(gentle music) >> Hey! Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of WiDS 2023, the eighth Annual Women In Data Science Conference. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. We are at Stanford University, as you know we are every year, having some wonderful conversations with some very inspiring women and men in data science and technical roles. I'm very pleased to introduce Tracy Zhang, my co-host, who is in the Data Journalism program at Stanford. And Tracy and I are pleased to welcome our next guest, Rhonda Crate, Principal Data Scientist at Boeing. Great to have you on the program, Rhonda. >> Tracy: Welcome. >> Hey, thanks for having me. >> Were you always interested in data science or STEM from the time you were young? >> No, actually. I was always interested in archeology and anthropology. >> That's right, we were talking about that, anthropology. Interesting. >> We saw the anthropology background, not even a bachelor's degree, but also a master's degree in anthropology. >> So you were committed for a while. >> I was, I was. I actually started college as a fine arts major, but I always wanted to be an archeologist. So at the last minute, 11 credits in, left to switch to anthropology. And then when I did my master's, I focused a little bit more on quantitative research methods and then I got my Stat Degree. >> Interesting. Talk about some of the data science projects that you're working on. When I think of Boeing, I always think of aircraft. But you are doing a lot of really cool things in IT, data analytics. Talk about some of those intriguing data science projects that you're working on. >> Yeah. So when I first started at Boeing, I worked in information technology and data analytics. And Boeing, at the time, had cored up data science in there. And so we worked as a function across the enterprise working on anything from shared services to user experience in IT products, to airplane programs. So, it has a wide range. I worked on environment health and safety projects for a long time as well. So looking at ergonomics and how people actually put parts onto airplanes, along with things like scheduling and production line, part failures, software testing. Yeah, there's a wide spectrum of things. >> But I think that's so fantastic. We've been talking, Tracy, today about just what we often see at WiDS, which is this breadth of diversity in people's background. You talked about anthropology, archeology, you're doing data science. But also all of the different opportunities that you've had at Boeing. To see so many facets of that organization. I always think that breadth of thought diversity can be hugely impactful. >> Yeah. So I will say my anthropology degree has actually worked to my benefit. I'm a huge proponent of integrating liberal arts and sciences together. And it actually helps me. I'm in the Technical Fellowship program at Boeing, so we have different career paths. So you can go into management, you can be a regular employee, or you can go into the Fellowship program. So right now I'm an Associate Technical Fellow. And part of how I got into the Fellowship program was that diversity in my background, what made me different, what made me stand out on projects. Even applying a human aspect to things like ergonomics, as silly as that sounds, but how does a person actually interact in the space along with, here are the actual measurements coming off of whatever system it is that you're working on. So, I think there's a lot of opportunities, especially in safety as well, which is a big initiative for Boeing right now, as you can imagine. >> Tracy: Yeah, definitely. >> I can't go into too specifics. >> No, 'cause we were like, I think a theme for today that kind of we brought up in in all of our talk is how data is about people, how data is about how people understand the world and how these data can make impact on people's lives. So yeah, I think it's great that you brought this up, and I'm very happy that your anthropology background can tap into that and help in your day-to-day data work too. >> Yeah. And currently, right now, I actually switched over to Strategic Workforce Planning. So it's more how we understand our workforce, how we work towards retaining the talent, how do we get the right talent in our space, and making sure overall that we offer a culture and work environment that is great for our employees to come to. >> That culture is so important. You know, I was looking at some anitab.org stats from 2022 and you know, we always talk about the number of women in technical roles. For a long time it's been hovering around that 25% range. The data from anitab.org showed from '22, it's now 27.6%. So, a little increase. But one of the biggest challenges still, and Tracy and I and our other co-host, Hannah, have been talking about this, is attrition. Attrition more than doubled last year. What are some of the things that Boeing is doing on the retention side, because that is so important especially as, you know, there's this pipeline leakage of women leaving technical roles. Tell us about what Boeing's, how they're invested. >> Yeah, sure. We actually have a publicly available Global Diversity Report that anybody can go and look at and see our statistics for our organization. Right now, off the top of my head, I think we're hovering at about 24% in the US for women in our company. It has been a male majority company for many years. We've invested heavily in increasing the number of women in roles. One interesting thing about this year that came out is that even though with the great resignation and those types of things, the attrition level between men and women were actually pretty close to being equal, which is like the first time in our history. Usually it tends on more women leaving. >> Lisa: That's a good sign. >> Right. >> Yes, that's a good sign. >> And we've actually focused on hiring and bringing in more women and