February 15, 2023 • 28 mins
In this episode, Eveline Oehrlich is joined by Marco Gianotten to discuss how to master the art of a perfect experience.
Marco is founder and CEO of Giarte. His badge of honor in the C-suite is 'The Friendly Insultant'.
Marco is well-known for outside-in market views and creative problem solving. Marco is seen as a though leader in Xperience Management and XLA®.
Enjoy the Humans of DevOps Podcast? We’re incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.
Want access to more DevOps-focused content and learning? When you join SKILup IT Learning you gain the tools, resources and knowledge to help your organization adapt and respond to the challenges of today.
Have questions, feedback or just want to chat about the podcast? Send us an email at podcast@devopsinstitute.com
Marco is founder and CEO of Giarte. His badge of honor in the C-suite is 'The Friendly Insultant'.
Marco is well-known for outside-in market views and creative problem solving. Marco is seen as a though leader in Xperience Management and XLA®.
Enjoy the Humans of DevOps Podcast? We’re incredibly grateful to be voted one of the Best 25 DevOps Podcasts by Feedspot.
Want access to more DevOps-focused content and learning? When you join SKILup IT Learning you gain the tools, resources and knowledge to help your organization adapt and respond to the challenges of today.
Have questions, feedback or just want to chat about the podcast? Send us an email at podcast@devopsinstitute.com
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Episode Transcript
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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.
Marco Gianotten (00:17):
So, it's like yin and yang. But there's Yang,
but there was no yet soexcellent is the Yang into this
funny, crazy world. Perfectexample, if you have a first
full resolution, you also need afirst class experience.
Eveline Oehrlich (00:33):
Welcome to Humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Eveline Oehrlich, Chief ResearchOfficer at the DevOps Institute.
Our title for the podcast todayis "How to Master the Art of a
Perfect Experience". I'm hopingthat this title is making you
curious. Well, I'm curious I'mvery curious for the upcoming
(00:53):
conversation and I'm excited tohave a fantastic guests today.
Today, we have with us MarcoGianotten . He is the founder
and CEO of Giarte. Hello, Marco,
Marco Gianotten (01:06):
Yes, well, thanks for having me. I'm really
looking forward to this podcast.
Eveline Oehrlich (01:11):
Again, I am excited to speak to you today.
Let me give our listeners alittle bit of a background on
you. So I'll talk to you aboutyou in third person. I hope
that's okay. So Marco's badge ofhonor in the C suite is the
friendly insult and I love thatMarco is well known for outside
in market views and creativeproblem solving. He's also seen
(01:34):
as a thought leader inexperience management and
axillae. We'll get to that in alittle bit later. His favorite
saying Do or do not. There is notry. He's very sharp,
disruptive, a pioneer of theexperience revolution likes to
speak at home and abroad andpushes change into overdrive
(01:55):
with compelling arguments toact. I love this description. I
hope Marco This is a compliment,of course to you. Is there
anything I have missed?
Marco Gianotten (02:07):
No know, well, that I want to be a chef. But
I'm a failed chef. But that'sfor the aftermath of this
podcast. No, it makes me veryhumble, and also very proud. So
thank you for being on thispodcast.
Eveline Oehrlich (02:21):
Well, thank you again, welcome again. And
how I found your micro was I didof course research in and who I
would want to bring in to talkabout service level agreements
and all of those wonderfultopics. And I found a I think it
was on LinkedIn where you saidthat SLA stands for secret lies
and assumptions, which reallycaught my attention. As we are
(02:45):
in the month of February duringa lot of conversations and focus
on the topic of Site ReliabilityEngineering, we, of course, are
very interested in the topics ofSLA s KPIs and OKRs. And that is
really, why I thought I have totalk to you. So tell me about
(03:07):
the statement secret lies andassumptions. What made you say
that?
Marco Gianotten (03:12):
Well, I love it. I love DevOps in ITIL. They
have many descriptions, startingwith the word service, like a
service level report, or have aservice level objective, or a
service level agreement orservice manager or service
designed but actually, it's notabout service. It's about
process. So to Beatty, businessmanagers an SLA stands for
(03:34):
secret license assumptions. Forexample, at a large retailer,
all the it suppliers all theoutsourcing the whole landscape,
everybody was protecting the SLAbut the shelves were empty. So
system availability was theirtruth but shelf availability was
the truth of the business. So ifthe shelves are empty in the
(03:54):
basket size is empty and yourcustomers are in a happy I don't
give a crap about an SLA. Youdon't do a good job. So this is
I wanted to reinvent the wordSLA it's still a service level
agreement with for to thebusiness when it doesn't work
when it's a watermelon so it'sgreen inside all the metrics are
green in the service levelreport. But actually the
(04:17):
atmosphere the surrounding theemotions are in the red zone.
You have a watermelon and thenwhen I came over and did
something else so it was secretlife and assumption and and
outsourcing I call it sore loseragreement to catch my drift it's
it's something okay, what's thetruth? What's reality and you
can you don't hide behind yourown reality and claim I do a
(04:38):
great job as it you don't do agreat job. But it is so
important to the business thatwe're not able to talk mumbo
jumbo Tech, we have to talk thelanguage of the business.
Eveline Oehrlich (04:50):
Beautiful. Let's explore a little bit about
Giarte. You're the founder ofGiarte. I'd Love for you to
share with our listeners alittle bit about what what you
all do at Giarte.
Marco Gianotten (05:03):
So we're, we're focused on bringing touch into
tech. So, for true nerds werelike, We're called the cities of
it. And we're proud of that webring into touch normally, when
you say the word empathy in asoftware company, you get fired.
