August 15, 2023
Season 1, Episode 7
In this episode, Jon Shanks and Jay Keshur delve deep into the concept of cloud strategy. They discuss the importance of having a cloud strategy, especially for businesses that have been operating for a while and are considering a shift to the cloud. The conversation touches on the vision, key metrics, and understanding the current state of the business.
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
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Jon Shanks: LinkedIn
Jay Keshur: LinkedIn
Jon & Jay’s startup: Appvia
0:00[Music] that could be done exceptionally bad slow you down still and you’d be worse
0:06off yeah and if your aim was speed and cost savings you could be slower and
0:12more expensive that’s highly probable right because without the how it could be all wrong
0:20hello Welcome to Cloud unplug this is season two episode 12. I am John Shanks
0:25and I’m Jay Keshur and I think we are going to be talking about Cloud strategy what an exciting topic it’s going to be
0:32all the top top two topics top two topics yeah I love it um
0:38so I guess before we get in Cloud strategy is a bit of a broad topic yeah what do you actually
0:46mean when you say a cloud strategy yeah it’s it’s quite a weird nebulous term
0:52um I guess in in this context what I am going to talk about is
0:57um people often get told to create a cloud strategy or you know get asked
1:03whether or not they have one right um what is it who is it for why are they being asked
1:09um what Behavior can you drive from having one um they’re the types of things we’re
1:15hoping to discuss right okay so somebody gets asked for a cloud strategy
1:21yeah when somebody’s asking for it do you think what they’re meaning is something to read through or just like
1:29have you got one yeah do you have an idea yeah don’t worry about it it’s fine like I’ve
1:36got this well then there’s there’s that trust right so that No One’s Gonna trust
1:42just what you’re saying that you you think you have it so you probably need to write it down sometimes then a
1:48physical document a physical thing um well digital thing that you uh that
1:54you have um that you can point someone to that defines what defines what you’re setting
2:00out how you’re setting out to use cloud and why because there’s some assumptions here yeah
2:07um one this sounds for like companies that are kind of older not brand new companies because would you go off and
2:13do five if you’re a startup or you just you know you’re a new company that’s good highly probably bothering the cloud
2:19yeah would you go off and Define a cloud strategy up front you might actually to be fair because
2:26um let’s say you’re you know that you’re using Cloud yeah um you might need a new a a
2:34well-articulated um document that defines why you need to
2:40go to a second cloud or um because there’s a cost to the
2:45business and the strategy really is very similar to a business case in that it’s
2:52articulating why it’s important to the business very waterfall yeah 100 yeah
2:57that’s why I was just suggesting it’s like meanwhile people need to be delivering something while you’re
3:02writing it just let me know when you did this
3:10it certainly skews to a type of organization that needs it yeah exactly
3:15once more while I was teasing that I don’t I can’t imagine many young companies would they’re probably sold on
3:21the cloud exactly and it’s and well you don’t you probably don’t if if you’ve got like some Regulatory Compliance
3:27thing of hey you know um the pra or someone is telling you you
3:33need to go to multiple Cloud um vendors yeah then you probably don’t
3:38need to write it down much there’s already a need and you just have to figure out how to do it yeah it’s
3:44probably like an agile team right um a team that is working or an organization
3:49that is working within a certain framework to deliver value quickly yeah and to just go off and explore and
3:56figure it out and figure it out as they go along but I guess what I’m talking about is not
4:02every organization is has that Advantage they’re not all you know
4:07have been created in the last say five ten years or whatever yeah so there’s like ways of working you know um
4:14investment committees or or whatever it is that they need to show to senior
4:19leadership to get buy-in and the way that they might
4:25do that is through a document presentations
4:31um you know meetings uh to gain trust and then get money to do the thing
4:38a little bit around probably money yeah risk you know impact to the business
4:44change exactly like how much change is going to be so this is more about you need to define a strategy
4:51because there’s a lot of Fallout maybe on what it could mean to the business in US choosing this direction and therefore
4:57like actually what does it mean to us yeah um as a company if we are going to go to the cloud because we operate this
5:02way and you’re suggesting it’s not just going to be like take what you’ve got and it’s the same we’re just going to
5:08relabel our on-prem to Amazon and keep it exactly as it is in fact the documents are one line everything stays
5:14the same I mean you you almost hit the nail on the head there it’s this is if
5:19you’re on Prem already there’s already a cultural way of working that’s very
5:25Associated to being on-prem yeah then you might need a cloud strategy because it’s changing whereas if you’re starting
5:32for the first time then to be fair to for most organizations they don’t need
