. So shoutout to her super thanks for
sharing that. In terms of atopic, I really want to first
(05:15):
address one I have alsoresearched and studied. So
you've been focusing and doingsome work around observability
for a while. Why do you thinkobservability is such a hot
topic today?
Adam Frank (05:32):
I think we could probably sum it up in in four or
five words. And that would becustomer experience and product
lead growth, bring that down tofive letters UX and plg. I think
with the complexity and scale ofinfrastructure and application,
in today's day and age, and thereach from globalization, it's
(05:55):
it's that coupled with the speedof innovation that we are
seeing, one really needs tounderstand what that customer
experience is, what is thatcustomer experiencing with the
end to end solution that you areproviding, as a software
provider as a product service.So being able to not only
(06:16):
understand the system, and howthey are interacting and
behaving, but what that customeris feeling what that customer is
doing, that's going to reallyenable you to make informed
decisions to iterate quickly. Toincrease your uptime, the way
that we really look at the worldis agility, stability, and
(06:36):
security are going to providethe best customer experience out
there. But in order to providethe agility, you need to know
where you're pivoting whatyou're iterating on. And being
able to do that quickly. Inorder to provide the stability,
you need to understand thesystems and the application and
how they're all interacting tomake sure that it is up and
available and ready to go forthat customer wherever they may
(06:58):
be. And of course, security,security is top of mind always,
but there's also the other sideof it. And that's the cost
savings. So being able to seedifferent areas of the
application that can be tuned,the infrastructure that can be
tuned to also bring cost savingsforward is going to be very,
very beneficial for any any, anyproduct in any company that is
(07:22):
that is delivering the services.
Eveline Oehrlich (07:25):
That it's really a balancing effort. And
an outside in perspective,right. As you said, from a
customer experience,perspective, we're rolling out,
we're coming in from thatperspective, making sure we have
the velocity, we have thestability, and we have the
security because my that'sessential. But at the same time,
(07:46):
we know budgets aren't that bigthis year, according to Gartner,
I think there's a 5.3% rising inIT budget. So that's not a lot
in terms of spending. So havingthat balance is where
observability fits right in.That's a great, I love that that
could be actually a nice, a nicegraphic. All right. Now, of
(08:10):
course, this has to do with thedigital pace, right, the pace of
transformation, no matter if itis in healthcare in industries,
verticals, governments, whateverthey are, we see that pace
continues as CEOs have that ontheir, on their sleeve as a
strategic initiative continuing,particularly after pandemic. And
(08:36):
that causes. But while we have apace of fast and agile and
stable and secure, there's alsoa significant challenge around
the taking of debt that creates,we also have skill gaps, and we
have not enough talents. Andthat makes everything a little
bit more complicated. But reallywhat I want to get to is the
(08:59):
technology stack is, as youmentioned, I think you said that
is becoming more and morecomplex. And it's becoming more
and more complicated. And I'massuming you're seeing that with
your clients. So when I stepback and think about our focus
on the on the in the listeningmode, maybe we have some leaders
and of course, we haveindividual contributors who need
(09:21):
to rethink their technologystack. How should they? So this
is a two part question first,how should they rethink their
tech stack today? Where and whatcan they do to consolidate the
tech stack? What are yourthoughts on that?
Adam Frank (09:37):
Great, great question. Yes, every day, we
every day both as a companyourselves and with our
customers. We see this everyday. The pace of change is the
fastest that it's ever been. Andit is not slowing down. I don't
see we don't see it slowing downanytime soon. So yes, every day.
I think some of the first thingsthat leaders can start to do is
(09:59):
really Staying close to thetrends and the best practices
that are out there. But one alsoneeds to not just make a
decision, because it's the newshiny object, it's the new shiny
toy. But is there any return oninvestment with updating their
tech stack, they'll begin tothink five years, 10 years out
down the road, but also in thatshort term, and is there
(10:21):
actually going to be returned todo this not everything needs to
be promoted to a cloud nativepiece of software. Sometimes
things just can't, the way thatthey were written, you know, we
talked to I talked to a customernot too long ago, and they're,
you know, 42 year old softwarecompany with millions of lines
of code, supporting over 20different languages at this
(10:43):
point. And by the time that theyrewrote this, they may be 42
years in the future, and theywill just have to rewrite it all
again. So it doesn't necessarilymake sense to replace everything
within the tech stack. I had agreat conversation with Kelsey
Hightower a couple of weeks ago.And you know, he and I both
(11:04):
firmly believe that Kubernetesis here. Kubernetes is certainly
here for a while. And, you know,with that, and the promise of
cloud native is always beencheaper, faster, more stable. So
I think one thing that leaderscan can definitely do is embrace
the declarative nature ofKubernetes and future oriented
solutions that are reallyembracing the declarative
(11:25):
nature. No, that's also offeringsimple experiences for people.