We bring empathy, we bringexperience to the world of tech.
(05:25):
So you have the general trend ofexperience management, that's,
that's real big that we bringexperience management into the
world of tech, and technologyand outsourcing an ecosystem. So
we focus on the X. And that'sabout three things that's about
customer experience, or employeeexperience, or developer
happiness. So the human, it'sabout business impact. And the
(05:48):
funny thing is, if systems godown, the word outreach and
outreach, outreach, differentone letter. So that's the
business impact. And the thirdone is about collaboration,
about Win Win by design. Sothese are the three value
drivers. And we put it into aconcept and that concept evolved
into a framework. And we callthat now XLH, the experience
(06:11):
level agreement. Very good helplarge, we sell we help large
companies with Well, let's saySteve thinks it's a mindset. So
flip thinking, great example isthere was a famous German, or
there still is famous Germancarmaker in Bavarian, and they
claim for damn file on there,enjoy driving, but they use 853
(06:36):
KPIs just for workplacemanagement. So there was no
emotional or experience metricincluded. So that was a typical
Secrets, Lies and assumptionthat was not actually the
reality. So helping thosecompanies to get into the
mindset. And having the skillslike for example, Experience
Management, what kind ofcapability is that? And also,
(07:00):
what kind of tools do you use,to measure to monitor to
optimize and use experiencebecause from experience
everything that's digitallyrelated.
Eveline Oehrlich (07:10):
So something caught my attention on your
website. And again, this isrelated to our months of Site
Reliability Engineering, and I'mgoing to quote from your
website, it says, excellent is apowerful new addition to the
traditional IT service levelagreements, or SLA is one that
builds on the SLA concept bymeasuring human sentiment and
(07:32):
using this to break down silos,and think and act from the
perspective of a user. So I havea three prong question. First,
explain to us what are x delays?Second, how different are they
from service level agreements?And can I if I am in that, for
(07:55):
example, company you weretalking about or any others if
I'm managing SLAs? Can I movefrom SLA s to xls? And how would
that look?
Marco Gianotten (08:05):
Oh, great questions. Okay, the first one,
okay, what's an excellent, itstands for experience level
agreement. Actually, it's aframework, but also a commitment
to apply Experience Managementin organizations and ecosystems,
for example, outsourcingrelationships. So it's a
framework and a commitment. Thesecond question is, okay, you
(08:29):
have the world of azules andITIL. And we're, we're agnostic.
So you have to rethink about it.And it is left brain oriented.
So it's about the details. Andif we look to SLA, it's about
the important details. It'sabout process. First, it's about
(08:52):
tangible outputs, like theefficiency of freight or of
surfer so uptime, oravailability. So it's technology
centric. So actually, it's aboutthe bigger picture. It's about
the impact you have on thebusiness and especially human
beings. So it's like yin andyang. But there's Yang, but
there was no Yang. So excellentis the Yang into this funny,
(09:14):
crazy world of tech. Forexample, if you have a first
call resolution measurement,well, you also need a first
class experience. So you canlook at incident management, but
also okay, what was the impacton lost productivity? You can
focus on problems but alsoprevent them because you're
repeat. It's the same differencebetween if a product is not
(09:38):
available on the shelf becauseof an IT problem. That's
reality. And if you claim thatthe system is still up, that's
not reality, because thebusiness is hurt, and people are
not happy. So at klm theystarted rethinking about their
metrics. And eventually they arein business so flying planes Got
(10:00):
it, but they need it to supporttheir main business. So if you
have a flight delayed due to it,because above and below the wing
IT systems fill, then you haveflight delay due to it. And our
goal as it is to have no flightdelays due to it. Because if I
have a flight delay, that'scosting you money, you have to
(10:20):
pay a penalty, your net promoterscore will go down. Because if
I'm there, you know, I'm notable to fly as a customer, I'm
not happy, I wouldn't recommendyou and you have to change the
crew. So finding out where wego, key provenance indicators,
what actually makes the businessor the customer or the ecosystem
tick and focus, and focused onthe things that really matter.
(10:43):
So that's why we introduced keyproud indicators, because they
motivate you to do the rightthing and you know, you do the
right thing.
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Eveline Oehrlich (11:24):
I was just traveling across to the US at
Christmas time, and of course,there was a huge challenge from
one particular flight providertravel company, who, yeah, we
did not, we were not delighted.And what really made me a little
bit upset was when I was sittingat the airport. The news hit
(11:49):
that it was infrastructure, andit who was responsible for the
outage because they had agingsystems. Of course, I wasn't an
I am not part of that company.But I felt a little bit offended
that their IT department isblamed for this situation, and
they make it very public. So anexcellent example. And I am a
(12:10):
KLM flier, lucky me that youguys have worked with them. But
I felt really, really sad forthis IT organization who gets to
who is blamed for all this messhappening over Christmas in the
US, anyway, sorry.
Marco Gianotten (12:25):
And that's also what happens to it. People don't
celebrate success or no product,because they're always on the
wrong end. You know, they alwaysget the blame, and they accept
the blame. It's the same as itstarts reporting, oh, my
metrics. I don't celebratesuccess. You know, I know. I
don't know if I report metrics.And I think could do a good job.