diversity in our company. >> Yeah, some of the stats too from anitab.org talked about the increase, and I have to scroll back and find my notes, the increase in 51% more women being hired in 2022 than 2021 for technical roles. So the data, pun intended, is showing us. I mean, the data is there to show the impact that having females in executive leadership positions make from a revenue perspective. >> Tracy: Definitely. >> Companies are more profitable when there's women at the head, or at least in senior leadership roles. But we're seeing some positive trends, especially in terms of representation of women technologists. One of the things though that I found interesting, and I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, Rhonda, is that the representation of women technologists is growing in all areas, except interns. >> Rhonda: Hmm. >> So I think, we've got to go downstream. You teach, I have to go back to my notes on you, did my due diligence, R programming classes through Boeings Ed Wells program, this is for WSU College of Arts and Sciences, talk about what you teach and how do you think that intern kind of glut could be solved? >> Yeah. So, they're actually two separate programs. So I teach a data analytics course at Washington State University as an Adjunct Professor. And then the Ed Wells program is a SPEEA, which is an Aerospace Union, focused on bringing up more technology and skills to the actual workforce itself. So it's kind of a couple different audiences. One is more seasoned employees, right? The other one is our undergraduates. I teach a Capstone class, so it's a great way to introduce students to what it's actually like to work on an industry project. We partner with Google and Microsoft and Boeing on those. The idea is also that maybe those companies have openings for the students when they're done. Since it's Senior Capstone, there's not a lot of opportunities for internships. But the opportunities to actually get hired increase a little bit. In regards to Boeing, we've actually invested a lot in hiring more women interns. I think the number was 40%, but you'd have to double check. >> Lisa: That's great, that's fantastic. >> Tracy: That's way above average, I think. >> That's a good point. Yeah, it is above average. >> Double check on that. That's all from my memory. >> Is this your first WiDS, or have you been before? >> I did virtually last year. >> Okay. One of the things that I love, I love covering this event every year. theCUBE's been covering it since it's inception in 2015. But it's just the inspiration, the vibe here at Stanford is so positive. WiDS is a movement. It's not an initiative, an organization. There are going to be, I think annually this year, there will be 200 different events. Obviously today we're live on International Women's Day. 60 plus countries, 100,000 plus people involved. So, this is such a positive environment for women and men, because we need everybody, underrepresented minorities, to be able to understand the implication that data has across our lives. If we think about stripping away titles in industries, everybody is a consumer, not everybody, most of mobile devices. And we have this expectation, I was in Barcelona last week at a Mobile World Congress, we have this expectation that we're going to be connected 24/7. I can get whatever I want wherever I am in the world, and that's all data driven. And the average person that isn't involved in data science wouldn't understand that. At the same time, they have expectations that depend on organizations like Boeing being data driven so that they can get that experience that they expect in their consumer lives in any aspect of their lives. And that's one of the things I find so interesting and inspiring about data science. What are some of the things that keep you motivated to continue pursuing this? >> Yeah I will say along those lines, I think it's great to invest in K-12 programs for Data Literacy. I know one of my mentors and directors of the Data Analytics program, Dr. Nairanjana Dasgupta, we're really familiar with each other. So, she runs a WSU program for K-12 Data Literacy. It's also something that we strive for at Boeing, and we have an internal Data Literacy program because, believe it or not, most people are in business. And there's a lot of disconnect between interpreting and understanding data. For me, what kind of drives me to continue data science is that connection between people and data and how we use it to improve our world, which is partly why I work at Boeing too 'cause I feel that they produce products that people need like satellites and airplanes, >> Absolutely. >> and everything. >> Well, it's tangible, it's relatable. We can understand it. Can you do me a quick favor and define data literacy for anyone that might not understand what that means? >> Yeah, so it's just being able to understand elements of data, whether that's a bar chart or even in a sentence, like how to read a statistic and interpret a statistic in a sentence, for example. >> Very cool. >> Yeah. And sounds like Boeing's doing a great job in these programs, and also trying to hire more women. So yeah, I wanted to ask, do you think there's something that Boeing needs to work on? Or where do you see yourself working on say the next five years? >> Yeah, I think as a company, we always think that there's always room for improvement. >> It never, never stops. >> Tracy: Definitely. (laughs) >> I know workforce strategy is an area that they're currently really heavily investing in, along with safety. How do we build safer products for people? How do we help inform the public about things like Covid transmission in airports? For example, we had the Confident Traveler Initiative which was a big push that we had, and we had to be able to inform people about data models around Covid, right? So yeah, I would say our future is more about an investment in our people and in