But when it comes down to areally careful planning, not
over analyzing, and makinginformed decisions quickly, to
be able to fail fast on whichaspects of your tech stack you
are replacing, don't try and doit all at once. Nobody ever
wants to do that just targetspecific areas. And that
(11:46):
portion, start with that portionthat really enables you to move
quicker. And we definitelyadvocate when people are looking
at different parts of their techstack. What's What's your CI CD
pipeline looking like? What'sthat process look like? Can that
be one of the first things thatyou target that will then enable
you to move much quicker withthe rest of your stack. And of
(12:07):
course, don't force anythingdown on your developers make
sure that they are part of theprocess, they are making part of
the decisions with you. Becausethey are going to be the ones
that are going to have tobenefit and use all of this. At
the end of the day.
Eveline Oehrlich (12:23):
That gets me to my next question. Great. What
is it called a hook into my nextquestion, developer experience.
We have heard about this. And Ihave to admit, Adam, I am an
infrastructure and operations. Iwouldn't say geek, because I'm
kind of an old an old guys or ageezer I guess that's the way to
say it. But I started out and Iyou know, and developers to me,
(12:45):
were always kind of a strangeanimal. This is like 1994, that
dates me, right. But anyway,just a little bit on that. And
but that's not why we're here, Iwanted to ask you, we hear a lot
about developer experiencekeeping developers happy. And as
I said, I'm an IMO myself, but Ialso covered developer and
(13:06):
infrastructure operations. As ananalyst. We have made really
great progress with DevOps andSRE and many other press best
practices and developers, weknow they don't want to do
operations. So how do we keepthese developers happy? You
already mentioned some ideasthere relative to C, ICD. We'll
(13:26):
get there in a little bit later.But what are some things our
folks can do? Even if theirdevelopers keep themselves
happy, right, Heather, andothers to keep the developers
happy?
Adam Frank (13:39):
Yeah, I think, in two words, empowerment and
transparency, with more emphasison the empowerment side of
things, developers really wantto focus they want to create,
they want to innovate, they wantto solve complex problems, and
then want to see the benefitsthat those complex problems, the
solutions to those complexproblems are providing for their
(14:00):
their users. So they need aplatform, they need a tool base,
that's going to really providethem the confidence and make
their lives easier. They don'twant to be stuck in those loops
of maintaining different piecesof infrastructure or figuring
out how to get their softwaredelivered to production. You
know, why things are failing,all that kind of stuff. So
(14:24):
they're going to be happiestwhen they're coding when they're
solving complex problems, whentheir code is being shipped out
to production in a nice, easyand simple fashion that they can
fully control with thattransparency that I had
mentioned, ops, ops also wantsto focus, create, innovate, but
also has to enable and obfuscatethe complexities that come along
(14:48):
with some of this. And reallyinstrument for visibility and
stability. I mean, coupling allof that together. And having
close relationships withdevelopers. That's really
started to really start to seethings and that velocity take
off, you really start to seethings come to fruition and, and
make the lives of developersmuch happier. Some of the things
(15:10):
that I've seen people do toreally bring us together is
start a dedicated UX program,sorry, a dedicated developer
experience DX program went inthere, that has a very strong
emphasis on improving thatdeveloper experience. So they're
evaluating tools or evaluatingprocesses, they're including the
(15:32):
developers in all of thedecisions, all of the
evaluation. So they can all makeinformed decisions together, and
really drive that experience towhere they want it to be. And at
the end, when you do have happydevelopers, you're going to have
higher retention, your velocityis going to be higher your time
to market all that kind of greatstuff. So it's a really, really
(15:52):
great area of focus and improveon within your company.
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Eveline Oehrlich (16:32):
A little side, turn down the Dorothy's past,
you said developer experienceprogram. So what kind of skills
does somebody like that need tohave?
Adam Frank (16:43):
You know, I've seen a lot of developer advocates,
within companies really kind ofstart to look internally, to
bring these programs to date,they definitely need the skills
to understand the life and theday of a developer, what a
developer is experiencing, theydefinitely need the tools to
(17:03):
understand or the experiences tounderstand what some of these
tools are, what some of theseprocesses look like, having
somebody come in off the streetwithout any development
experience whatsoever, it wouldbe a very tough job for them to
improve that developerexperience. So one who is kind
of walks in those shoes of adeveloper is certainly going to
(17:23):
have the best best foot forward.
Eveline Oehrlich (17:28):
Great idea, I'm actually going to add that
to my upskilling report. As apotential idea in the area of
start WM process, it's notreally in tech, federally, and
in total, just kind of alloverride. Excellent idea. I love
that skill building. That's thenext topic I want to explore
(17:50):
with you. So we talked a littlebit about it already. But I'm a
little biased, maybe because ofwhere I come from, but I won't
tell you which bias I have untilyou answered the question. So
what do you what do you think isthe most is the must have skill
building category? Is it aroundpeople or humans? Is it around
(18:12):
technology? Is it around bestpractice models and frameworks?