(12:46):
But actually the business isgoing down, for example, these
IT guys working very hard. Butactually, there's inter
investment, or they don't havethe wrong metrics. So they, for
example, they don't have thebackup procedures, because well,
they didn't have enough money.But if you don't have the backup
procedures, and you have anoutage, your recovery time goes
(13:07):
up. So your recovery timeobjective, you know, that's
really key. So, if we're downfor 10 minutes, that's okay. If
we're down for three hours,okay, that's totally wrong,
because then the system willcollapse and we have to replan
everything but those kinds ofdiscussions are not business it
alignments of I don't know whatthey're talking about, because
(13:29):
we invested a lot of money inbusiness it alignment and I
don't know what they're doing.There's only one language in
this the language of thebusiness and the customer do if
it starts talking aboutbusiness. For example, I also
make a joke that's EBIT earningsbefore interest in tax so most
IT guys it just means earningsbefore it. talk the language of
(13:52):
the business and I really helpthose people but even at klm
people within it, they weren'tvery happy, you know, and they
started outsourcing and insteadof helping the service providers
there were blaming them becausethey were bullying them because
they were bullied by thebusiness. That was so so about
you know, when you're doing agreat job, I don't have to be
(14:14):
managed by someone if I have noflight delay due to it. I know I
did a great job when the answeris zero when the Friday because
then we have celebrate and wehave drinks because I know I did
a great job because it's myimpact on the business. So
Heineken invented the beer KPIon the impact of SAP hosting on
on the on the production andespecially the selling of beer
(14:37):
in Asia and Africa. Because youdon't want to do with change
just prior to the end of therainy season Africa because then
they celebrate and appear. Yep.So being in the mind and being
thoughtful and understanding thebusiness because the business is
very tricky because they havethe money so the relationship
would do between IT and businessor the doesn't work. If they
(15:01):
speak different languages andhaving a service level
agreement, it actually is awatermelon. So it's called
secret lies and assumptions tothe business. That's, that's not
good for it. Because it's, itmakes you depressed even. Yep.
Eveline Oehrlich (15:17):
As an IT person I am. This is music to my
ears because I would love tohave a proudness indicator,
which helps me to share andcelebrate what I've done. But
here's another question. Youguys talked a lot about the
human experience and tech. And Ithink you talked about left
brain, right brain. Many of ourlisteners are developers site
(15:41):
reliability engineers, DevOpsand team members. If it did,
they don't really do a lot ofyou know, thinking in terms of
human experience and technology,maybe it's user experience. But
again, if you're an operationsor in DevOps, not too much
concerns about that. Give us alittle bit more insight on your
(16:01):
guys's thinking in terms ofhuman experience and technology.
How can our listeners start suchnew thinking?
Marco Gianotten (16:10):
Yes. Okay. For first, for example, like user
interaction or user design,that's the settle. Excellent is
the horse. So holistically, it'sbigger. And most people the most
important word in DevOps, or inAgile, the Agile Manifesto is
the word valuable. They mademoney mistake. They named it
(16:32):
valuable software, but it has tobe value, anything you do. Value
is very abstract to understandas a human being, it has to be
valuable for me, like an enduser or a business, but it has
to be valuable, or has to bevalued as a developer. So if I'm
a developer, and I make coat notonly makes that makes the
(16:53):
product owner happy, but thecustomer happy, because it's
easy for them to adopt, theylove the software, they love the
feature, the usability goes upand user adoption goes up that
makes me proud to and especiallyin in the DevOps way of working
in releasing software, it's veryimportant to understand what the
(17:16):
end user what the customer, whatthe employee is actually doing
with that software. And we haveproduct owners that decide on on
the priorities. They have theirown KPIs key value indicators,
and that's the first thing thatgoes wrong, that KPI is focused
on the customer. It's focused onthe value is not a traditional
(17:36):
KPI like uptime, or availabilityor whatever. So if you start
changing from a KPI to a KPI inDevOps, that's a good thing. But
actually, you need somethingoverarching, because you have
multiple teams and they don'treally work together and the end
up, it's a bad customerexperience. So a key proudness
indicator works very well as themother of all key value
(17:58):
indicators. So I think in theDevOps community, in the
software engineering community,that they will adopt, excellent
thinking to, for example, theystart thinking about experience
engineering, like they do inProduct Engineering. If you go
to a carmaker, if you go toBoeing, if you go to any company
(18:19):
that makes great products. Inproduct design, you also think
about experience, the famousbook, emotional design by Don
Norman. That's a classic book.And it's well known in product
management and product designand designers. But actually, no
one almost no one in IT. Andespecially DevOps knows that
(18:41):
book. This guy, both two greatbooks about the about design.
And I love the book, emotionaldesign, because that's part of
the nature that's part whenBoeing developed the Dreamliner
it was about emotion becausethis was the first airplane they
ever designed with a human beingin mind. The previous edition
(19:03):
when there was designing a planewas about safeness. And then
they came up with a jumbo jet,it has to be cheap. And the
third real third generation indesigning an airplane was about
human experience. And then youthe first problem they
encountered at Boeing was whenyou start talking to people like
I'm in a focus group togetherwith you, Evelyn. And you say,
(19:24):
Well, what do you want this Iwant more legroom and engineer
really understands that. That'sa functional requirement. So I
say, I don't want to feel lockedup. What happens with
traditional engineer? They say,my God, he's an idiot. Well,
should we make it intoinconvertible? This sucker will
freeze to that because 10,000meters minus 50 Celsius degrees,
something like that. That's notempathy. That's apathy. So they
(19:47):
change the design team also withsocial engineers, and now they
understand so the Dreamliner andthe Airbus 350 are about the
human being and it's abouthumidity. It's about light. It's
about It's about the experienceand you feel more refreshed
after a flight with a Dreamlinerthan a triple seven. So in car,
(20:10):
a in airplay in electronics inthe iPhone, what Apple that's
all about design, emotionaldesign, people have to love it.
But in software, we still haveto embrace that thinking.