5:39to have the conversation whether they’re going to go on start on-prem or Cloud it’s just going to be yeah right yeah so
5:46it’s like funding investment or buying so is it like you saying this is a strategy encompassing a business plan
5:53oh it’s the strategy the business plan is in my I think they they’ll overlap
5:59quite a lot um because a business plan might tell you why uh you want to do something what
6:05the benefit is to the business but the cloud strategy will
6:11articulate vision of where you want to be by the end of it
6:18um and what what uh Innovation that that could drive
6:23um what the adoption plan is for projects and then how the road map
6:29um what the road map looks like to get to that Vision to see that Vision cool not to distract from this interesting
6:36topic but I just realized that we’re almost matching outfits and I don’t know if that was right here’s Jay I know like influencing your Styles
6:45actually I never wear a color exactly that’s always a bit like what is going on you could tell by my collars
6:52constantly being like turning up yeah actually to get better better um so okay so sorry back on track
6:58because that was a bit of a side but um all right so what is in this so who would you think this is normally
7:05for I guess anyone really from within the business potentially I’m guessing should it
7:11should be readable by pretty much anybody I’m presuming I mean it’s going to be written in English so it should be
7:17but I mean for everyone in the organ organization to orientate against they
7:22all understand what it means and say generally speaking like let’s start from the first question right why do you need
7:30a cloud strategy um if you’re being asked to do it why uh who’s asked you to do it
7:36um is there is there an issue in in terms of um
7:42you need to take senior leadership through a learning exercise as to why
7:48you would go to cloud and this document is being used really for for oh you’re not buying
7:54um or it’s more uh kind of organization wide and your this is your living
8:00breathing um strategy uh to constantly get organizational buy-in
8:07um and they don’t they’re not mutually exclusive um uh because obviously the organization
8:13has those leaders in it but the leaders are obviously going to be the ones to fund the program overall um or fund the
8:20strategy so let’s assume that we’re using this for greater kind of
8:25organizational buying okay cool all right so it’s a great all pleasure to balance it could have many stakeholders
8:31in there yeah um primarily either the CTO is driving it all delegated on behalf of CTO to
8:38somebody yeah to produce um well that’s an interesting one do you
8:44my gut is that organizations that are structured in that way that have ctOS
8:51might not necessarily need a cloud strategy because they’re already very
8:56tech technology heavy right I I’d say it almost as the ones that have kind of
9:02cios or cdios that have the technical element to how they’re positioned
9:11um they’re more likely to have come from a background where they’re talking about them not
9:18necessarily how to manage the tech it’s their asset is the information and how
9:23to how to drive um business value from that so the title
9:28and how the organization is structured is probably another giveaway in terms of whether or not the document is needed
9:35yeah so okay so CIO CTO whoever owns the tech in the end which could be multiple
9:41obviously because I had a CIO you can’t have a cdio right yeah exactly trading just the simplicity’s case we’re
9:47assuming then that business services there’s already a footprint of something
9:54um and that’s something probably isn’t in the cloud or is destined for for the
10:00cloud because someone’s deciding like we need a strategy for this this is the direction we’re going to go in
10:06um or wants to convince everybody that it’s this direction we should go in one of the other yeah um which then really means that the
10:12other stakeholders are the business owners of those services and the impacts of those services and some people might own the revenue for those Services maybe
10:18who knows and that isn’t necessarily the technology individual that’s the line of business
10:24so then the people need to understand and get buying from them like well we don’t want to move
10:30um we’re fine yeah where we are thanks the service works exactly um does it like because it does work
10:36actually it works really well yeah it’s working quite well but but maybe um you know there’s things that you want
10:42to improve like uh security or operational efficiency resilience Etc
10:48and that’s part of the reason for potentially having a cloud strategy and moving to the cloud yeah but I guess
10:55if we’re approach to type in a bit of a business people don’t like change yeah so even when things are bad it’s better
11:02the devil you know yeah um you know a lot of people tend to feel a bit like that but I do know the
11:07on-prem I mean it’s got its flaws um but now how much it costs it’s accepted to the business yeah exactly
11:14like the security is known we’ve got approval that was already painful yeah for us to go live before like you know
11:20so people will resist not deliberately because they’re not bought in necessarily to the value but
11:26just because things might have been historically quite problematic to even get to where they’ve got to yeah and the
11:31thought of going on yet another journey is just like oh God do we have to really do the cloud honestly like