our culture from my perspective >> That's so important. One of the hardest things to change especially for a legacy organization like Boeing, is culture. You know, when I talk with CEO's or CIO's or COO's about what's your company's vision, what's your strategy? Especially those companies that are on that digital journey that have no choice these days. Everybody expects to have a digital experience, whether you're transacting an an Uber ride, you're buying groceries, or you're traveling by air. That culture sounds like Boeing is really focused on that. And that's impressive because that's one of the hardest things to morph and mold, but it's so essential. You know, as we look around the room here at WiDS it's obviously mostly females, but we're talking about women, underrepresented minorities. We're talking about men as well who are mentors and sponsors to us. I'd love to get your advice to your younger self. What would you tell yourself in terms of where you are now to become a leader in the technology field? >> Yeah, I mean, it's kind of an interesting question because I always try to think, live with no regrets to an extent. >> Lisa: I like that. >> But, there's lots of failures along the way. (Tracy laughing) I don't know if I would tell myself anything different because honestly, if I did, I wouldn't be where I am. >> Lisa: Good for you. >> I started out in fine arts, and I didn't end up there. >> That's good. >> Such a good point, yeah. >> We've been talking about that and I find that a lot at events like WiDS, is women have these zigzaggy patterns. I studied biology, I have a master's in molecular biology, I'm in media and marketing. We talked about transportable skills. There's a case I made many years ago when I got into tech about, well in science you learn the art of interpreting esoteric data and creating a story from it. And that's a transportable skill. But I always say, you mentioned failure, I always say failure is not a bad F word. It allows us to kind of zig and zag and learn along the way. And I think that really fosters thought diversity. And in data science, that is one of the things we absolutely need to have is that diversity and thought. You know, we talk about AI models being biased, we need the data and we need the diverse brains to help ensure that the biases are identified, extracted, and removed. Speaking of AI, I've been geeking out with ChatGPT. So, I'm on it yesterday and I ask it, "What's hot in data science?" And I was like, is it going to get that? What's hot? And it did it, it came back with trends. I think if I ask anything, "What's hot?", I should be to Paris Hilton, but I didn't. And so I was geeking out. One of the things I learned recently that I thought was so super cool is the CTO of OpenAI is a woman, Mira Murati, which I didn't know until over the weekend. Because I always think if I had to name top females in tech, who would they be? And I always default to Sheryl Sandberg, Carly Fiorina, Susan Wojcicki running YouTube. Who are some of the people in your history, in your current, that are really inspiring to you? Men, women, indifferent. >> Sure. I think Boeing is one of the companies where you actually do see a lot of women in leadership roles. I think we're one of the top companies with a number of women executives, actually. Susan Doniz, who's our Chief Information Officer, I believe she's actually slotted to speak at a WiDS event come fall. >> Lisa: Cool. >> So that will be exciting. Susan's actually relatively newer to Boeing in some ways. A Boeing time skill is like three years is still kind of new. (laughs) But she's been around for a while and she's done a lot of inspiring things, I think, for women in the organization. She does a lot with Latino communities and things like that as well. For me personally, you know, when I started at Boeing Ahmad Yaghoobi was one of my mentors and my Technical Lead. He came from Iran during a lot of hard times in the 1980s. His brother actually wrote a memoir, (laughs) which is just a fun, interesting fact. >> Tracy: Oh my God! >> Lisa: Wow! >> And so, I kind of gravitate to people that I can learn from that's not in my sphere, that might make me uncomfortable. >> And you probably don't even think about how many people you're influencing along the way. >> No. >> We just keep going and learning from our mentors and probably lose sight of, "I wonder how many people actually admire me?" And I'm sure there are many that admire you, Rhonda, for what you've done, going from anthropology to archeology. You mentioned before we went live you were really interested in photography. Keep going and really gathering all that breadth 'cause it's only making you more inspiring to people like us. >> Exactly. >> We thank you so much for joining us on the program and sharing a little bit about you and what brought you to WiDS. Thank you so much, Rhonda. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Tracy: Thank you so much for being here. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> Alright. >> For our guests, and for Tracy Zhang, this is Lisa Martin live at Stanford University covering the eighth Annual Women In Data Science Conference. Stick around. Next guest will be here in just a second. (gentle music)