Eveline Oehrlich (20:24):
I love that. I love that Dream Lighter example,
absolutely right on having thatdesign for the relaxing journey
to your destination. Fantasticexample. Just something for the
listeners, as you mentioned thatMarco Don Norman, if anybody
wants to do some research inthat he is a very famous thought
(20:47):
leader and is actually workingon another book at this point of
time, I think it's called theDigital Transformation
experience. But I was fascinatedby some of his writings and
actually have pre ordered hishis book on this digital
experience. So just for ourlisteners, again, Dream Lighter
is an excellent example. Now,you are releasing an excellent
(21:11):
pocket book, I think, yeah,pretty soon. Yeah. Tell us Tell
us. Tell us a little bit moreabout that.
Marco Gianotten (21:18):
Okay. When we started this, I was like, we
were like a lowly nut. Sothere's a famous YouTube footage
over like a video and the videosby a guy dancing on his own. And
then people start following. Sowe did a lot of good practices
already, for a lot of largecompanies in the US in Europe,
even in Japan, and we wereinfusing our thoughts with game
(21:41):
design or product design. Andthen you have to come up with a
glossary. And then we said,we're going to share this with a
lot of people we want, we wantto have an academy, we want to
develop the skill sets forpeople. So now you have to start
codifying your knowledge. And westarted with a pocket book, it
will be published in three weeksfrom now, the US version,
(22:05):
together with fan Harapublishing, I'm really excited
because we're now into the open.And then that will be followed
by something more spectacular inthe summer that call to ritual
book this because the greatthing about agile or especially
DevOps is about the ceremonies,it's about the sprint planning,
(22:25):
or a daily standup, or a sprintreview, or sprint retrospective
keep ceremonies are likerituals. So we developed a lot
of rituals, like the key proudindicator, or the or the KPI,
stress methodology, or a lot ofgreat things that could be
applied. And also law firms lovethis, to put it into the
(22:46):
contract. Because the spirit ofthe contract is really important
if you start collaborating. Sowe work to get other people, the
book, that book will be outthere. And when this possible
will be there, people hopefullywill look at it and they can
order it. And we have a lineupof great products, books
(23:09):
eLearning video content to sharethis. And we train people in
Lesotho. And my team is nowworking in Portugal and in Spain
and in France, and we're veryproud with people start stealing
stuff from us. And we have thatmakes us very proud like because
if you're good artists copygreat artists, you still go, we
(23:31):
help this community and a lot ofyoung people and old people with
the spirit, the people from thetitle community, people from the
DevOps community, the peoplefrom any community, even with
people with Lean. And so we hadto discuss what's what is so
great about this. And they said,well, like lean, we started all
about Lean thinking when I wasin university, but was no waste
(23:54):
and lean it is there. So lean isabout no waste. ITIL is about no
chaos. Agile is about no delay.And while we needed a fourth
one, we call it axillae. And itwill be about no frustration.
And if we have no waste, nochaos, no delay, no frustration,
I think we'll all be happy withthe digital transformation. So
(24:14):
we're on a mission, we love toshare. And we love to hear and
it's great that sometimes wepeople send as well we apply
this in a way and when the mostone of the most funny things is
that at the ditch we're way theylaunched applications on time on
budget like prints too. Andpeople were actually crying
(24:37):
because I'm not able to workwith this release. And they say,
well, well how can we celebratesuccess when the customer is not
happy? So on time on budget wasnot complete. So they said it
has to be on experience. Sothat's Oh x so it was on time on
budget on experience, and nowit's called auto boxing. It's a
(24:58):
vert and we have to out Robots,it's in their nature in their
DNA. So the developers and thebusiness are extremely happy and
only happy when the customershappy.
Eveline Oehrlich (25:09):
Wow, fantastic. You know, after,
let's say 40 years, and it theno frustration is very, very
motivational, because I havedone all kinds of work design
development, support, I carrieda pager in the early stages. And
that was the most frustratingtime of my IT career. So this is
(25:31):
absolutely beautiful. Thank youso much. For those who are
listening, the XLR pocket book,I will make sure that I will
share with you the website, it'sactually pretty easy.
giardia.com Go look there. Ifyou have specific questions,
reach out to me. I know where tofind Marco. Now, Michael, I have
(25:51):
one more question. This hasnothing to do well, slightly. It
has to do with experience, butnot necessarily with tech. What
do you do for fun?
Marco Gianotten (26:01):
Well, I do a lot of things for fun. I like
read but especially I amambidextrous golfer, so I play
left hand the right hand. So I'ma masochist, that plays against
himself. So I do nine holes lefthand and line holes, right
handed so and it's a veryinteresting way. It's also
related to Chinese swordfighting. So that's a very non
(26:23):
traditional way of playing golf.And a second I love cooking. I
started cooking for toddlerscooking classes and, and read
the thing because taste is soimportant for people healthy
food. But also if you havepeople only or maybe with
dementia and you you start totaste of your youth that's
really important. So I wanted tobe chef my life I turned out to
(26:44):
work in it. But I still Istarted working as a teenager in
the kitchen. And that's stillone of my biggest hobbies and
making people happy with food isalso a passion.
