Own is much more than have

JIT economy

JIT economy changed many industries. Owning a SaaS (environment) is an asset. Just having it slows your process. Owning an environment means knowing how to go to new vertical, adjust, overcome, or pivot.

Let’s compare it to similar trends in home construction as they are more relatable than abstract in nature software development.

Home construction metaphor for SaaS blueprints

There were always rapid development approaches to home and cabin construction. It is possible to take a standard shipping container, cut a few windows, doors, create an outlet for electricity, and that’s a dwelling which gives a roof over your head. It will protect against wind and rain in pleasant conditions. You even can combine a few of these to have multiple rooms. When temperature goes higher or lower of course comfort of being in such “home” is questionable.

Better technology would have at least insulation, and air conditioning. Further improvement will need to have outlets for water and bathroom waste to allow for connection of such unit to main foundation and utilities.

Boxabl [1] has offering to have kitchen with amenities, bathroom and air-conditioning already pre-built at a factory. Unit comes in shippable dimensions, which transforms into full size during installation. They offer these days units which can be combined into multi-room dwellings.

And if you are a developer - that's the exact piece you need. If you want to move into a house to live there, then someone still needs to figure out how to design a blueprint and lay a foundation and hook up utilities to the unit’s infra outlets.

[1] - https://www.boxabl.com/

Drawing parallels

The parallels can be drawn now. The unit in the world of SaaS is application, or are services needed for buildout. Infrastructure as a code (IaaC) and SDLC pipelines are that foundation, and connections between container outlets to utilities. These three components define typical SaaS environment.

Their quality defines how shippable it is from one place to another. Of course, what a copy is in digital world differs tangibly from a world of construction. The quality of these three components defines whether you own or just have your software.

Similarly to physical world unit infrastructure built into the “walls” differs. Defining how flexible it is to be deployed to an environment (“foundation”), combined with other services and reshipped to a new one.

The foundation in place has similar qualities, and flexibility of its own blueprint.

Cloud-infrastructure changes how SaaS companies provision servers, as cloud providers can offer servers in a matter of minutes. Beforehand similar provisioning easily could start months and quarters ahead.

Similarly to the physical world, actionable blueprint for SaaS is like having a factory which builds units, instead of having a container which was built. Automation in both cases ensures standard and quality across the entire production line.

It improves strategic positioning of SaaS companies in three main directions: human capital, operations and risk management, and of course existential adjustments.

Below are symptoms which appear independent at first look. They have the same solution – owning an environment.

Human Capital

1. Remember when a new engineer came and was afraid to touch the environment? – as a result it took a long time to ship new features.
2. Remember that new product which never went live because all engineers who enabled company to have it, don’t remember what they put in into these years? Think about it. Some of them might never have met.
3. Remember that feature engineer was overthinking for months because environment is fragile? IT is a practical discipline and “break things fast” is an excellent way of learning when you have dedicated environment(s) for it. Especially when the goal is to find out what you should not do to break production.

Risk management and operations

4. Remember the DR (disaster recovery) process which was added as a separate checkbox item, and took a year and half for teams to complete?
5. Remember the time when production went down because configuration management was not predictable and in code? - sad story of Knight Capital
6. Remember the performance testing which never took place and then customers had to experience every single bottleneck, and the team spent hours troubleshooting this?
7. Remember that security patch which brought a company to a stall, or full halt?

Existential adjustments

8. Remember the other day when your sales did not go because demo environment is development environment?
9. Remember a dedicated customer you had to abandon because it was estimated that onboarding would take a year?
10. Remember that vertical you did not go into because it was just too many controls to add on top of what is supported?
11.  Remember the certification process which took ages to complete because product deployments were so ad hoc it required due diligence to investigate each one for the processes in-place?
12.  Remember the product pivot you were overthinking, instead of testing it as a standalone brand?

Line on a sand

These are 12 symptoms which can be resolved with a comprehensive resiliency and reliability program and SaaS blueprint.

Alone mentioned directions are quite difficult to prioritize when a company is pushing another feature or product, but together they replace constantly amortizing have by steadily compounding own. This is a practical way to implement strategy of change, and lay foundation of infinite game for a business.

See also

• Strategy is all about starting and stopping in time
• Technology and product balance
• Keep technology menu short

Cross-cloud credentials

 Still spending technological time on management of static credentials?

