ctos in london "the challenges of evaluating development technology within the c-suite"

The Challenges of evaluating (Development)

Technology within the C-Suite

Daniel Bryant

@danielbryantuk

New technology is great... Until it isn'T

11/08/2016 @danielbryantuk

App developers with new tech be like

F**king new technology...

Credit to Michael Hausenblas

Thishasbeenmemanytimes!

The pitch

• We all know Evaluating technology as a cto is challenging– Balancing multiple constraints while owning the tech vision

– Delegation is key...

• Core skills– Communicating the tech vision

– Evaluation

– Developing (and maintaining) knowledge and awareness


@danielbryantuk• Chief Scientist at OpenCredo / CTO SpectoLabs

ü Transforming organisations through technology and teams

ü Ex Academic, web dev, sysadmin, 'full stack Dev', CTO, Consultant

ü Microservices, cloud, Containers, Java, Go, Docker, Kubernetes

• London Java Community Associate

• Adopt OpenJDK and JSR

• InfoQ Editor, DZone MVB, VOXXED, O'Reilly


Communicate the tech vision


http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/02/an-introduction-to-wardley-value-chain.html

https://speakerdeck.com/acolyer/making-sense-of-it-all

Communicate the tech Vision


Evaluation - first steps

• Frame the problem and the general solution

• Offer at least two alternatives

• State the recommendation (with benefits and drawbacks)

• Bonus: engage empathy (Dev/Ops - ops/DeV etc)


Evaluation - The’Spine Model• Effective conversations make for effective

collaboration

• It's a TOOL Problem– As a species, we have always been Tool users

and makers.

– We use _____ to get our work done

• People get stuck in a dilemma where equally plausible options are available

• “Going up the Spine” breaks deadlockhttp://spinemodel.info/explanation/introduction/

Determine the need for the tool• PRACTICES before Tools

– Decide on the Practices that the tools are there to support

– We do _____ to create value

• PRINCIPLES before Practices– Decide on the Principles to measure those Practices against.

– We leverage _____ to change the system

• VALUES before Principles

– Make as explicit as possible the Values at play in the system.

– We optimise for _____

• NEEDS before Values– It all starts at Needs. Why does this system exist in the first

place?

– We are here to satisfy _____http://spinemodel.info/explanation/introduction/

Evaluation - Fitness functions

• Evolutionary Architecture

– Neal Ford and Rebecca Parsons

• Great for evaluation and documentation

– Platforms / Language

– Middleware

– Data stores


Evaluation - Matt Raible’s Comparison Framework


Evaluation - It'S easy to be tricked


Evaluation - beware of bias and heuristics


Developing knowledge and awareness

• News and trends– Twitter

– blog lists (feedly)

– Harvard business review

• Learning– Coursera

– O'Reilly, pluralsight

– Books

– Academic papers

• Developing A DEEP understanding– Write or blog (InfoQ, Voxxed, O'Reilly)

– Teach

– Present at conferences

• Developing others (and learning)– Brown bag lunches

– Afternoon lightning talks

– Book clubs

– Internal conferences


Bedtime reading...



www.slideshare.net/dbryant_uk

www.infoq.com/author/Daniel-Bryant

THANKS...

@danielbryantuk

[email protected]