Is it leadership? Or is thereanything else?
Adam Frank (18:19):
Yeah, I mean, given the the title of this podcast, I
can probably guess, where wereyou lean in this? My guess is
correct, I would lean the sameway. I think a good mix is
always a sound strategy, you'llalways need a level of
leadership that can believe inwhat you're doing, they can
inspire others and they can,they can downright execute
(18:42):
against your strategy and yourplan. But the right people can
learn tech, so I always believethat starting with the humans
starting with the people, andthe rest kind of comes together.
When you have people that arehave a willingness to learn,
they have have the ability tofoster great relationships with
people collaboration,communication, all that kind of
(19:03):
good stuff. A lot of that stuffis is a lot more difficult to
teach in people than the actualtech is and the best practices
the best practices will comefrom learning what the new tech
is and and having those peoplethat are very capable and very
willing so I always believestarting with people is the
(19:23):
right choice
Eveline Oehrlich (19:25):
you know music to my ears, but you will be some
you will be surprised as I havebeen for the last five years in
doing this research thatorganizations particularly IT
teams are hiring for technologyskills. That's to me right maybe
it is it maybe it's a it's ait's a muscle they have trained
(19:47):
for many many years where theywhere they think that they need
to bring and hire for technologyskills. To me sometimes shakes
shake my head because AbsolutelyI agree with you. It has to be
Around to humans and the empathyand the collaboration and the
problem solving thecommunication. Because without
that, it makes it verydifficult. But as I said, in, in
(20:10):
the research, that's not whatit's saying, I've been beating
the drums on that. And maybethis is the year where we can
maybe make a little bit more,you know, an inroad on that.
Anyway, I have another two partquestion. This is now into, of
course, your favorite topic ofcontinuous integration versus
continuous deployment. Give usyour thoughts on these two very
(20:33):
important topics. And relativeto each other, I hear sometimes
there are folks talking itinterchangeably. And I remember,
you know, having conversationswith they said the same, it's
not the same, it's different.And here's why. So what are your
thoughts on those things, andthen I have another part, but
(20:55):
I'll hold that until we're donewith that.
Adam Frank (20:58):
Excellent, definitely not the same thing.
However, hand in hand, it'svery, very difficult to have one
without the other, you know,almost impossible, continuous
integration and continuousdeployment. They're like peanut
butter and jelly. I mean, thesetwo are just absolutely made for
each other a match that is likeno other. But they are very,
(21:20):
very different. ContinuousIntegration is really about
producing the highest qualityartifacts as quickly as you can.
Continuous Deployment is aboutgetting that artifact out to
production, and to your users assafely and as soundly as
possible. So to two verydifferent things. However, they
(21:41):
do work hand in hand, when welook at continuous integration,
this is really where most peoplestart. And this typically been
around a little bit longer,taking in a lot of the build and
test automation to produce thatartifact. And I think it's
really only been the last coupleof years, that continuous
deployment is starting to catchon more and more, giving people
(22:04):
that competitive advantage toiterate quickly, to understand
that a user is more acceleratethe time to market, all of that
kind of really great stuff. Sothat's absolutely needed. And to
have a sound strategy back tothe agility, the stability and
the security. That's reallywhere continuous deployment
comes in, giving you the abilityto get that code out to your
(22:24):
users quickly, but to be able todo it safely and soundly. So you
can control the blast radius,no, look at 5% of your user
base, you can start to shifttraffic between different users.
But ultimately getting that codeout there. And really empowering
back to empowering and makingdevelopers have a great
experience, empowering them todeploy on commit, and having
(22:47):
that confidence to be able to dothat. And having that
transparency to watch that codego through Dev through staging,
you know, on to production.
Eveline Oehrlich (22:58):
Well, just something on the side. For those
who don't know, peanut butterand jelly for us, Europeans, it
is red wine and chocolate.Right? Just FYI. But so armory
provides products and solutionsin that space. Tell us a little
(23:20):
bit about what you guys have tooffer in that area.