>> Hello everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE been profiling the leaders in the technology world, women in technology from developers to the boardroom, everything in between. We have two great guests promoting in from Malaysia. Nancy Wang is the general manager, also CUBE alumni from AWS Data Protection, and founder and board chair of Advancing Women in Tech, awit.org. And of course Kate Watts who's the executive director of Advancing Women in Tech.org. So it's awit.org. Nancy, Kate, thanks for coming all the way across remotely from Malaysia. >> Of course, we're coming to you as fast as our internet bandwidth will allow us. And you know, I'm just thrilled today that you get to see a whole nother aspect of my life, right? Because typically we talk about AWS, and here we're talking about a topic near and dear to my heart. >> Well, Nancy, I love the fact that you're spending a lot of time taking the empowerment to go out and help the industries and helping with the advancement of women in tech. Kate, the executive director it's a 501C3, it's nonprofit, dedicating to accelerating the careers of women in groups in tech. Can you talk about the organization? >> Yes, I can. So Advancing Women in Tech was founded in 2017 in order to fix some of the pathway problems that we're seeing on the rise to leadership in the industry. And so we specifically focus on supporting mid-level women in technical roles, get into higher positions. We do that in a few different ways through mentorship programs through building technical skills and by connecting people to a supportive community. So you have your peer network and then a vertical sort of relationships to help you navigate the next steps in your career. So to date we've served about 40,000 individuals globally and we're just looking to expand our reach and impact and be able to better support women in the industry. >> Nancy, talk about the creation, the origination story. How'd this all come together? Obviously the momentum, everyone in the industry's been focused on this for a long time. Where did AWIT come from? Advancing Women in Technology, that's the acronym. Advancing Women in Technology.org, where'd it come from? What's the origination story? >> Yeah, so AWIT really originated from this desire that I had, to Kate's point around, well if you look around right and you know, don't take my word for it, right? Look at stats, look at news reports, or just frankly go on your LinkedIn and see how many women in underrepresented groups are in senior technical leadership roles right out in the companies whose names we all know. And so that was my case back in 2016. And so when I first got the idea and back then I was actually at Google, just another large tech company in the valley, right? It was about how do we get more role models, how we get more, for example, women into leadership roles so they can bring up the next generation, right? And so this is actually part of a longer speech that I'm about to give on Wednesday and part of the US State Department speaker program. In fact, that's why Kate and I are here in Malaysia right now is working with over 200 women entrepreneurs from all over in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia Philippines, Vietnam, Borneo, you know, so many countries where having more women entrepreneurs can help raise the GDP right, and that fits within our overall mission of getting more women into top leadership roles in tech. >> You know, I was talking about Teresa Carlson she came on the program as well for this year this next season we're going to do. And she mentioned the decision between the US progress and international. And she's saying as much as it's still bad numbers, it's worse than outside the United States and needs to get better. Can you comment on the global aspect? You brought that up. I think it's super important to highlight that it's just not one area, it's a global evolution. >> Absolutely, so let me start, and I'd love to actually have Kate talk about our current programs and all of the international groups that we're working with. So as Teresa aptly mentioned there is so much work to be done not just outside the US and North Americas where typically tech nonprofits will focus, but rather if you think about the one to end model, right? For example when I was doing the product market fit workshop for the US State Department I had women dialing in from rice fields, right? So let me just pause there for a moment. They were holding their cell phones up near towers near trees just so that they can get a few minutes of time with me to do a workshop and how to accelerate their business. So if you don't call that the desire to propel oneself or accelerate oneself, not sure what is, right. And so it's really that passion that drove me to spend the next week and a half here working with local entrepreneurs working with policy makers so we can take advantage and really leverage that passion that people have, right? To accelerate more business globally. And so that's why, you know Kate will be leading our contingent with the United Nations Women Group, right? That is focused on women's economic empowerment because that's super important, right? One aspect can be sure, getting more directors, you know vice presidents into companies like Google and Amazon. But another is also how do you encourage more women around the world to start businesses, right? To reach economic and freedom independence, right? To overcome some of the maybe social barriers to becoming a leader in their own country. >> Yes, and if I think about our own programs and our model of being very intentional about supporting the learning development and skills of women and members of underrepresented groups we focused very much on providing global access to a number of our programs. For instance, our product management certification on Coursera or engineering management our upcoming women founders accelerator. We provide both access that you can get from anywhere. And then also very intentional programming that connects people into the networks to be able to further their networks and what they've learned through the skills online, so. >> Yeah, and something Kate just told me recently is these courses that Kate's mentioning, right? She was instrumental in working with the American Council on Education and so that our learners can actually get up to six college credits for taking these courses on product management engineering management, on cloud product management. And most recently we had our first organic one of our very first organic testimonials was