Eveline Oehrlich (26:57):
Fantastic. We have more in common than you
think. I also play golf but onlyright hand. So when you come
down to where I live, we can goand you can teach me the other
way. I love to cook. I alwayspride myself with that I'm the
best cook in in my family. Andwhen I go to a restaurant, I
(27:19):
always say I can cook betterthan I can make this better than
these people. So I can cook foryou. So come on down. Well,
yeah, thank you so much for thisvery, very enlightening
conversation. We have beentalking to Marco Gianotten and
founder and CEO of Giarte Marcoagain, thank you for joining me
today on the Humans of DevOpsPodcast. Again, for our
(27:42):
listeners, if you'd like tolearn more about the axillae
pocketbook keepchecking@yahoo.com And last but
not least humans of DevOps hasis produced by the DevOps
Institute. Our audio productionteam includes Julia Pape, my
good friend and Brendan Lay, mygood friend as well. I'm Humans
of DevOps Podcast ExecutiveProducer Eveline Oehrlich. If
(28:05):
you would like to join us on apodcast in the future, please
contact us at humans of DevOpspodcast at DevOps institute that
calm Boy, that's not a goodname. It's a mouthful. Thank you
again, I'm Evelyn earlyish. Talkto you soon.
Narrator (28:24):
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
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.
Marco Gianotten (00:17):
So, it's like yin and yang. But there's Yang,
but there was no yet soexcellent is the Yang into this
funny, crazy world. Perfectexample, if you have a first
full resolution, you also need afirst class experience.
Eveline Oehrlich (00:33):
Welcome to Humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm
Eveline Oehrlich, Chief ResearchOfficer at the DevOps Institute.
Our title for the podcast todayis "How to Master the Art of a
Perfect Experience". I'm hopingthat this title is making you
curious. Well, I'm curious I'mvery curious for the upcoming
(00:53):
conversation and I'm excited tohave a fantastic guests today.
Today, we have with us MarcoGianotten . He is the founder
and CEO of Giarte. Hello, Marco,
Marco Gianotten (01:06):
Yes, well, thanks for having me. I'm really
looking forward to this podcast.
Eveline Oehrlich (01:11):
Again, I am excited to speak to you today.
Let me give our listeners alittle bit of a background on
you. So I'll talk to you aboutyou in third person. I hope
that's okay. So Marco's badge ofhonor in the C suite is the
friendly insult and I love thatMarco is well known for outside
in market views and creativeproblem solving. He's also seen
(01:34):
as a thought leader inexperience management and
axillae. We'll get to that in alittle bit later. His favorite
saying Do or do not. There is notry. He's very sharp,
disruptive, a pioneer of theexperience revolution likes to
speak at home and abroad andpushes change into overdrive
(01:55):
with compelling arguments toact. I love this description. I
hope Marco This is a compliment,of course to you. Is there
anything I have missed?
Marco Gianotten (02:07):
No know, well, that I want to be a chef. But
I'm a failed chef. But that'sfor the aftermath of this
podcast. No, it makes me veryhumble, and also very proud. So
thank you for being on thispodcast.
Eveline Oehrlich (02:21):
Well, thank you again, welcome again. And
how I found your micro was I didof course research in and who I
would want to bring in to talkabout service level agreements
and all of those wonderfultopics. And I found a I think it
was on LinkedIn where you saidthat SLA stands for secret lies
and assumptions, which reallycaught my attention. As we are
(02:45):
in the month of February duringa lot of conversations and focus
on the topic of Site ReliabilityEngineering, we, of course, are
very interested in the topics ofSLA s KPIs and OKRs. And that is
really, why I thought I have totalk to you. So tell me about
(03:07):
the statement secret lies andassumptions. What made you say
that?
Marco Gianotten (03:12):
Well, I love it. I love DevOps in ITIL. They
have many descriptions, startingwith the word service, like a
service level report, or have aservice level objective, or a
service level agreement orservice manager or service
designed but actually, it's notabout service. It's about
process. So to Beatty, businessmanagers an SLA stands for
(03:34):
secret license assumptions. Forexample, at a large retailer,
all the it suppliers all theoutsourcing the whole landscape,
everybody was protecting the SLAbut the shelves were empty. So
system availability was theirtruth but shelf availability was
the truth of the business. So ifthe shelves are empty in the
(03:54):
basket size is empty and yourcustomers are in a happy I don't
give a crap about an SLA. Youdon't do a good job. So this is
I wanted to reinvent the wordSLA it's still a service level
agreement with for to thebusiness when it doesn't work
when it's a watermelon so it'sgreen inside all the metrics are
green in the service levelreport. But actually the
(04:17):
atmosphere the surrounding theemotions are in the red zone.
You have a watermelon and thenwhen I came over and did
something else so it was secretlife and assumption and and
outsourcing I call it sore loseragreement to catch my drift it's
it's something okay, what's thetruth? What's reality and you
can you don't hide behind yourown reality and claim I do a
(04:38):
great job as it you don't do agreat job. But it is so
important to the business thatwe're not able to talk mumbo
jumbo Tech, we have to talk thelanguage of the business.
Eveline Oehrlich (04:50):
Beautiful. Let's explore a little bit about
Giarte. You're the founder ofGiarte. I'd Love for you to
share with our listeners alittle bit about what what you
all do at Giarte.
Marco Gianotten (05:03):
So we're, we're focused on bringing touch into
tech. So, for true nerds werelike, We're called the cities of
it. And we're proud of that webring into touch normally, when
you say the word empathy in asoftware company, you get fired.
We bring empathy, we bringexperience to the world of tech.