Adam Frank (23:24):
Yeah, absolutely. So we specialize in continuous
deployment. And in particular,we have a declarative model,
we're deploying out toKubernetes. And in fact, we were
the first and still the onlythat I'm aware of that has a
declarative model that actuallyorchestrates that deployment
across all of your Kubernetesclusters and environments. No
(23:45):
matter how many you have. It'sreally at any scale. So you
know, hooking up to continuousintegration like GitHub using
GitHub actions. So empowerdevelopers to be able to deploy
on commit, and orchestrate thatdeployment. Throughout dev
tests. We integrate with thingslike security scanning,
(24:08):
integrate with loggingsolutions, observability
solutions to be able to runautomated Canary analysis. So
you understand, is this changeaffecting my user base? How is
it affecting my user base? Is itclose to the baseline baseline
is the same, all that kind ofreally good stuff, to really
help our customers acceleratetheir time to market? You know,
(24:29):
move quicker, have that agilitythat they need to understand
their users and their user base,iterate quickly. But do it in a
nice, safe, sound and reliableway? Wow,
Eveline Oehrlich (24:40):
great. You are really wicked smart about all
these topics. I love it. This isgreat. We could continue. But I
have been looking at the clockand it's amazing how quickly 25
minutes pass. So I have aclosing question has nothing To
Do With CI CD, or maybe a littlebit with peanut butter and jelly
(25:04):
or red wine and chocolate, butwhat do you do for fun if you
don't do what you do at yourteams as an ambassador or
otherwise? What do you do forfun, Adam?
Adam Frank (25:14):
Yes, sir. Certainly closer to the red wine and
jelly. Having grown up inCanada, you really need to do
something throughout the wintermonths. So since it is the very
beginning of March, the sun isstarting to shine. But there's
still snow on the ground here. Ivery much enjoy snowboarding.
(25:35):
I've played hockey for a lot ofmy life and playing sports. But
most importantly, I have abeautiful daughter who has
almost a year and a half, and afantastic wife and partner. So I
very much enjoy spending a lotof my time with them. And just
watching her grow right now isone of the funniest things that
(25:55):
that I could possibly do with mydad.
Eveline Oehrlich (25:57):
Oh, fantastic. That is fantastic. Embrace it,
because they grow up fast. Ihave two daughters myself, and
they are 25 and 27. And oh,well. I love them. But they're,
they're their own. This has beenfantastic conversation. Thank
you so much for talking to usand sharing your wealth of
knowledge, your excitement andyour I can hear the passion. And
(26:21):
I could hear the little accentthere. There's another thing we
have in common. I used to livein Colorado, I love to ski and I
have an accent because I'm fromGermany. And um, this has been
great. Thank you so much. Thankyou so much for the pleasure. We
have been talking to Adam Frank,Senior Vice President, product
and marketing at armory. Adamagain, wonderful. Enjoy.
(26:44):
Hopefully the upcoming weekendsoon have some fun with your
daughter. And here is againhumans of the ops podcast is
produced by DevOps Institute.Our audio production team
includes Julia pape, and BrendanLee. I am humans of DevOps
podcast, executive producerevolutionarily. If you would
(27:07):
like to join us on the podcast,please contact us at humans of
DevOps podcast at DevOpsinstitute.com. I cannot imagine
a longer email address and thatanyway, I'm Evelyn, I'll talk to
you soon.
Narrator (27:25):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget tojoin our global community to get
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You belong
You're listening to the humans of DevOps podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing thehumans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning,or the skil framework.
Adam Frank (00:16):
You know, I've seen a lot of developer advocates,
within companies really kind ofstart to look internally. One
who is kind of walks in thoseshoes of a developer is
certainly going to have the bestbest foot forward.
Eveline Oehrlich (00:33):
Welcome to humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Evelyn early Chief ResearchOfficer at DevOps Institute. Our
podcast title today is cloudnative observability developer
happiness. Yes, you can, or Oh,my, if that sounds a little bit
like the Dorsey at Kansas, it isfor a reason, because I have
(00:57):
with me, a gentleman who hasincredible knowledge across
many, many topics, and I wantedto talk to Him about everything.
But I know we only have about2025 minutes. So today, we have
with us Adam Frank. He's asenior vice president for
product and marketing at armory.Hello, Adam.
Adam Frank (01:17):
Thank you so much for having me on.
Eveline Oehrlich (01:19):
Yes, excited. Like I said, I'm very excited.
So before we get started, Iwanted to share with the
audience a little bit on yourbackground. So Adam is
passionate about all thingsproduct and design, he creates
influences and greatly improvesend to end or e to e, I just
(01:40):
heard somebody say thatexperiences, he is helping
armory expand and grow bybuilding top shelf product
marketing and design teams thatdeliver a simple message with a
simple experience. He has over15 years of product and
development experience,specializing, sorry for that
specializing in buildingproducts and strategies for
(02:02):
complex problems, problems thatenable digital transformations,
and organizational change toensure growth and scale for
businesses of the world. Now,Adam is also a DevOps Institute
ambassador, and I believe youare still advisor for financial
services and technology as partof a misery that IO, is that
(02:24):
correct? That is correct.Excellent. Well, welcome again.
And thank you for having thetime or taking the time on your
end. I know you are very, verybusy. So I really appreciate it.
And I know our listeners areappreciating it as well.
Adam Frank (02:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me. That's quite the
intro there as well.