Multi-cloud is the last thing to recommend to keep technology menu short [1]. Unless, you have a really strong case for it. But when you do multi-cloud - do it without static credentials. OpenID is a well-tested technology, which wipes boundaries even between separate clouds through federated principal.

If even multi-cloud can do it, the rest should follow.

[1] - Keep technology menu short

Leadership as a service

“We were not in a grand way of business, but we had a good name, and worked for our profits, and did very well.” - from final chapters of “Great expectations” by C. Dickens.

This concept is far from being novel, yet it needs to be rediscovered by each professional in their own way.

This shows one journey of discovering and putting meaning to leadership as a service how it came and unfolded over the course of a couple decades.

Service primarily driven by going from empowering a team by being "the best" – which comes naturally; to driving the best out of your team by example – which is quite an artificial process.

The darkness

To appreciate light, we need to see darkness. The darkness here was and is Elite theory [1]. The “theory” de facto is a macro-sum (bias) of individuals striving to be the best and stopping there. Or bluntly single skill needed for leadership – operational (ephemeral) domination. This comes naturally, and often lives inside of a cultural layer.

The gap which this theory has is in declining. To illustrate this let’s dive into data on Olympic gold medals [2]. For 100 years of the competition there are just 318 incredible people in the whole world who won more than a single medal.

Such a career has a typically short time span of 4-12 years depending on the discipline. It took training of every muscle needed to be in perfect condition for each sport, and every hour of the day to get to that form, and then maintain it. And still, winning on the track of life is a short period in these cases. What lasted – is coming back to their communities, and giving heart back, showing example and path forward. That can and will last forever.

The ray of light

This was likely in a play, or movie. Happened instantly.

“Who cleans up your sh*t?” – the main character asks his partner. Pause. Surprised look. “Parents.” – scene.

This started the process.

Mr. J

Mr. J did come to the USA with a school diploma, no college profession, or bags of money. Mr. J came with determination and golden hands. He got his English courses, landed a job in maintenance (floor cleaning), and started building credit showing a strong habit of paying own bills on time.

When time came and credit score settled, he learned what’s what, and where is who, they (J and his partner) could take a business loan. The loan to buy a house, flip it, and sell renovated property ready for happy family.

The loan had two components: money needed to pay for the house itself as is, and money to renovate it. As the group knew how to do a bunch of work renovating the house, they needed to spend only a portion on contractors, and materials. That was their competitive advantage.

They did it with the first house, then with the second, and over time naturally ended up owning rental properties for themselves.

The end of the millennium was a perfect time for this too.

There are famous script and novel writers too who follow the quest of Mr. J: using every napkin, every short break while working in the service industry. S. Stallone describes the making of Rocky in 1977, which in spirit a way to describe typical software startup founder.

Meaningful work matters. It is effective.

NB: This story is about getting to your dream with given. Though, college education is still important for professions around CRISPR, quantum computers, legal, medical etc.

Wild exaggeration

Two thriller/drama movies as exaggerated models of group dynamics.

Exam (2009) – about importance of clear structured expectations, with a pinch of leadership as a service.

Experiment (2010) – this movie is the darkness contrasting leadership of a service to servicing the leadership. Exaggerated version of a manger who has no real explanation of own authority.

A typical idea in light is to make sure the manager is ready. Frankly one is ready when a professional can sense if the supporting environment is ready as well.

No further comments here to prevent spoiler alerts.

Business

Stories above were beacons. Showing what is missing.  Leadership as a service piece is well shaped by the following books, presentations and practices:

1. "Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success", 2014 by  P. Jackson, H. Delehanty 
2. G. Mogelashvili, 2018, Booking.com story about Team Autonomy at QConn
3. K. Blanchard on servant leadership
4. “Principles”, 2017 by R. Dalio on systematic company structuring and decision making
5. “Radical Candor”, 2017 by K. Scott on practical notes on giving feedback
6. “What You Do Is Who You Are”, 2019, by B. Horowitz
7. "Trillion Dollar Coach", 2019, by  E. Schmidt, J. Rosenberg,  A. Eagle
8. “The Infinite Game”, 2019, by S. Sinek
9. Gary Vaynerchuk who verbally connects well on the topic in remarkably eloquent manner

It’s quite interesting to see how these works complement each other from different angles, sides and surfaces.