(05:25):
So you have the general trend ofexperience management, that's,
that's real big that we bringexperience management into the
world of tech, and technologyand outsourcing an ecosystem. So
we focus on the X. And that'sabout three things that's about
customer experience, or employeeexperience, or developer
happiness. So the human, it'sabout business impact. And the
(05:48):
funny thing is, if systems godown, the word outreach and
outreach, outreach, differentone letter. So that's the
business impact. And the thirdone is about collaboration,
about Win Win by design. Sothese are the three value
drivers. And we put it into aconcept and that concept evolved
into a framework. And we callthat now XLH, the experience
(06:11):
level agreement. Very good helplarge, we sell we help large
companies with Well, let's saySteve thinks it's a mindset. So
flip thinking, great example isthere was a famous German, or
there still is famous Germancarmaker in Bavarian, and they
claim for damn file on there,enjoy driving, but they use 853
(06:36):
KPIs just for workplacemanagement. So there was no
emotional or experience metricincluded. So that was a typical
Secrets, Lies and assumptionthat was not actually the
reality. So helping thosecompanies to get into the
mindset. And having the skillslike for example, Experience
Management, what kind ofcapability is that? And also,
(07:00):
what kind of tools do you use,to measure to monitor to
optimize and use experiencebecause from experience
everything that's digitallyrelated.
Eveline Oehrlich (07:10):
So something caught my attention on your
website. And again, this isrelated to our months of Site
Reliability Engineering, and I'mgoing to quote from your
website, it says, excellent is apowerful new addition to the
traditional IT service levelagreements, or SLA is one that
builds on the SLA concept bymeasuring human sentiment and
(07:32):
using this to break down silos,and think and act from the
perspective of a user. So I havea three prong question. First,
explain to us what are x delays?Second, how different are they
from service level agreements?And can I if I am in that, for
(07:55):
example, company you weretalking about or any others if
I'm managing SLAs? Can I movefrom SLA s to xls? And how would
that look?
Marco Gianotten (08:05):
Oh, great questions. Okay, the first one,
okay, what's an excellent, itstands for experience level
agreement. Actually, it's aframework, but also a commitment
to apply Experience Managementin organizations and ecosystems,
for example, outsourcingrelationships. So it's a
framework and a commitment. Thesecond question is, okay, you
(08:29):
have the world of azules andITIL. And we're, we're agnostic.
So you have to rethink about it.And it is left brain oriented.
So it's about the details. Andif we look to SLA, it's about
the important details. It'sabout process. First, it's about
(08:52):
tangible outputs, like theefficiency of freight or of
surfer so uptime, oravailability. So it's technology
centric. So actually, it's aboutthe bigger picture. It's about
the impact you have on thebusiness and especially human
beings. So it's like yin andyang. But there's Yang, but
there was no Yang. So excellentis the Yang into this funny,
(09:14):
crazy world of tech. Forexample, if you have a first
call resolution measurement,well, you also need a first
class experience. So you canlook at incident management, but
also okay, what was the impacton lost productivity? You can
focus on problems but alsoprevent them because you're
repeat. It's the same differencebetween if a product is not
(09:38):
available on the shelf becauseof an IT problem. That's
reality. And if you claim thatthe system is still up, that's
not reality, because thebusiness is hurt, and people are
not happy. So at klm theystarted rethinking about their
metrics. And eventually they arein business so flying planes Got
(10:00):
it, but they need it to supporttheir main business. So if you
have a flight delayed due to it,because above and below the wing
IT systems fill, then you haveflight delay due to it. And our
goal as it is to have no flightdelays due to it. Because if I
have a flight delay, that'scosting you money, you have to
(10:20):
pay a penalty, your net promoterscore will go down. Because if
I'm there, you know, I'm notable to fly as a customer, I'm
not happy, I wouldn't recommendyou and you have to change the
crew. So finding out where wego, key provenance indicators,
what actually makes the businessor the customer or the ecosystem
tick and focus, and focused onthe things that really matter.
(10:43):
So that's why we introduced keyproud indicators, because they
motivate you to do the rightthing and you know, you do the
right thing.
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Eveline Oehrlich (11:24):
I was just traveling across to the US at
Christmas time, and of course,there was a huge challenge from
one particular flight providertravel company, who, yeah, we
did not, we were not delighted.And what really made me a little
bit upset was when I was sittingat the airport. The news hit
(11:49):
that it was infrastructure, andit who was responsible for the
outage because they had agingsystems. Of course, I wasn't an
I am not part of that company.But I felt a little bit offended
that their IT department isblamed for this situation, and
they make it very public. So anexcellent example. And I am a
(12:10):
KLM flier, lucky me that youguys have worked with them. But
I felt really, really sad forthis IT organization who gets to
who is blamed for all this messhappening over Christmas in the
US, anyway, sorry.
Marco Gianotten (12:25):
And that's also what happens to it. People don't
celebrate success or no product,because they're always on the
wrong end. You know, they alwaysget the blame, and they accept
the blame. It's the same as itstarts reporting, oh, my
metrics. I don't celebratesuccess. You know, I know. I
don't know if I report metrics.And I think could do a good job.
(12:46):
But actually the business isgoing down, for example, these
IT guys working very hard. Butactually, there's inter
investment, or they don't havethe wrong metrics. So they, for
example, they don't have thebackup procedures, because well,
they didn't have enough money.But if you don't have the backup
procedures, and you have anoutage, your recovery time goes
(13:07):
up. So your recovery timeobjective, you know, that's
really key. So, if we're downfor 10 minutes, that's okay. If
we're down for three hours,okay, that's totally wrong,
because then the system willcollapse and we have to replan
everything but those kinds ofdiscussions are not business it
alignments of I don't know whatthey're talking about, because
(13:29):
we invested a lot of money inbusiness it alignment and I
don't know what they're doing.There's only one language in
this the language of thebusiness and the customer do if
it starts talking aboutbusiness. For example, I also
make a joke that's EBIT earningsbefore interest in tax so most
IT guys it just means earningsbefore it. talk the language of
(13:52):
the business and I really helpthose people but even at klm
people within it, they weren'tvery happy, you know, and they
started outsourcing and insteadof helping the service providers
there were blaming them becausethey were bullying them because
they were bullied by thebusiness. That was so so about
you know, when you're doing agreat job, I don't have to be
(14:14):
managed by someone if I have noflight delay due to it. I know I
did a great job when the answeris zero when the Friday because
then we have celebrate and wehave drinks because I know I did
a great job because it's myimpact on the business. So
Heineken invented the beer KPIon the impact of SAP hosting on
on the on the production andespecially the selling of beer
(14:37):
in Asia and Africa. Because youdon't want to do with change
just prior to the end of therainy season Africa because then
they celebrate and appear. Yep.So being in the mind and being
thoughtful and understanding thebusiness because the business is
very tricky because they havethe money so the relationship
would do between IT and businessor the doesn't work. If they
(15:01):
speak different languages andhaving a service level
agreement, it actually is awatermelon. So it's called
secret lies and assumptions tothe business. That's, that's not
good for it. Because it's, itmakes you depressed even. Yep.