Eveline Oehrlich (02:46):
Yes, of course. And I'm actually
surprised, you know, we haven'tactually, I am an ambassador, of
course, as well. But I'm alsoChief Research Officer, we
haven't really met in person. Socongratulations on being an
ambassador, and thank you forall of your work. Hopefully, we
get to meet in person at somepoint, because now we can, we
will see. The first thingreally, what is the take of
(03:12):
being an ambassador? And how hasthat helped you as kind of a
little bit of a want to get alittle bit more insight on what
ambassadors do to our audience?Tell us a little bit about your
role.
Adam Frank (03:24):
Sure, sure. So like you said, back in 2020, is
really where I was introduced tothe DevOps Institute. Helen Bill
was the first person that Iinteracted with, and she is
absolutely lovely, she is fullof energy. And she really
advocates for the community. Soher energy just kind of spilled
onto me to advocate for thecommunity as well. So it's
(03:47):
really about sharing theknowledge sharing the
experiences, the number ofcourses that the DevOps
Institute has been coming outwith lately, and being able to
consult on those courses,provide inputs, ideas, even
right some of the courses, themodules, the chapters, wherever
they may be, and reallycollaborate with that community
to produce something that willhopefully help other members
(04:11):
that are very interested in thetopic or trying to learn. I
think that's the impetus of allof this is that really sharing
knowledge to help others learnand grow within the vast, vast
community that we have in andaround DevOps and it in in
general. So it's, it's, it'sfantastic to be an ambassador. I
very much enjoyed it. And it'sreally helped me both from a
(04:35):
networking point of view andunderstand other people's
perspectives, but also helpunderstand other problems and
things that people are facing aswell to come up with and you
know, kind of ideate aroundsolutions to those problems,
along with keeping up withtrends and things of that
nature. It's been it's been awonderful ride so far.
Eveline Oehrlich (04:53):
Great. Well, thank you for sharing that. And
yes, shout out to Helen. She isabsolutely wonderful. She has
Add that that Nick for gettingpeople connected and excited. I
love working with her. So shoutout to her super thanks for
sharing that. In terms of atopic, I really want to first
(05:15):
address one I have alsoresearched and studied. So
you've been focusing and doingsome work around observability
for a while. Why do you thinkobservability is such a hot
topic today?
Adam Frank (05:32):
I think we could probably sum it up in in four or
five words. And that would becustomer experience and product
lead growth, bring that down tofive letters UX and plg. I think
with the complexity and scale ofinfrastructure and application,
in today's day and age, and thereach from globalization, it's
(05:55):
it's that coupled with the speedof innovation that we are
seeing, one really needs tounderstand what that customer
experience is, what is thatcustomer experiencing with the
end to end solution that you areproviding, as a software
provider as a product service.So being able to not only
(06:16):
understand the system, and howthey are interacting and
behaving, but what that customeris feeling what that customer is
doing, that's going to reallyenable you to make informed
decisions to iterate quickly. Toincrease your uptime, the way
that we really look at the worldis agility, stability, and
(06:36):
security are going to providethe best customer experience out
there. But in order to providethe agility, you need to know
where you're pivoting whatyou're iterating on. And being
able to do that quickly. Inorder to provide the stability,
you need to understand thesystems and the application and
how they're all interacting tomake sure that it is up and
available and ready to go forthat customer wherever they may
(06:58):
be. And of course, security,security is top of mind always,
but there's also the other sideof it. And that's the cost
savings. So being able to seedifferent areas of the
application that can be tuned,the infrastructure that can be
tuned to also bring cost savingsforward is going to be very,
very beneficial for any any, anyproduct in any company that is
(07:22):
that is delivering the services.
Eveline Oehrlich (07:25):
That it's really a balancing effort. And
an outside in perspective,right. As you said, from a
customer experience,perspective, we're rolling out,
we're coming in from thatperspective, making sure we have
the velocity, we have thestability, and we have the
security because my that'sessential. But at the same time,
(07:46):
we know budgets aren't that bigthis year, according to Gartner,
I think there's a 5.3% rising inIT budget. So that's not a lot
in terms of spending. So havingthat balance is where
observability fits right in.That's a great, I love that that
could be actually a nice, a nicegraphic. All right. Now, of
(08:10):
course, this has to do with thedigital pace, right, the pace of
transformation, no matter if itis in healthcare in industries,
verticals, governments, whateverthey are, we see that pace
continues as CEOs have that ontheir, on their sleeve as a
strategic initiative continuing,particularly after pandemic. And
(08:36):
that causes. But while we have apace of fast and agile and
stable and secure, there's alsoa significant challenge around
the taking of debt that creates,we also have skill gaps, and we
have not enough talents. Andthat makes everything a little
bit more complicated. But reallywhat I want to get to is the
(08:59):
technology stack is, as youmentioned, I think you said that
is becoming more and morecomplex. And it's becoming more
and more complicated. And I'massuming you're seeing that with
your clients. So when I stepback and think about our focus
on the on the in the listeningmode, maybe we have some leaders
and of course, we haveindividual contributors who need
(09:21):
to rethink their technologystack. How should they? So this
is a two part question first,how should they rethink their
tech stack today? Where and whatcan they do to consolidate the
tech stack? What are yourthoughts on that?