from a woman's tech bootcamp in Nigeria, right? So if you think about the worldwide impact of these upskilling courses where frankly in the US we might take for granted right around the world as I mentioned, there are women dialing in from rice patties from other, you know, for example, outside the, you know corporate buildings in order to access this content. >> Can you think about the idea of, oh sorry, go ahead. >> Go ahead, no, go ahead Kate. >> I was going to say, if you can't see it, you can't become it. And so we are very intentional about ensuring that we have we're spotlighting the expertise of women and we are broadcasting that everywhere so that anybody coming up can gain the skills and the networks to be able to succeed in this industry. >> We'll make sure we get those links so we can promote them. Obviously we feel the same way getting the word out. I think a couple things I'd like to ask you guys cause I think you hit a great point. One is the economic advantage the numbers prove that diverse teams perform better number one, that's clear. So good point there. But I want to get your thoughts on the entrepreneurial equation. You mentioned founders and startups and there's also different makeups in different countries. It's not like the big corporations sometimes it's smaller business in certain areas the different cultures have different business sizes and business types. How do you guys see that factoring in outside the United States, say the big tech companies? Okay, yeah. The easy lower the access to get in education than stay with them, in other countries is it the same or is it more diverse in terms of business? >> So what really actually got us started with the US State Department was around our work with women founders. And I love for Kate to actually share her experience working with AWS startups in that capacity. But frankly, you know, we looked at the content and the mentor programs that were providing women who wanted to be executives, you know, quickly realize a lot of those same skills such as finding customers, right? Scaling your product and building channels can also apply to women founders, not just executives. And so early supporters of our efforts from firms such as Moderna up in Seattle, Emergence Ventures, Decibel Ventures in, you know, the Bay Area and a few others that we're working with right now. Right, they believed in the mission and really helped us scale out what is now our existing platform and offerings for women founders. >> Those are great firms by the way. And they also are very founder friendly and also understand the global workforce. I mean, that's a whole nother dimension. Okay, what's your reaction to all that? >> Yes, we have been very intentional about taking the product expertise and the learnings of women and in our network, we first worked with AWS startups to support the development of the curriculum for the recent accelerator for women founders that was held last spring. And so we're able to support 25 founders and also brought in the expertise of about 20 or 30 women from Advancing Women in Tech to be able to be the lead instructors and mentors for that. And so we have really realized that with this network and this individual sort of focus on product expertise building strong teams, we can take that information and bring it to folks everywhere. And so there is very much the intentionality of allowing founders allowing individuals to take the lessons and bring it to their individual circumstances and the cultures in which they are operating. But the product sense is a skill that we can support the development of and we're proud to do so. >> That's awesome. Nancy, I want to ask you some never really talk about data storage and AWS cloud greatness and goodness, here's different and you also work full-time at AWS and you're the founder or the chairman of this great organization. How do you balance both and do you get, they're getting behind you on this, Amazon is getting behind you on this. >> Well, as I say it's always easier to negotiate on the way in. But jokes aside, I have to say the leadership has been tremendously supportive. If you think about, for example, my leaders Wayne Duso who's also been on the show multiple times, Bill Vaas who's also been on the show multiple times, you know they're both founders and also operators entrepreneurs at heart. So they understand that it is important, right? For all of us, it's really incumbent on all of us who are in positions to do so, to create a pathway for more people to be in leadership roles for more people to be successful entrepreneurs. So, no, I mean if you just looked at LinkedIn they're always uploading my vote so they reach to more audiences. And frankly they're rooting for us back home in the US while we're in Malaysia this week. >> That's awesome. And I think that's a good culture to have that empowerment and I think that's very healthy. What's next for you guys? What's on the agenda? Take us through the activities. I know that you got a ton of things happening. You got your event out there, which is why you're out there. There's a bunch of other activities. I think you guys call it the Advancing Women in Tech week. >> Yes, this week we are having a week of programming that you can check out at Advancing Women in Tech.org. That is spotlighting the expertise of a number of women in our space. So it is three days of programming Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday if you are in the US so the seventh through the ninth, but available globally. We are also going to be in New York next week for the event at the UN and are looking to continue to support our mentorship programs and also our work supporting women founders throughout the year. >> All right. I have to ask you guys if you don't mind get a little market data so you can share with us here at theCUBE. What are you hearing this year that's different in the conversation