Eveline Oehrlich (15:17):
As an IT person I am. This is music to my
ears because I would love tohave a proudness indicator,
which helps me to share andcelebrate what I've done. But
here's another question. Youguys talked a lot about the
human experience and tech. And Ithink you talked about left
brain, right brain. Many of ourlisteners are developers site
(15:41):
reliability engineers, DevOpsand team members. If it did,
they don't really do a lot ofyou know, thinking in terms of
human experience and technology,maybe it's user experience. But
again, if you're an operationsor in DevOps, not too much
concerns about that. Give us alittle bit more insight on your
(16:01):
guys's thinking in terms ofhuman experience and technology.
How can our listeners start suchnew thinking?
Marco Gianotten (16:10):
Yes. Okay. For first, for example, like user
interaction or user design,that's the settle. Excellent is
the horse. So holistically, it'sbigger. And most people the most
important word in DevOps, or inAgile, the Agile Manifesto is
the word valuable. They mademoney mistake. They named it
(16:32):
valuable software, but it has tobe value, anything you do. Value
is very abstract to understandas a human being, it has to be
valuable for me, like an enduser or a business, but it has
to be valuable, or has to bevalued as a developer. So if I'm
a developer, and I make coat notonly makes that makes the
(16:53):
product owner happy, but thecustomer happy, because it's
easy for them to adopt, theylove the software, they love the
feature, the usability goes upand user adoption goes up that
makes me proud to and especiallyin in the DevOps way of working
in releasing software, it's veryimportant to understand what the
(17:16):
end user what the customer, whatthe employee is actually doing
with that software. And we haveproduct owners that decide on on
the priorities. They have theirown KPIs key value indicators,
and that's the first thing thatgoes wrong, that KPI is focused
on the customer. It's focused onthe value is not a traditional
(17:36):
KPI like uptime, or availabilityor whatever. So if you start
changing from a KPI to a KPI inDevOps, that's a good thing. But
actually, you need somethingoverarching, because you have
multiple teams and they don'treally work together and the end
up, it's a bad customerexperience. So a key proudness
indicator works very well as themother of all key value
(17:58):
indicators. So I think in theDevOps community, in the
software engineering community,that they will adopt, excellent
thinking to, for example, theystart thinking about experience
engineering, like they do inProduct Engineering. If you go
to a carmaker, if you go toBoeing, if you go to any company
(18:19):
that makes great products. Inproduct design, you also think
about experience, the famousbook, emotional design by Don
Norman. That's a classic book.And it's well known in product
management and product designand designers. But actually, no
one almost no one in IT. Andespecially DevOps knows that
(18:41):
book. This guy, both two greatbooks about the about design.
And I love the book, emotionaldesign, because that's part of
the nature that's part whenBoeing developed the Dreamliner
it was about emotion becausethis was the first airplane they
ever designed with a human beingin mind. The previous edition
(19:03):
when there was designing a planewas about safeness. And then
they came up with a jumbo jet,it has to be cheap. And the
third real third generation indesigning an airplane was about
human experience. And then youthe first problem they
encountered at Boeing was whenyou start talking to people like
I'm in a focus group togetherwith you, Evelyn. And you say,
(19:24):
Well, what do you want this Iwant more legroom and engineer
really understands that. That'sa functional requirement. So I
say, I don't want to feel lockedup. What happens with
traditional engineer? They say,my God, he's an idiot. Well,
should we make it intoinconvertible? This sucker will
freeze to that because 10,000meters minus 50 Celsius degrees,
something like that. That's notempathy. That's apathy. So they
(19:47):
change the design team also withsocial engineers, and now they
understand so the Dreamliner andthe Airbus 350 are about the
human being and it's abouthumidity. It's about light. It's
about It's about the experienceand you feel more refreshed
after a flight with a Dreamlinerthan a triple seven. So in car,
(20:10):
a in airplay in electronics inthe iPhone, what Apple that's
all about design, emotionaldesign, people have to love it.
But in software, we still haveto embrace that thinking.
Eveline Oehrlich (20:24):
I love that. I love that Dream Lighter example,
absolutely right on having thatdesign for the relaxing journey
to your destination. Fantasticexample. Just something for the
listeners, as you mentioned thatMarco Don Norman, if anybody
wants to do some research inthat he is a very famous thought
(20:47):
leader and is actually workingon another book at this point of
time, I think it's called theDigital Transformation
experience. But I was fascinatedby some of his writings and
actually have pre ordered hishis book on this digital
experience. So just for ourlisteners, again, Dream Lighter
is an excellent example. Now,you are releasing an excellent
(21:11):
pocket book, I think, yeah,pretty soon. Yeah. Tell us Tell
us. Tell us a little bit moreabout that.