Adam Frank (09:37):
Great, great question. Yes, every day, we
every day both as a companyourselves and with our
customers. We see this everyday. The pace of change is the
fastest that it's ever been. Andit is not slowing down. I don't
see we don't see it slowing downanytime soon. So yes, every day.
I think some of the first thingsthat leaders can start to do is
(09:59):
really Staying close to thetrends and the best practices
that are out there. But one alsoneeds to not just make a
decision, because it's the newshiny object, it's the new shiny
toy. But is there any return oninvestment with updating their
tech stack, they'll begin tothink five years, 10 years out
down the road, but also in thatshort term, and is there
(10:21):
actually going to be returned todo this not everything needs to
be promoted to a cloud nativepiece of software. Sometimes
things just can't, the way thatthey were written, you know, we
talked to I talked to a customernot too long ago, and they're,
you know, 42 year old softwarecompany with millions of lines
of code, supporting over 20different languages at this
(10:43):
point. And by the time that theyrewrote this, they may be 42
years in the future, and theywill just have to rewrite it all
again. So it doesn't necessarilymake sense to replace everything
within the tech stack. I had agreat conversation with Kelsey
Hightower a couple of weeks ago.And you know, he and I both
(11:04):
firmly believe that Kubernetesis here. Kubernetes is certainly
here for a while. And, you know,with that, and the promise of
cloud native is always beencheaper, faster, more stable. So
I think one thing that leaderscan can definitely do is embrace
the declarative nature ofKubernetes and future oriented
solutions that are reallyembracing the declarative
(11:25):
nature. No, that's also offeringsimple experiences for people.
But when it comes down to areally careful planning, not
over analyzing, and makinginformed decisions quickly, to
be able to fail fast on whichaspects of your tech stack you
are replacing, don't try and doit all at once. Nobody ever
wants to do that just targetspecific areas. And that
(11:46):
portion, start with that portionthat really enables you to move
quicker. And we definitelyadvocate when people are looking
at different parts of their techstack. What's What's your CI CD
pipeline looking like? What'sthat process look like? Can that
be one of the first things thatyou target that will then enable
you to move much quicker withthe rest of your stack. And of
(12:07):
course, don't force anythingdown on your developers make
sure that they are part of theprocess, they are making part of
the decisions with you. Becausethey are going to be the ones
that are going to have tobenefit and use all of this. At
the end of the day.
Eveline Oehrlich (12:23):
That gets me to my next question. Great. What
is it called a hook into my nextquestion, developer experience.
We have heard about this. And Ihave to admit, Adam, I am an
infrastructure and operations. Iwouldn't say geek, because I'm
kind of an old an old guys or ageezer I guess that's the way to
say it. But I started out and Iyou know, and developers to me,
(12:45):
were always kind of a strangeanimal. This is like 1994, that
dates me, right. But anyway,just a little bit on that. And
but that's not why we're here, Iwanted to ask you, we hear a lot
about developer experiencekeeping developers happy. And as
I said, I'm an IMO myself, but Ialso covered developer and
(13:06):
infrastructure operations. As ananalyst. We have made really
great progress with DevOps andSRE and many other press best
practices and developers, weknow they don't want to do
operations. So how do we keepthese developers happy? You
already mentioned some ideasthere relative to C, ICD. We'll
(13:26):
get there in a little bit later.But what are some things our
folks can do? Even if theirdevelopers keep themselves
happy, right, Heather, andothers to keep the developers
happy?
Adam Frank (13:39):
Yeah, I think, in two words, empowerment and
transparency, with more emphasison the empowerment side of
things, developers really wantto focus they want to create,
they want to innovate, they wantto solve complex problems, and
then want to see the benefitsthat those complex problems, the
solutions to those complexproblems are providing for their
(14:00):
their users. So they need aplatform, they need a tool base,
that's going to really providethem the confidence and make
their lives easier. They don'twant to be stuck in those loops
of maintaining different piecesof infrastructure or figuring
out how to get their softwaredelivered to production. You
know, why things are failing,all that kind of stuff. So
(14:24):
they're going to be happiestwhen they're coding when they're
solving complex problems, whentheir code is being shipped out
to production in a nice, easyand simple fashion that they can
fully control with thattransparency that I had
mentioned, ops, ops also wantsto focus, create, innovate, but
also has to enable and obfuscatethe complexities that come along
(14:48):
with some of this. And reallyinstrument for visibility and
stability. I mean, coupling allof that together. And having
close relationships withdevelopers. That's really
started to really start to seethings and that velocity take
off, you really start to seethings come to fruition and, and
make the lives of developersmuch happier. Some of the things
(15:10):
that I've seen people do toreally bring us together is
start a dedicated UX program,sorry, a dedicated developer
experience DX program went inthere, that has a very strong
emphasis on improving thatdeveloper experience. So they're
evaluating tools or evaluatingprocesses, they're including the
(15:32):
developers in all of thedecisions, all of the
evaluation. So they can all makeinformed decisions together, and
really drive that experience towhere they want it to be. And at
the end, when you do have happydevelopers, you're going to have
higher retention, your velocityis going to be higher your time
to market all that kind of greatstuff. So it's a really, really
(15:52):
great area of focus and improveon within your company.