11:37um so there’s always listens because they don’t necessarily so these document’s there to help them see the value of like maybe even a bit on a bit
11:43of a job protectionism to be fair as well right because um if if you think about it
11:49um with with Cloud unless you’re you know picking up the way that you are
11:54operating on-prem you’re going to have a bunch of roles that aren’t necessarily needed um because you don’t you’re not
12:02having people physically go into a Data Center and rack certain things and move wires from here to connect the wires
12:08from here to another or whatever so they could that that would definitely be yeah
12:13because there’ll be nervousness definitely right there yeah so is that gonna so is this document encompassing
12:19layoffs is up because how transparent is this strategy so you know as advice for
12:27people I’m eating but with advice people you probably never want to go into the detail of of layoffs you want to outline
12:34a vision for what their roles and responsibilities could be
12:39um and training and training exactly that um so how you know what is the
12:45current um skill set uh that we have in the team at the moment and how can we what do we
12:52need how do we get there um what resources what what um outside uh open source or public you know
13:01YouTube videos or whatever can I watch to to help me in that Journey that might be part of it
13:07it sounds like there needs to be some description like an overview framing
13:12like an executive summary of some description to framing like what the purpose of this document even is like
13:18why have I even wrote why have I even begun a class strategy document yeah um which is going to cover the things
13:24the question we’ve probably asked like who’s it for why and then what would be next and I’d say
13:31the vision of what you’re trying to achieve not with this document but with
13:37um you know if if you adopted the cloud in the way that your strategy will keep you will set out what will enable to the
13:45business but what is the overall outcome that you’re striving for or enabling right okay
13:51and so there’ll be the vision and a vision should we map into some value add
13:57absolutely so then like metric goals objectives so when whenever you start any sort of
14:05you know major transformational thing you probably need to have like checks
14:11and measures um built into the thing that you’re trying to build right so how are you
14:17going to like what are you say what actual metric have you got that you’re
14:22trying to improve upon um how will you know if you’re successful
14:28um so that it’s not subjective um that’s like in any term in any
14:33project program anything that you’re ever delivering that’s like such a basic way of
14:40um I guess defining the value yeah so okay so but then you still need
14:46what would you do what would be the goals give examples then of what you would affiliate
14:51so keep say you got the vision what would a vision be would you say then yeah um good good question so the vision
14:58might be um uh let’s say you’re an e-commerce
15:04um company and uh your competitors are moving super quickly and you know you’ve
15:10got a bit of risk in your business because if if they carry on in the way
15:16that you they are without you doing something about it then you’re going to quickly get displaced so your vision
15:22might be to change that on its head so you’re the one that is being Innovative
15:29and leaning on that side of things and using the technology that’s out there in the cloud to create new revenue streams
15:37or um you know be operationally efficient in the things that you’re able
15:42to deliver and then potentially customer value so let’s say more like business not cloud
15:49they shouldn’t start to be looking for pictures it is a bit business it is a business Vision because it it it re like
15:56cloud is just a thing at all to get there really um it’s not but it’s your vision for
16:03cloud so are you saying no that the vision for cloud is also the same as a business because it’s it’s
16:11value to why you would do these things yeah absolutely but I I you could say like a vision for
16:18cloud would be um The Innovation the accessibility of
16:25those services for that vision of the business yeah um and then yeah but they’re kind of
16:31slightly different one from recognizing the vision of the business yeah so you’re probably right uh there
16:37so um I guess you know let’s let’s say the business overall has some things that
16:45they have set out want to achieve and this is maybe a layer down into it like
16:52how are we going to use cloud to achieve those things which kind of makes the strategy a lot easier to write yeah
16:58right because um now it’s quite quite well defined in in that it’s only
17:04like someone’s already set those things out there’s already buy-in that that’s the vision of the company yeah
17:10um which is probable for most businesses because they’ll be like I know it could be the share prices
17:16dropped or the revenue stagnated or whatever it is right there’ll be pressure maybe from stakehold from like
17:22um investors or maybe from people on the board that are like why are we not hit the target for the year or why we
17:28stagnated growth or why have we dropped share price or you know why are we not
17:33entering new markets then if that’s what we need to do so that’ll be the conversation probably happening at the very top I wonder though because you