Sports

Following Mr. J example. In sports plan A is to be a good player, and then maybe train and coach as a plan B if injuries happen, or time comes.

It is important to mention Ted Lasso (2020) series too.

Line on a sand

Classical decision making describes three levels of maturity from simplest to complex and smartest: reflex, reaction, and response.

Maybe, leadership as a service is a complex response requiring training and preparation by a group itself, but yet it is smart and efficient way to organize game, and channel priorities in a smart way.

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_theory
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_Olympic_medalists

Decentralize

"Governing a big country is as delicate as frying a small fish... disturb a lot – and you get mush, leave untouched – charcoals” – Laozi (6th century BC)

Assigning proper people to manage a priority is also critical. After all, you don’t want to vote if surgery is needed, or not. You use a very limited group of professionals to advise on it – doctors.

Priority is sometimes confused with projects. Quality operations can allow many projects to be executed per person/team, but typically execution on each of them happens consequently on one-by-one basis.

Priorities are much trickier, no matter how perfect a product is there are parallel priorities as this product goes to operations. The main characteristic of priority in well oiled company is how quickly you handle a bottleneck when one arises.

Bottleneck could be a supply issue, customer question, making sure systems are up, whether it is payroll, project management, one of many API systems etc. When it happens, it means something went different on this day. Someone needs to assess, contain and adjust operations based on the assessment.

Each priority typically means some set of bottlenecks which your company experiences: or due to growth, or due to amortization. The theory of constraints clearly indicates that each bottleneck addressed opens another one somewhere down the stream.

That’s where decentralization comes into the game. When it comes to time and quality. If you have a “player” on your “business field” who knows what needs to be done to handle issues actively as they happen and further proactively - before they happen, your business saves time and constantly improves quality. In contrast, if everyone must go up to a single person who constantly tells how to handle this and that instead of figuring out (at least key) “bases”, there is obvious design flaw here – that person becomes a bottleneck. Independently handling issues and crisis creates better throughput especially when multiple priorities are triggered in the same time.

Ken Blanchard calls this training a team of eagles vs. team of (lame) ducks.

At some point, they need to start, or re-start again to get a better understanding of what the current process is. Decision making for important questions, including which questions are important, which questions need more discussions, and which discussions need decisions is a seniority characteristic. This characteristic is always relative, and always recursive, and always needs time and priority at every level.

Delegation of such priorities gives you confidence:

• organization is setting up metrics and expectations for that operating block of a company
• there is somebody else who asserts clarity on this part of a company process
• with even 30-50% of decisions delegated to a team one creates healthy learning environment

To zoom out into a wider picture. Josiah Ober has a fantastic linguistic analysis in his paper [1] where he shows how meaning of democracy comes into capacity to do things, not simple voting tool when things are non-binary.

Especially true for specialized knowledge, whether it is surgery or refinement of an operating block. Think, about this… if you come to an office floor and there is person in a jacket with a sharp object stuck out of a pocket – you don’t need to wait for everyone to vote on it.

Teams are specialized to handle such “sharp objects” and need to have enough autonomy to act even before it is not clear how sharp they are for everyone else.

In the end of the day, that’s why we ask doctors for advice and diagnosis. That’s why you hire people who tell you what to do, no other way around. Then you work on keeping in synch. Then you apply “checks and balances” to what is expected from each function.

 

[1] - The Original Meaning of 'Democracy': Capacity to Do Things, Not Majority Rule

Signature of the artisan

 Craftsmanship means quality.

 A good example is “handcrafted signature” by Mercedes Benz AMG engine. To get the engine assembled they put together already prepared parts from commonly available materials. Then philosophy “One man. One Engine.” [1] precisely describes level of personal responsibility put into work to make sure supreme quality of the final product.

 Such a process gives clear ownership and reduces chances of miscommunication during assembly entirely. Software development processes are often compared to manufacturing [2], [3]. This is exactly the case: as software engineering means assembling already existing parts (code) into more complex engine or system.

The rest of the post takes the form of a quest. As it turns out the Internet tends to forget fine things. Because they should not be forgotten.

First, I am 90% sure Mercedes had a similar process for assembly of a model with artisan signature in the end. In that case car engine and parts would come as inputs, and engineer following strict process: scanning a next part into computer before using it to incorporate into the final product would execute quality-ensuring checklist. The automated checklist is a good example to make sure quality steadily remains and sometimes increases as there is a way to detect abnormal, or broken sequence. If you have a link to a video – post in the comments.