space around the topics, the interests? Obviously I've seen massive amounts of global acceleration around conversations, more video, things like this more stories are scaling, a lot more LinkedIn activity. It just seems like it's a lot different this year. Can you guys share any kind of current trends you're seeing relative to the conversations and topics being discussed across the the community? >> Well, I think from a needle moving perspective, right? I think due to the efforts of wonderful organizations including the Q for spotlighting all of these awesome women, right? Trailblazing women and the nonprofits the government entities that we work with there's definitely more emphasis on creating access and creating pathways. So that's probably one thing that you're seeing is more women, more investors posting about their activities. Number two, from a global trend perspective, right? The rise of women in security. I noticed that on your agenda today, you had Lena Smart who's a good friend of mine chief information security officer at MongoDB, right? She and I are actually quite involved in helping founders especially early stage founders in the security space. And so globally from a pure technical perspective, right? There's right more increasing regulations around data privacy, data sovereignty, right? For example, India's in a few weeks about to get their first data protection regulation there locally. So all of that is giving rise to yet another wave of opportunity and we want women founders uniquely positioned to take advantage of that opportunity. >> I love it. Kate, reaction to that? I mean founders, more pathways it sounds like a neural network, it sounds like AI enabled. >> Yes, and speaking of AI, with the rise of that we are also hearing from many community members the importance of continuing to build their skills upskill learn to be able to keep up with the latest trends. There's a lot of people wondering what does this mean for my own career? And so they're turning to organizations like Advancing Women in Tech to find communities to both learn the latest information, but also build their networks so that they are able to move forward regardless of what the industry does. >> I love the work you guys are doing. It's so impressive. I think the economic angle is new it's more amplified this year. It's always kind of been there and continues to be. What do you guys hope for by next year this time what do you hope to see different from a needle moving perspective, to use your word Nancy, for next year? What's the visual output in your mind? >> I want to see real effort made towards 50-50 representation in all tech leadership roles. And I'd like to see that happen by 2050. >> Kate, anything on your end? >> I love that. I'm going to go a little bit more touchy-feely. I want everybody in our space to understand that the skills that they build and that the networks they have carry with them regardless of wherever they go. And so to be able to really lean in and learn and continue to develop the career that you want to have. So whether that be at a large organization or within your own business, that you've got the potential to move forward on that within you. >> Nancy, Kate, thank you so much for your contribution. I'll give you the final word. Put a plug in for the organization. What are you guys looking for? Any kind of PSA you want to share with the folks watching? >> Absolutely, so if you're in a position to be a mentor, join as a mentor, right? Help elevate and accelerate the next generation of women leaders. If you're an investor help us invest in more women started companies, right? Women founded startups and lastly, if you are women looking to accelerate your career, come join our community. We have resources, we have mentors and who we have investors who are willing to come in on the ground floor and help you accelerate your business. >> Great work. Thank you so much for participating in our International Women's Day 23 program and we'd look to keep this going quarterly. We'll see you next year, next time. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. >> Thanks so much John. >> Thank you. >> Okay, women leaders here. >> Nancy: Thanks for having us >> All over the world, coming together for a great celebration but really highlighting the accomplishments, the pathways the investment, the mentoring, everything in between. It's theCUBE. Bring as much as we can. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.

>>Hey everyone, welcome to this Cube's special program series Women of the Cloud, brought to you by aws. I'm your host for the series, Lisa Martin. Very pleased to be joined by Patty Jordan, the VP of enabling processes and technology at Optimus. My next guest, Patty, welcome to the program. >>Hi Lisa. Thank you for having me. >>Tell me a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your role so the audience gets that understanding of exactly who you are. >>Sure thing. Hi, my name is Patty Jordan. As we mentioned, I am originally from Cameroon, Central Africa, but I was raised in the DC area. I'm called and what you call a bank brat. My father worked for an international organization, the the World Bank. Lived in, like I said, grew up in dc, moved to Austin, Texas about seven years ago. Been with Optum for the last nine years of my working career. And I've had multiple roles, but currently my role as is with the enabling technologies and processes, which means that I manage teams that support the platform of a lot of analytics products in Optum. >>Got it. All right. Bank Brett, that's a new one to me. I hadn't heard that. I love that you're a bank, Brit and proud of it. I can tell. Talk to me a little bit about your, the career path that you have navigated and what are some of your sort of tactical and also strategic recommendations for the audiences looking to grow their career in tech? >>So the interesting thing is, I did