17:41know sometimes uh because people don’t necessarily know like those those leaders might not necessarily be aware
17:48of all of their ways that technology could help um that there’s a disconnect
17:56between what’s possible um to enable the business and then the
18:01business vision um do you know what I mean yeah that’s what I was kind of getting at I guess if
18:07you’ve so I think that’s what this is isn’t it because you’re saying the business has hit there’s there’s some
18:14there’s some reason to change yes um otherwise everything was going swimming and amazingly yeah there’s got
18:21to be a reason to change to begin with but imagine that this could be a bit more opportunistic
18:27um that only um you know only a select few that are writing the strategy are
18:35um can see and they’re using this this this document to alter business uh
18:41strategy or Vision so depend again it almost depends or what you’re looking to achieve by
18:49writing the strategy but I mean I guess for me protection would ever drive the
18:54business well you should never be just like you
19:00need to know what the business goals are yeah otherwise you’ve got no idea whether your strategy has actually brought any value hundreds of the
19:06company or not yeah like otherwise it’s just random it’s like I’ve decided that this is a really good idea in isolation
19:12I think we should do it it’s like fine well when it costs X did anything did we get why or not I mean if you
19:19don’t know what Y is or what x was and you’ve got no interest in it yes you just cost the business loads of disruption and money for no role
19:25legitimate value add 100 but there’s you know look what we’ve kind of just talked about like getting Tech to push a vision
19:33Vision it might be that um the the business wants to achieve
19:39certain goals but they don’t know that they can actually achieve way more or
19:45you know um achieve it in a different way that gives them greater value by
19:51using cloud and that could be part of the vision of the cloud that’s included in
19:57the cloud strategy yeah I think that’s true I think it should be including the cloud strategy but I think they should
20:02know not necessarily about what it looks like in the end but they need to know well we want to get the share price yeah
20:09exactly it’s not their job yeah to then know actually what that means you know it’s like they just know that there’s a
20:15there’s a big big goal very high level superficial you don’t trust in maybe the CEO or others in that business to have
20:22the vision of how that will be recognized um and then they might just like right okay we need to get into a new market or
20:29we need to do this other thing then somebody needs to go and be like oh we’re going to do that then we need to be really Innovative and we’re not yeah
20:35so right we need to obviously look at new services that we could consume how fast do we normally moving in terms
20:43of innovation well we released one new product and it took us two years okay what’s the metric that we’re gonna have
20:49exactly that’s the measure we’re going to use that’s not good enough yeah um what do our competitors do well they’ve done two product lines in six
20:56months yeah okay right so that’s what we’ve got to be because two three months exactly and then you start to orientate
21:01yourself on like what this document needs to probably contain but without any of that data or information or
21:07questioning then you’re a bit blind on why are you doing it yeah on where you end up if you’re just in the now maybe
21:13in some basic reason to go to the cloud and not necessarily a legit big enough
21:20reason all right so you’ve got the vision you’ve got metrics that you’re trying to improve for the business
21:27um you’ve got a reason that you’re doing all of this uh obviously that feeds into the metrics and the vision what’s next
21:36um so sorry I didn’t think you’re confusing this topic a little bit because you’re this is something you’re
21:41very excited passionate about that’s how we entered this podcast based on you being really excited about
21:48this college yourself into the equation so yeah you
21:54tell me Jay what comes next I mean if you let me finish that was gonna be a you know rhetorical thing
22:05you just asked rhetorical questions in silence yeah I’m doing a podcast of one
22:11person from now on these two people podcasts they’re overrated these two
22:16people podcasts you just ask myself the questions
22:21um so you’ve got the vision you’ve got the key metrics and that you’re trying to improve now you’ve got to think about
22:28um what it means to the business um so understanding where the business currently is
22:34um and that might be from um you know an organizational perspective um how it’s how it’s set up
22:41um it might be from from a skills perspective which you know will obviously overlap to some degree with
22:48how the organization is already set up um and then um what the change will be so if you
22:56know I’m gonna put my techie hat on for a second whenever you’re making like a change to
23:02a system you always kind of map out so that you can visually represent what the
23:08where you are now like an architecture let’s let’s call it where you are now and where you want to get to current
23:15state current state and end State exactly that um and so I’d say it’s the next part of
23:23this document is is probably that what is the current state what’s your end State um
23:29have you done the thinking around the organizational design to create that end