Narrator (15:56):
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way to stay on top of the latestDevOps trends, and improve your
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(16:18):
including virtual sponsorbooths, competitions, and
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Eveline Oehrlich (16:32):
A little side, turn down the Dorothy's past,
you said developer experienceprogram. So what kind of skills
does somebody like that need tohave?
Adam Frank (16:43):
You know, I've seen a lot of developer advocates,
within companies really kind ofstart to look internally, to
bring these programs to date,they definitely need the skills
to understand the life and theday of a developer, what a
developer is experiencing, theydefinitely need the tools to
(17:03):
understand or the experiences tounderstand what some of these
tools are, what some of theseprocesses look like, having
somebody come in off the streetwithout any development
experience whatsoever, it wouldbe a very tough job for them to
improve that developerexperience. So one who is kind
of walks in those shoes of adeveloper is certainly going to
(17:23):
have the best best foot forward.
Eveline Oehrlich (17:28):
Great idea, I'm actually going to add that
to my upskilling report. As apotential idea in the area of
start WM process, it's notreally in tech, federally, and
in total, just kind of alloverride. Excellent idea. I love
that skill building. That's thenext topic I want to explore
(17:50):
with you. So we talked a littlebit about it already. But I'm a
little biased, maybe because ofwhere I come from, but I won't
tell you which bias I have untilyou answered the question. So
what do you what do you think isthe most is the must have skill
building category? Is it aroundpeople or humans? Is it around
(18:12):
technology? Is it around bestpractice models and frameworks?
Is it leadership? Or is thereanything else?
Adam Frank (18:19):
Yeah, I mean, given the the title of this podcast, I
can probably guess, where wereyou lean in this? My guess is
correct, I would lean the sameway. I think a good mix is
always a sound strategy, you'llalways need a level of
leadership that can believe inwhat you're doing, they can
inspire others and they can,they can downright execute
(18:42):
against your strategy and yourplan. But the right people can
learn tech, so I always believethat starting with the humans
starting with the people, andthe rest kind of comes together.
When you have people that arehave a willingness to learn,
they have have the ability tofoster great relationships with
people collaboration,communication, all that kind of
(19:03):
good stuff. A lot of that stuffis is a lot more difficult to
teach in people than the actualtech is and the best practices
the best practices will comefrom learning what the new tech
is and and having those peoplethat are very capable and very
willing so I always believestarting with people is the
(19:23):
right choice
Eveline Oehrlich (19:25):
you know music to my ears, but you will be some
you will be surprised as I havebeen for the last five years in
doing this research thatorganizations particularly IT
teams are hiring for technologyskills. That's to me right maybe
it is it maybe it's a it's ait's a muscle they have trained
(19:47):
for many many years where theywhere they think that they need
to bring and hire for technologyskills. To me sometimes shakes
shake my head because AbsolutelyI agree with you. It has to be
Around to humans and the empathyand the collaboration and the
problem solving thecommunication. Because without
that, it makes it verydifficult. But as I said, in, in
(20:10):
the research, that's not whatit's saying, I've been beating
the drums on that. And maybethis is the year where we can
maybe make a little bit more,you know, an inroad on that.
Anyway, I have another two partquestion. This is now into, of
course, your favorite topic ofcontinuous integration versus
continuous deployment. Give usyour thoughts on these two very
(20:33):
important topics. And relativeto each other, I hear sometimes
there are folks talking itinterchangeably. And I remember,
you know, having conversationswith they said the same, it's
not the same, it's different.And here's why. So what are your
thoughts on those things, andthen I have another part, but
(20:55):
I'll hold that until we're donewith that.
Adam Frank (20:58):
Excellent, definitely not the same thing.
However, hand in hand, it'svery, very difficult to have one
without the other, you know,almost impossible, continuous
integration and continuousdeployment. They're like peanut
butter and jelly. I mean, thesetwo are just absolutely made for
each other a match that is likeno other. But they are very,
(21:20):
very different. ContinuousIntegration is really about
producing the highest qualityartifacts as quickly as you can.