Marco Gianotten (21:18):
Okay. When we started this, I was like, we
were like a lowly nut. Sothere's a famous YouTube footage
over like a video and the videosby a guy dancing on his own. And
then people start following. Sowe did a lot of good practices
already, for a lot of largecompanies in the US in Europe,
even in Japan, and we wereinfusing our thoughts with game
(21:41):
design or product design. Andthen you have to come up with a
glossary. And then we said,we're going to share this with a
lot of people we want, we wantto have an academy, we want to
develop the skill sets forpeople. So now you have to start
codifying your knowledge. And westarted with a pocket book, it
will be published in three weeksfrom now, the US version,
(22:05):
together with fan Harapublishing, I'm really excited
because we're now into the open.And then that will be followed
by something more spectacular inthe summer that call to ritual
book this because the greatthing about agile or especially
DevOps is about the ceremonies,it's about the sprint planning,
(22:25):
or a daily standup, or a sprintreview, or sprint retrospective
keep ceremonies are likerituals. So we developed a lot
of rituals, like the key proudindicator, or the or the KPI,
stress methodology, or a lot ofgreat things that could be
applied. And also law firms lovethis, to put it into the
(22:46):
contract. Because the spirit ofthe contract is really important
if you start collaborating. Sowe work to get other people, the
book, that book will be outthere. And when this possible
will be there, people hopefullywill look at it and they can
order it. And we have a lineupof great products, books
(23:09):
eLearning video content to sharethis. And we train people in
Lesotho. And my team is nowworking in Portugal and in Spain
and in France, and we're veryproud with people start stealing
stuff from us. And we have thatmakes us very proud like because
if you're good artists copygreat artists, you still go, we
(23:31):
help this community and a lot ofyoung people and old people with
the spirit, the people from thetitle community, people from the
DevOps community, the peoplefrom any community, even with
people with Lean. And so we hadto discuss what's what is so
great about this. And they said,well, like lean, we started all
about Lean thinking when I wasin university, but was no waste
(23:54):
and lean it is there. So lean isabout no waste. ITIL is about no
chaos. Agile is about no delay.And while we needed a fourth
one, we call it axillae. And itwill be about no frustration.
And if we have no waste, nochaos, no delay, no frustration,
I think we'll all be happy withthe digital transformation. So
(24:14):
we're on a mission, we love toshare. And we love to hear and
it's great that sometimes wepeople send as well we apply
this in a way and when the mostone of the most funny things is
that at the ditch we're way theylaunched applications on time on
budget like prints too. Andpeople were actually crying
(24:37):
because I'm not able to workwith this release. And they say,
well, well how can we celebratesuccess when the customer is not
happy? So on time on budget wasnot complete. So they said it
has to be on experience. Sothat's Oh x so it was on time on
budget on experience, and nowit's called auto boxing. It's a
(24:58):
vert and we have to out Robots,it's in their nature in their
DNA. So the developers and thebusiness are extremely happy and
only happy when the customershappy.
Eveline Oehrlich (25:09):
Wow, fantastic. You know, after,
let's say 40 years, and it theno frustration is very, very
motivational, because I havedone all kinds of work design
development, support, I carrieda pager in the early stages. And
that was the most frustratingtime of my IT career. So this is
(25:31):
absolutely beautiful. Thank youso much. For those who are
listening, the XLR pocket book,I will make sure that I will
share with you the website, it'sactually pretty easy.
giardia.com Go look there. Ifyou have specific questions,
reach out to me. I know where tofind Marco. Now, Michael, I have
(25:51):
one more question. This hasnothing to do well, slightly. It
has to do with experience, butnot necessarily with tech. What
do you do for fun?
Marco Gianotten (26:01):
Well, I do a lot of things for fun. I like
read but especially I amambidextrous golfer, so I play
left hand the right hand. So I'ma masochist, that plays against
himself. So I do nine holes lefthand and line holes, right
handed so and it's a veryinteresting way. It's also
related to Chinese swordfighting. So that's a very non
(26:23):
traditional way of playing golf.And a second I love cooking. I
started cooking for toddlerscooking classes and, and read
the thing because taste is soimportant for people healthy
food. But also if you havepeople only or maybe with
dementia and you you start totaste of your youth that's
really important. So I wanted tobe chef my life I turned out to
(26:44):
work in it. But I still Istarted working as a teenager in
the kitchen. And that's stillone of my biggest hobbies and
making people happy with food isalso a passion.
Eveline Oehrlich (26:57):
Fantastic. We have more in common than you
think. I also play golf but onlyright hand. So when you come
down to where I live, we can goand you can teach me the other
way. I love to cook. I alwayspride myself with that I'm the
best cook in in my family. Andwhen I go to a restaurant, I
(27:19):
always say I can cook betterthan I can make this better than
these people. So I can cook foryou. So come on down. Well,
yeah, thank you so much for thisvery, very enlightening
conversation. We have beentalking to Marco Gianotten and
founder and CEO of Giarte Marcoagain, thank you for joining me
today on the Humans of DevOpsPodcast. Again, for our
(27:42):
listeners, if you'd like tolearn more about the axillae
pocketbook keepchecking@yahoo.com And last but
not least humans of DevOps hasis produced by the DevOps
Institute. Our audio productionteam includes Julia Pape, my
good friend and Brendan Lay, mygood friend as well. I'm Humans
of DevOps Podcast ExecutiveProducer Eveline Oehrlich. If
(28:05):
you would like to join us on apodcast in the future, please
contact us at humans of DevOpspodcast at DevOps institute that
calm Boy, that's not a goodname. It's a mouthful. Thank you
again, I'm Evelyn earlyish. Talkto you soon.
Narrator (28:24):
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.
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