23:34state is that end State just going to be about the the team that’s responsible
23:40for cloud is it going to be wider um in terms of you know how potential
23:47product teams or application teams are going to iterate on services on the cloud
23:53um what’s the kind of scope of this again feeds into what you’re using it for right so if you if you’re using this
24:00as a bit of a business case to get investment in this in this thing then and those and those investment areas are
24:07building those product teams then you absolutely need to include it but if it’s just to get um you know uh your
24:14investment for say your Cloud team then maybe not um so it it has to have a steel thread all the
24:21way through this document um and consistency so what we’re obviously doing today is just telling you about
24:28the different options um because each you can’t just like write a generic Cloud strategy that
24:33covers every organization and how they what their what their goals are and what they’re trying I guess they’re the end
24:38States you know there is doing things well and those end States probably like
24:45by industry definition yeah I kind of clearly defined I would say I mean I don’t know yeah can you can you dig into
24:52that a little bit deeper what would you well if we’re if you’re using best practices and you’re looking at kind of
24:58industry principles and you’re talking about you know there’s values in say things
25:05that we’ve discussed before like the Dora match it’s like deployment frequency and lead time for change and all those other things and security and
25:13um what’s symmetric for that again well there isn’t one there isn’t one for security um under Dora but obviously you know
25:20awareness and visibility do people patch quickly what’s it what’s the patch frequency that you’re operating at so
25:27you can kind of probably tie to the release frequency but then include like did you patch in that release do you often do yeah because I think there’s
25:34obviously metrics there that you could also surface additionally but outside of those things
25:40from business true business value that isn’t security business value kind of take that out of scope a little bit
25:46obviously important um if you’re thinking well there are a bunch of cloud services they’re a finite
25:53right and so there’s only so many of them that exist and there’s only so many that you might want to use that fit into
26:00the strategy of what you do as a company so that it’s about the speed of accessibility the speed of use of those
26:06Services the speed of features the growth of you within in relation then
26:11Downstream of all that technical stuff yeah which then is all about development development speed
26:16um and then I guess then your strategy needs to somehow work out the Delta between
26:21how those things are going to be realized um and what the strategy is a little bit for that
26:27but that’s a part of cloud and maybe also other things
26:32um it might not just be the cloud at that point because you might need more than what the cloud gives you to achieve that outcome Cloud it’s just a bag of
26:39services yeah exactly it’s not necessarily bringing it all together into something so
26:45you know there is even in the cloud strategy this seems like it could be made up of more than just one thing in
26:51the end um are you is this document to define the
26:58recognition of the true outcome of your own because it said that if you are going for a coup if you’re going for the
27:03end stay that end stay might be more than just the cloud
27:09um if you in the end in truth what you might need what do you mean by so I I
27:15guess like it in this um conversation we’re talking about cloud cloud being
27:21you know not just like say public cloud or whatever but also being the responsibility that there’s there’s
27:29some sort of responsibility in the organization and having that maybe as a central function so we’re talking about
27:34people process and Technology right not just the technology yeah but you’re talking about Cloud
27:40technology yeah so what about technology that isn’t the cloud is that in this too oh I see what
27:47you mean so um kind of other services that you might use although so if you might use are the
27:53tools you might use exactly kind of ways of working I guess depends on how you’re using them
28:00um so let’s say uh a good example is jira um
28:05it will okay so maybe not quite but
28:11um you have ways of working um agile always working whatever and
28:16during that in this document depends on again what you’re using the document for
28:21I’d say it fits somewhere else okay so you might want to link off to it online yeah because you can’t just have like
28:29you know a 200 Page document that no one’s going to read that you’ve spent forever creating should I have read your
28:36documentation um no I agree I’m just teasing it I’ve been I’m being slightly facetious I
28:42suppose in the question because I’m trying to I agree with you online it’s just when you phrase things like
28:49that about current state end States things like that that’s a quite a nebulous thing right because it’s like
28:54the end State could be way bigger in true to get the True Value it might be a lot more than just the cloud in
29:01isolation but I guess it’s working and the energy and all the things you were saying the interstate state state to
29:08some degree is you know what um uh you know what’s what mixture of