Continuous Deployment is aboutgetting that artifact out to
production, and to your users assafely and as soundly as
possible. So to two verydifferent things. However, they
(21:41):
do work hand in hand, when welook at continuous integration,
this is really where most peoplestart. And this typically been
around a little bit longer,taking in a lot of the build and
test automation to produce thatartifact. And I think it's
really only been the last coupleof years, that continuous
deployment is starting to catchon more and more, giving people
(22:04):
that competitive advantage toiterate quickly, to understand
that a user is more acceleratethe time to market, all of that
kind of really great stuff. Sothat's absolutely needed. And to
have a sound strategy back tothe agility, the stability and
the security. That's reallywhere continuous deployment
comes in, giving you the abilityto get that code out to your
(22:24):
users quickly, but to be able todo it safely and soundly. So you
can control the blast radius,no, look at 5% of your user
base, you can start to shifttraffic between different users.
But ultimately getting that codeout there. And really empowering
back to empowering and makingdevelopers have a great
experience, empowering them todeploy on commit, and having
(22:47):
that confidence to be able to dothat. And having that
transparency to watch that codego through Dev through staging,
you know, on to production.
Eveline Oehrlich (22:58):
Well, just something on the side. For those
who don't know, peanut butterand jelly for us, Europeans, it
is red wine and chocolate.Right? Just FYI. But so armory
provides products and solutionsin that space. Tell us a little
(23:20):
bit about what you guys have tooffer in that area.
Adam Frank (23:24):
Yeah, absolutely. So we specialize in continuous
deployment. And in particular,we have a declarative model,
we're deploying out toKubernetes. And in fact, we were
the first and still the onlythat I'm aware of that has a
declarative model that actuallyorchestrates that deployment
across all of your Kubernetesclusters and environments. No
(23:45):
matter how many you have. It'sreally at any scale. So you
know, hooking up to continuousintegration like GitHub using
GitHub actions. So empowerdevelopers to be able to deploy
on commit, and orchestrate thatdeployment. Throughout dev
tests. We integrate with thingslike security scanning,
(24:08):
integrate with loggingsolutions, observability
solutions to be able to runautomated Canary analysis. So
you understand, is this changeaffecting my user base? How is
it affecting my user base? Is itclose to the baseline baseline
is the same, all that kind ofreally good stuff, to really
help our customers acceleratetheir time to market? You know,
(24:29):
move quicker, have that agilitythat they need to understand
their users and their user base,iterate quickly. But do it in a
nice, safe, sound and reliableway? Wow,
Eveline Oehrlich (24:40):
great. You are really wicked smart about all
these topics. I love it. This isgreat. We could continue. But I
have been looking at the clockand it's amazing how quickly 25
minutes pass. So I have aclosing question has nothing To
Do With CI CD, or maybe a littlebit with peanut butter and jelly
(25:04):
or red wine and chocolate, butwhat do you do for fun if you
don't do what you do at yourteams as an ambassador or
otherwise? What do you do forfun, Adam?
Adam Frank (25:14):
Yes, sir. Certainly closer to the red wine and
jelly. Having grown up inCanada, you really need to do
something throughout the wintermonths. So since it is the very
beginning of March, the sun isstarting to shine. But there's
still snow on the ground here. Ivery much enjoy snowboarding.
(25:35):
I've played hockey for a lot ofmy life and playing sports. But
most importantly, I have abeautiful daughter who has
almost a year and a half, and afantastic wife and partner. So I
very much enjoy spending a lotof my time with them. And just
watching her grow right now isone of the funniest things that
(25:55):
that I could possibly do with mydad.
Eveline Oehrlich (25:57):
Oh, fantastic. That is fantastic. Embrace it,
because they grow up fast. Ihave two daughters myself, and
they are 25 and 27. And oh,well. I love them. But they're,
they're their own. This has beenfantastic conversation. Thank
you so much for talking to usand sharing your wealth of
knowledge, your excitement andyour I can hear the passion. And
(26:21):
I could hear the little accentthere. There's another thing we
have in common. I used to livein Colorado, I love to ski and I
have an accent because I'm fromGermany. And um, this has been
great. Thank you so much. Thankyou so much for the pleasure. We
have been talking to Adam Frank,Senior Vice President, product
and marketing at armory. Adamagain, wonderful. Enjoy.
(26:44):
Hopefully the upcoming weekendsoon have some fun with your
daughter. And here is againhumans of the ops podcast is
produced by DevOps Institute.Our audio production team
includes Julia pape, and BrendanLee. I am humans of DevOps
podcast, executive producerevolutionarily. If you would
(27:07):
like to join us on the podcast,please contact us at humans of
DevOps podcast at DevOpsinstitute.com. I cannot imagine
a longer email address and thatanyway, I'm Evelyn, I'll talk to
you soon.
Narrator (27:25):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget tojoin our global community to get
access to even more greatresources like this. Until next
time, remember, you are part ofsomething bigger than yourself.
You belong
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