Agenda

IC

Systems engineering through technical work

Manager

Systems engineering through people work

Exec

Systems engineering through systems work

How Do We Do?

One of the main hurdles when building a company is figuring out how to scale decision making

• The effectiveness of a collaboration model is influenced by the scope, the context, and the motivation under which it's utilized.
• Ideal collaboration happens when the ownership of the work, the motivation to do it, and the authority to complete it are all mutually aligned.
• There's another set of factors here: Time, and Stability.
  (They're less relevant than you'd think)
• We think of Time as teams having a life-cycle, but that's not really true in the traditional "Forming, Norming, Storming, Dying" sense.
• We like stability because it's an effective compensation mechanism for working around bad management, poor alignment, lack of agency, overload, and context switching.

• Vertical

  • Specialized Knowledge
  • Effective action in the organization
  • Cognitive overhead required for doing
  • Utilizes consensus

  Horizontal

  • Collective Knowledge
  • Effective learning in the organization
  • Cognitive overhead required for collaboration
  • Utilizes alignment

Scaling Decision Making

1. Shape motivation
2. Understand relationships
3. Scope context

• Building a stable base of knowledge is how you scale collective learning as a society
• Ignorance Limited Context is a feature, not a bug

IC

Systems engineering through technical work

Manager

Systems engineering through people work

Exec

Systems engineering through systems work

Platforms Are a Way to Scale Doing

What is a Platform?

IC

Platforms are the Dual of Libraries

Manager

Platforms turn Service Teams into Product Teams

Exec

Platforms derisk diversification by exploiting the economics of agglomeration

Totes Platforms™

• Kubernetes
• Design Systems
• Programs
• Education Curriculum
• Corn
• Sales Funnel
• Jazz Standards
• Mission, Strategy, Vision, Objectives
• Executive Alignment
• Policy
• Language
• APIs
• ISO Standards
• Algebraic Structures Equivalent to Computational Models
  regex is a platform. die mad about it.

Platforms Are Not

These are tools and a means to an end

• Platforms
• DevOps
• Kubernetes
• Libraries
• Process
• Culture
• Infrastructure
• Golden Paths
• SDKs
• Self-Service Platforms
• Cookbooks
• Enabling / Platform Teams

Platforms ≠ Platform Engineering

Libraries vs Platforms

Platforms Turn Services into Products

This isn't always good.

It's not always what you want.

You will always need both services and products.

Platform Synergy

IC

Libraries are the building blocks of Platforms

Manager

Platforms synergize with executive alignment and team dynamics

Exec

Platforms operationalize Libraries the way Programs operationalize Policy

DevOps vs
SRE vs
Platform Engineering

DevOps

A culture of whole-system ownership motivated by broadening horizontal context

SRE

A specialist role in resilience engineering that naturally arises when horizontal context becomes too large for any one team

Platform Engineering

An empathy-driven approach towards sociotechnical organizational design

What is a Platform?

IC

Platforms are the Dual of Libraries

Manager

Platforms turn Service Teams into Product Teams

Exec

Platforms derisk diversification by exploiting the economics of agglomeration

What Makes Platforms Work?

IC

Abstractions that are force multipliers

Manager

Interfaces between teams that reduce cognitive overhead

Exec

Consistent language and mental models that enable aligned innovation

Mapping Organizational Structures to Doing

Slicing Context - Functional

Slicing Context - Product

Slicing Context - Matrix

Directional Context

Context + Collaboration

Cheating the Matrix

• Building a stable base of knowledge is how you scale collective learning as a society

  But, how do you build a base of knowledge if scaling requires managing context?

• 

Shrinking Context

IC

Well designed abstractions

Manager

Thoughtful interfaces between teams

Exec

Consistent language and mental models

• Well designed abstractions are both transparent and opaque

• Thoughtful interfaces between teams result in effective collaboration models

• Humans chunk concepts together to build on top of them

  Providing consistent language and mental models allows people to build their own chunks in a way that results in aligned growth of understanding

Properties of Good Platforms

• Reduce horizontal context
• Enable emergent innovation
• Enable experimentation
• Minimize migration cost
• Minimize collaboration model overhead
• Improve feedback loops
• Minimize context switching
• Reduce IC context overhead

What Makes Platforms Work

IC

Abstractions that are force multipliers

Manager

Interfaces between teams that reduce cognitive overhead

Exec

Consistent language and mental models that enable aligned innovation

My Sincere Apologies to Finance Teams and MBAs

Economics ⇔ Technology

Economic Model - Functional

• Economics of scale
• Tech Vertical - often viewed as a cost center
• Value generation comes from removing waste from feedback loop

Economic Model - Product

• Economics of scope
• Tech Vertical - often viewed as a profit center
• Value generation comes from reuse of overhead when diversifying

Economic Model - Matrix

• Economics of density
• Often viewed as too much paperwork multiple centers
• Value generation comes from efficiencies generated by peer proximity

Continuity, Economics

Platform Economics

• 

  Platform Engineering derisks effective diversification

• 

  • Blocks can be seen as services
  • Groups of blocks can be seen as product offerings
  • Clusters are economic optimization opportunities
  • Nodes are teams

• 

  • Branches can be seen as codebases
  • Branch clusters can be seen as problem domain understanding
  • Clusters are economic optimization opportunities
  • Nodes are teams

When to Platform?

Platforms make sense when the benefits of reducing horizontal context more than offset the overhead of adding a vertical to the organization.

Platforms must be more than the sum of their parts

The Blueprint: LOVE

1. Listen
2. Observe
3. Validate
4. Empathize

Not the Blueprint: EVIL

1. Examine
2. Vindicate
3. Implement
4. Launch

Love vs Evil

They're surprisingly similar, really

Empathy

Perspective taking

Recognize other people's perspectives as their truth

Staying out of judgement

Suspend judgement and be curious

Recognizing emotion in other people

Recognize and acknowledge other people's emotions

Communicating emotion

Communicate your understanding of other people's emotions

Step-By-Step Recipe

• IC

  1. Ask individuals on your team what their pain points are
  2. Look for duplication of effort, code, process, communication
  3. Compare results

• EM

  1. Ask teams you interface with what their pain points are
  2. Look for duplication of workflows, interfaces, process, planning
  3. Compare results

• Exec

  1. Ask organizational leaders what their pain points are
  2. Look for duplications of language, vision, alignment efforts, programs
  3. Compare results

Understanding Each Other

• Priorities

  IC

  Reduction of toil

  Manager

  Optimization of team interactions

  Exec

  Long term alignment of innovation

A Platform Is An Abstraction That Platforms Like A Platform

Platform teams are organizationally empowered to address cross-cutting changes

With a combination of technical, procedural, and cultural improvements

Platform Engineering can turn culture into an intuition around how to use a platform

Make Change Easy to Handle, Not Easy To Do

Failure Modes

• DevOps tends to fail because the sharp and blunt ends of a system are rarely aligned and addressing that requires a cultural shift
• SRE tends to fail when implemented prematurely; it only makes sense when the horizontal context is too large for any one team
• Platform Engineering tends to fail when implemented without empathy and diversity
• Platform Engineering tends to fail when an agglomeration based approach isn't used to address optimizations

Platforms are a way to scale doing

What is Platform Engineering

IC

Empathy Driven Development

Manager

Empathy Driven Collaboration

Exec

Empathy Driven Organizational Design

Platform Engineering is Empathy Driven Learning