29:15SAS has and IR services that you’re working with in in the end and you know
29:22in in my example of sajira if you’re targeting the end state of going
29:28further up that chain I.E SAS products then they’re probably going to be boiling the
29:35cloud or whatever but you at least you’re defining your principles that
29:40you’re aiming for in that Target you don’t have to have everything fine but at least you have
29:46um ways of understanding how you’re getting that value out of those things so it could absolutely have
29:55um you know a definition of how you’re going to use those cloud services whether you’re going to
30:00prioritize say using SAS jira versus Giro within your own premises because
30:07there’s a cost to that yeah because there’s an assumption here there’s always a few assumptions here that seemed to be like really implicit in
30:13this dark that I’m picking up on um it feels like it’s angled
30:20mentally in some ways towards like um you’re already kind of on-prem with
30:25something we can kind of get you in the cloud it might be some operational efficiency now actually you can make the
30:32cloud really bad too yeah so you can’t say we’re going to use some past services and these services and this is
30:38the thing our strategy is the cloud and it’s like yeah that could be done exceptionally bad slow you down still
30:43and you’d be worse off yeah and if your aim with speed and cost savings you
30:48could be slower and more expensive that’s highly probable right because unless you know strategically how you
30:56are going to do it not just what because it feels like some of this is very what and not how and the how is about how
31:02you’re going to work how it’s all going to come together yeah um it feels like quite an important thing to not have somewhere because
31:08without the how it could be all wrong
31:14and not be of value in the end at all so um
31:20yeah it feels quite an important it is a big uh this document could end up huge
31:25that’s what that’s what I’m saying since but it because it’s at the beginning so you have but you by principles you meant
31:32like we’re gonna do devops Agile blah blah you mean more like that yeah yeah these things we’re not going to get into
31:37the detail of exactly but these are the things these are the assumptions and we’re assuming that an organization
31:44either has buy-in or can point off to other documents that describe these
31:49things like let’s just keep it really lightweight as as much as possible because you don’t want to define the
31:54world right um but you probably have principles that’s what you mean by the principle yeah exactly ways of working principles
32:01that the organization is adopting um or platform engineering maybe yeah potentially platform engineering
32:07um and therefore um the cloud strategy is is there to support all further yeah
32:14so and that and those principles might also be you know which layer of the
32:20stack that you’re targeting like like I kind of mentioned yeah that makes sense so keep it light touch right we’re going to be Cloud native yeah quick definition
32:27of what that is more reading over there yeah we’re going to be agile quick definition I thought you’re going to do
32:33the quick definition I was like what it is I just got a good example I’m all reading over there but more like that’s what the dock would end up looking like
32:39exactly rather than like War and Peace yes I’m trying to Define exactly how it’s going to look in the end and
32:45remember hopefully that this is a living document um so what you start off with won’t be
32:54whatever like what you what you start off with might just be a single Cloud strategy what you end up with might be a
33:02multi-cloud strategy that has then assumed because you’ve now embedded all
33:07of those practices you probably don’t need to link after them right um so it it depends again what you’re using it
33:14for who the stakeholders are what the situation is um and then
33:21that kind of leads us into the next point which is how are you going to iterate on this strategy
33:28um are you going to you know create it like spend all this upfront time and
33:33effort um a whole year program two-year program on building this platform or something
33:40like that or are you gonna weave that in um like you probably should
33:47um with some business outcomes and value that you can drive early so maybe like a
33:52cloud adoption roadmap um hey I have projects you know API some
33:58microservice thing over here that is being built to
34:04um to to kind of uh to the benefit of this other business strategy that we’re
34:09aiming for this is how we’re going to show the value of the cloud really quickly because they’re going to be our
34:16first user yeah um and these are the minimum things that we need to do on this like Cloud Chester
34:22or this Cloud platform to meet their requirements so we could be choosing the
34:29because if the business goal was say like new markets
34:34and if there was an existing thing does that prove anything to do with the business goal
34:40is it on me like yeah okay you’ve taken something that existed some microservices and he went to the cloud you’re proving out the cloud at that
34:47point yeah but not necessarily the strategy um because the strategy was trying to
34:52align to business value yeah which would be like we are going to use these services that are Innovative and we are
34:58going to get to Market we are going to start releasing new functionality so do you start and buy that off straight away