Lastly, below is a more emotional example from the realm of art. In this case simple signature done with a lipstick turns satellite dish into a lady.

As you would guess I could not find the original name and author of the painting. All AI tools did offer convincing description by prompt as well as dozens of possible pairs of names. Unfortunately, all turned out to be hallucinations. It was necessary to improvise. Results are below. If you know the answer and/or have a link to original art – post in the comments.

Satellite dish

With a minor signature turns out to be a lady

References

[1] - https://www.mercedes-amg.com/en/footer/about-us.html

[2] – “Lean Startup”, - Eric Ries

[3] – “The Phoenix Project”, - Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford

"Triangle defense": customer, team, and long value

Incentives matter.

That’s what we can see in “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis depicting what misaligned incentives do to customers (loan takers), banks agents, money managers, insurance brokers, and retirement fund managers resulted in big recession and wipe out of savings at large.

Another case. A pharmaceutical company (let’s simply call them Y) abandons investment in R&D projects and focuses (entirely) on searching for acquisitions. It is hard to get ahead when you are always behind. Even as experiencing technology does not yield business, it does yield knowledge. Useful for deeper evaluation of a business category.

Understand me correctly, it’s not the strategy at the top line only: it’s gradual deformation of incentives which at the bottom line resulted in questionable practice.

In the long run, shares did drop. Shareholder value dropped. The newly appointed CEO would have to start conversation with government officials: “we are not the team which brought this ship to this wreck, we are the team which needs to manage this out”. Y even had to change their company name.

Let’s go to an even more morbid and fictional example of badly set business incentives. Of course it’s a reference to a story of Sweeney Todd. Business, shareholders, and a large part of customers (a business line) were happy. Except, they literally were cannibalizing fraction of customers, ignoring their interests altogether. This is a fictional story (or some say not) with deep metaphorical meaning.

Forth example. The famous The Johnson & Johnson Tylenol Case [1] gives a good example when thinking about customer mattered. They had a choice to fight massively expensive recall; yet recall resulting in a loss and share price drop in a short term and seal-closed bottles innovation meant in long term shareholder value gains.

Hence, the best framework for making decisions one could find is navigating best judgement using triangle of three interests: customer, team, and shareholder, - decision “triangle defense” of business. As each team follows virtues and takes care of customers, then the company follows and delivers value from their products, happy customers create happy feedback loops, and everyone benefits from long term value. That’s the defense.

 [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

Technology and product balance

When it comes to execution it is important to remember technology projects usually do not match product features.

For example. Let’s say you want to create a rail connection between Chicago and New York, and New York with Philadelphia. Each connection is a separate project. That’s what business needs. Let’s call them Pj.

To build those roads you need to have technical means to accomplish them: asphalt factory, gravel, heavy equipment, and teams which put all these components together. Let’s call them Ti.

The way you build and ship software, integrate pre-built systems, verify, train operators, and secure your services – are like technical means in the example above. They define your “factory”. The goal of the technology strategy is to gradually restructure, expand and recognize these abilities to handle projects of corresponding business roadmap.

Classic trilogy “The Financier” by T. Dreiser depicts how mass transit system emerges from a need to connect a few blocks in different places of the city by two-three station segments. The system progresses, and interval operators form transit lines. The lines form colors (line groups) under common management. Then the city’s mass transit system emerges from all these three-station segments. Initial buildout of transportation intervals was independent. Lack of coordination creates the burden of managing different standards later when the merged system forms. It naturally takes time to transform merged system into one united one. For many modern cities centuries later, the issues are still there. Standardization often happens via issuing considerable municipal debt to manage transition: unifying width between tracks, height of platforms, shifting to the same cars to optimize maintenance, introduce team training etc.

Startups are similar, though like later stage mass transportation systems they can and should be guided by an accumulated knowledge. This allows for reduction of time during onboarding, operations, and duplicative R&D. Hence, directing time and resources from would happen technical debt to addressing unique challenges each startup has. Together with that, when time to market is decisive – technological debt is justifiable.

Constant collaboration of what’s behind product corner drives interest to enrichment of your technology toolbox, and as toolbox becomes richer – more challenging product items could be included to business roadmap.