not start in tech. My background is as an economist. I have a bachelor's of economics from the women, from the College of Women, Mary. I also have a financial master's in public policy from American University. However, I did take some IT classes and as a kid I'm probably dating myself a little bit, but I programmed in dos, so I, I was always excited by it and I had internships as a programmer that helped me pay for my master's degree in when I graduated. I just felt like I was having fun and I was getting paid very well and I was able to pay off my graduate schools. So I just stayed with tech. >>Love that. But it sounds like you had that interest from when you were quite young and as a lot of us and end up in tech, we didn't start there originally. There's a lot of zigzaggy paths to get there. Sounds like you had that as well. What are some of your recommendations for people, either those that are in tech now or aren't who want to get into it and really expand and climb that ladder? >>So definitely, so one of the things to understand is tech could be many different things. Like one of the things could be programming, which I started doing and now dislike intensely. And then another thing could be like being in the business analyst in tech, getting the business requirements versus product management or even, you know, management. And what I would encourage people to do is really focus on what you feel happy doing, which for me is problem solving and collaborating and getting the right people together to solve very complex problems. And if you focus on that then you'll find your, your the role for you even in tech. >>I love that problem solving is such an important skill to be able to have and to cultivate regardless of the industry that you're in. But I'd love to know a little bit more about some of the successes that you've had helping organizations really navigate their cloud journeys, their migration to cloud as we've seen the last couple of years, a massive acceleration to the cloud that was really born outta the pandemic. Talk to me about some of the successes that you've been able to achieve. >>So the first, I guess most obvious thing is understanding the technology. What do you have at your disposal? What do you need for your team to succeed in the cloud or even OnPrem? But what I've learned most in the last four to five years with the projects that I work on, whether it was migrating from a host data center to one that we owned ourselves or migrating from that data center to AWS recently was you really need to get the business organization engaged. And that's not just getting the sponsorship and getting them this to write that check, but really helping them understand how this journey to the cloud is a combined journey between both organizations, right? And they will be able to be more successful as well with us going to the cloud with improved processing with revenue protection because we, there's more tools available with revenue expansion because now we can now expand faster address client needs faster. And you know, so there's various different aspects of going to cloud that are more than just we're using the coolest technology. >>You're a problem solver, has there. And one of the challenges with organizations and from a cloud migration standpoint that we often talk about is it's a cultural migration as well, which is really challenging to do for any type of organization regardless of industry. Do you have a favorite example where as a, as the problem solver, you came in and really helped the organization, the business side understand, be able to transform their cultural direction, understand why cloud migration can be such a facilitator of the business from the top line in a bottom line perspective. >>So from a bottom line perspective, I think the hardest thing for them to understand or what does not compute for them is you can't give them a set. This is what you're gonna cost in the cloud, right? Because the benefit of being in the cloud is being able to scale shrink, et cetera. So that's one hurdle that we're still fighting to be a hundred percent candid. But from a a top line perspective, what's what's been great is we've been able to ramp up more clients with the same, right? So we haven't had to go out and procure more servers, more storage, hire more staff because we're in the cloud and we've actually been able to scale our teams as well because we incorporated the DevOps functions and we do not need a team to manage a data center anymore. So that they absolutely understood, you know, savings ratified, but really just how do we get to market faster? How do we get to revenue faster and how do we get more revenue with the same pool of resources is something that they've really, really resonated with. >>Well, you're starting to speak their language so that to your point that resonates well, but there's so much productivity improvements, efficiencies to be gained by leveraging cloud computing that that really hit the bottom line of an organization that businesses, if you put it in the right way. And it sounds like as the problem solver you have, they understand the immense value and competitive advantage that cloud can bring to their organization and become sort of a ah, the blinders are off. I get it. >>Exactly. Exactly. You're just not trying to, to play with the latest toys, you are actually solving a business problem even before it happens. >>And that's the key solving business problems before they happen. Being able to predict and forecast is huge for businesses, especially as we've seen the last couple of years. Everybody racing to digital, to to pivot, to survive Now to be competitive. If they don't do that and embrace that emerging technology suite, there's a competitor that's right back here that if they're more culturally willing and able to, to be more agile, they're gonna take the place of a competing organization. So yeah, so it