35:03like well let’s get cracking with that and that’s the thing we should be focused on because that’s the true value or do you then go off and be like well
35:10we’ll get to that later what we’re really going to do now is prove out the cloud yeah sure
35:16um so so I guess it’s uh
35:22is being super ambitious in just like let’s get going nailing the vision as
35:28soon as possible um that’s kind of like the risk tolerance of of the of the of the thing
35:33right so let’s do it Joe let’s do it let’s be ambitious but knowing how you
35:40know some of these organizations work they’re not just going to give you oh yeah here’s like you know 10 million quid or whatever it’s probably going to
35:47be his chances of funding um so you probably need to like show
35:52show something um some little value before they can like fully
35:58rely on you for this for this business uh yeah for this I agree with I don’t
36:04necessarily always agree with that approach that risk aversion approach because if you’re a business owner you want to
36:11yield right you want yield you want something to be returned you have two years
36:18um so to not have any yield in the end for things that people are trying to
36:24prove doesn’t tell me that we’re actually on the right path at all yeah so I would argue that you kind of have to be ambitious because if you did get
36:30those products out and you did make more Revenue definitely the rest of the stuff is easily moving yeah right because
36:37you’ve already shown value to the company like that to try and just squeeze value little drips of something
36:43you know here and there and like we’re just going to go on a transformation journey and learn anything if I was a
36:48business owner thinking okay great I’ve been on this journey but when do we actually make money you know in truth
36:54like when are we going to get to the things we said we were going to get to and that’ll always be this friction yeah
36:59between um you know the business and technology at that point um that’s so interesting because I think
37:06that’s that’s kind of uh it might you might kind of see that as a as
37:13almost whether you’re changing an organization um and you have that sort of adoption
37:19strategy you know your chain you’re maybe creating all of these new roles and upscaling people into those roles or
37:27you’re basically creating a new organization yeah a new operating model new organization you know let’s call it
37:33like like most of the government houses is that what this Doc is supposed to be right it’s a strategy is it not yeah I
37:40know but it’s not it’s it’s like there’s there’s two different ways that you can achieve that strategy but it needs to
37:45align to what the business wants yes right and how quickly it wants it exactly yeah and how much money it wants
37:50to spend on achieving it exactly and what the opportunity cost so really it’s about qualifying you know yeah to Define
37:56enough that you know what he’s such is aiming for yeah so again I think like there’s a lot to tease out there’s so
38:02much to tease out up front absolutely uh before you can even really go off and write it because I think unless you are
38:08absolutely crystal clear what you’re going to be measure you don’t in the end yeah you know the strategy if it didn’t
38:14prove anything to the business properly and it’s cost a lot because I think this is the thing the expectations have been
38:20misled you know you’ve got a business you define these things you know what’s important to you people are going off
38:26and defining strategies and um and you might misinterpret the all
38:32right okay so we’re going to start a few Services that’s good but then we’ll get to the yeah and then you’re like no no this is like a whole transfer and later
38:39on it could be writing this is this is a whole transformation it’s five years before you’re gonna see the real thing about you like but that first that first
38:45piece of business value right that you’re you’re driving towards might be that first
38:52um you know it like that aligns fully to the business strategy so you don’t just like you know Big Bang land being in new
39:00region you might deliver one service in the region that you’re targeting no but
39:07I’m talking about the the that’s all I’m talking about the adoption roadmap
39:12um to deliver value incrementally rather than big bang I know I agree sorry I’m thinking about
39:18the expectation of people on this strategy right so yeah that makes sense
39:23if your strategy if your strategy is going into it thinking right well we’re going to phase it there’s a lot of
39:29change here we need to be you know we need to bring people only to trade and that’s what your strategy is based on yeah that is not fast to yield much
39:38return right for the business um it brings you all on a journey and you definitely get somewhere in the end
39:43but if their expectation wasn’t that yes right because we had the chat and we were like yeah we need to be Innovative
39:49you know we need to beat our competition and all this other stuff then that could be years before you’re
39:55going to get to that and they might not realize that at all and so the most total Mis alignment
40:02um on the strategy to the business again and so then they’re like getting confused um when are we seeing the thing and that
40:08and to be fair that’s probably the most common thing you watch happen true it’s a transformation program it’s a massive
40:15program it’s going to take forever and the business didn’t think it was going to take forever really and they also
40:21didn’t suggest it should take forever minimize technology yeah in in what it means to to a business to fully adopt it
40:27versus you know just just thinking that they can get some outcome because they’re using it um and not thinking
40:33because it might be options then you might need to give options in this strategy like whether you’re gonna
40:38partner you know use outside yeah kind of organizations where they whether or
40:45whether you’re doing like actually ring fence leave the old yeah exactly let’s take them go bang let’s go let’s go
40:52brand new let’s just get going yes that’s going to be far quicker option one far faster your return but you’ve
40:58now got debt and a cost yeah um that does that something has to happen with that too you gotta ignore it but it feels that there’s a lot of
41:04options to probably discover before you can work out even which what to do exactly what
41:10you’re exactly going to aim for um yeah which is why it’s a really complicated that’s why we said the
41:17subjective again it’s like this is a complicated subject really and it is complicated I think that’s what we’re
41:22talking about and here’s what we’re talking about I mean if it was simple then you just actually I think we’re done with this topic
41:28thanks guys thanks for listening
41:34um but I think that I think the bits that are simpler probably maybe I mean it’s a bit of a ignorant something that
41:41could be slight ignorance to what I’m saying here but um is the technology is just the technology
41:47in the end of the day and actually working with things that are defined already that are in the industry that are specific things and patterns and you
41:55know like talk about agiles like a known quantifiable thing that exists in the industry
42:01um there are services that you can use that are quantifiable and how you can use them so I think Downstream actually
42:07in the end the bit when you get to the technical detail is slightly in some ways can be different set of problems
42:13but slightly easier maybe you’ve got a good technical know-how honestly I think we we sometimes we we minimize them
42:19because we’re technologists um so to us obviously they’re super easy that’s what I’m saying it’s maybe a bit
42:25of an ignorant yeah and naive thing for me to say because I’m assuming but assuming you do have people that do know
42:33how to make technology work for your business that’s a massive Assumption of making that
42:38the hard bit is really trying to pin pin down the magnitude of the change to the
42:45business anything that deals with processing people yeah that’s the hardest bit
42:51people are hard yeah it’s yeah it’s difficult yeah it’s difficult that pick becomes very very difficult
42:57and challenging yeah exactly um and the cost overall of not bringing people
43:02along versus bringing people along and the speed which is constant time and versus like and even even uh even in
43:09that um you know the the utopian world that we talked about where you’re leaving the old alone and you’re just
43:15building a new thing then you’ve still got a potentially like recruit a bunch of people and the the skills that are in
43:23like high demand in the market so yeah absolutely yeah so much complexity so much complexity
43:30their responsibilities how are they going to get like gel with the rest of the organization that they clearly need
43:36things from yeah like there’s it’s just it’s not it’s not simple but overall the
43:42kind of outcome to the business and the the value that it drives can be so high if it’s done well oh yeah 100 I think no
43:50the problem I have with strategies in this sense is they are real all they’re
43:56humanistic in the end yeah and the thing is when you get to obviously the humanistic side is expectation and
44:02communication is the most critical thing yeah because if if your strategy doesn’t help set expectations properly if it
44:08didn’t contain any options you didn’t present anybody with any options you know all these things means you know
44:14what happens when they the expectation wasn’t there correctly or you assumed they understood what you understood and
44:21all these things that can happen you’re in a bit of a world of pain at that point because people might want to pull a plug in the funding yeah right and
44:27you’re like but we’ve got so far what are you talking about I think about anything so but they’re like their expectation wasn’t that do you mean it
44:35was set incorrectly by accident you thought you’d say it right but you didn’t like just let’s just move some of
44:41these Services because it costs less yeah or something like that it’s done achieved
44:47in the box and it’s like no that’s not really what I actually meant you know it’s very as I’m saying it has to really
44:54get everybody fully fully aligned yeah and the measurements have to be so well
45:00and clearly marked and timeline really and time-bound like by this time I think
45:06we should see X happening yes right this value should be there affiliate with the timeline people also need to be bought
45:13into um I guess the wider Vision right so you’ve got that you’ve got right by this
45:20and this is the value that we’re gonna strive for um but what if that isn’t ambitious
45:27enough so that value that you’re striving for is like oh [ __ ] like four pounds yeah I mean it just comes so
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