absolutely is a huge differentiator for organizations. And it sounds like you've had some great successes there in helping organizations really navigate the challenges, the cultural challenges, but the benefits of cloud computing. Yes. I do wanna talk to you a little bit about in your expertise, diversity is something that is talked about in every industry. We talk about it in tech all the time, there's still challenges there. What are, what's, what are your thoughts on diversity? What are you seeing and what are some of those challenges that are still sitting on the table? >>So I guess the first thing I would say is there's multiple facets to diversity, right? The first one we always lean to is gender and race, but there's also diversity of thought. And being in the healthcare industry is very important for us to have a diversity of thought and experiences so that we can target a lot of these health equity issues that are, you know, that, that are ongoing. So that's one thing that we've, we've been trying to do is making sure that I don't just have people that think like me on the team. And typically that also means not having people that look like me. So making sure that we have the right pipelines to hire for partnering with our, with some of our vendors. AWS for example, is a good one where they had avenues and they had non-profits that they worked with and they connected us with some of our staff augmentation people also did the same thing, really just expanding the scope of where we're looking for talent and, and that helps also bring that diversity of thought and the diversity of gender race into the, into the full >>It is. And it and, and there's also, there's so much data if we follow the data and of course in tech we're all about data. Every company these days, regardless of industry needs to be a data company. If we follow the data, we can see that organizations with, for example, females within the C-suite are far more profitable than those organizations that don't have that even that element of diversity. So the data is demonstrating there's tremendous business value, tremendous competitive advantage, faster time to market, more products and services that can be delivered if there is thought diversity among the entire organization, not just the C-suite. >>Exactly. And and since we have an impact on what is being delivered as an engineering organization, we also need that in engineering, right? One of the things that's very keen right now is machine language and ai. If we don't have the right models for example, then we either introduced bias or perpetuate by it. So we definitely need people on our teams as well that understand how these technologies work, how we can leverage 'em on our data sets so that we could run counter to this bias >>And countering that bias is incredibly important. Machine learning ai, so driven by data, the volumes of data, but the data needs to be as clean and and non-biased as possible. And that's a big challenge for organizations to undertake. Is there advice that you have for those folks watching who might be, I, I don't see me in this organization, I don't feel represented. How can I change that? >>Well, one would be to speak up, right? Even if you don't see you apply for the job, right? And one of the things that we're trying to address even in the DEI space is making sure that our job descriptions are not introducing any biases so that people will eliminate themselves immediately, right? But really just if you have the skill set and you feel like you can ramp up to the talent, then just apply for the job. Talk to somebody. You do have a network whether you realize it or not. So leverage that network. But really like there's this expression that my kid taught me saying, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take, right? So if you don't try, you're not gonna make it by default. If you do try, there's a chance to make it right. At the very least, you build a connection with someone who can potentially help you down the line. >>That is one of my absolute favorite sayings. You miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don't take. So encouraging people to raise their hand there, there are stats, data, speaking of data we've been talking about that, that demonstrate that women are far less likely to apply for jobs like on LinkedIn for example, unless they need 100% of the job requirements, which we all know are quite stringent and not necessary in a lot of cases. So I love your advice of just try raise your hand, ask the question. All the can say is no. And at the end of the day, what is that? It's a word but can also be directional and and really guiding for people on their journey to wherever that, if it's an engineering, cloud, engineering, DevOps, whatever happen that happens to be, raise your hand the question. And to your point, you have a network, it is there, open that up. There's so much potential for people that just raise, I think that's to raise their hand and ask the question. >>And the corollary to that though is I would also encourage people who are in leader leadership roles to be strong allies, right? Like we need to be aware of what biases we might be introducing or candidates that we might be leaving on the table because we're being too stringent because we're not expanding our, our our search, right? So definitely that's something that I've started doing about five, six years old shortly after I moved to Austin, which I kind of beat myself up about not having done before, is really contributing to that community, helping out, being a mentor, being a coach, being a guide. Sometimes it's just reviewing somebody's resume. Other times it's talking to 'em about a role that I have and helping them map their current state to that role. But really just being an ally to everyone and anyone who wants to come into this space. >>I love that. I, and I have a feeling, Patty, that you're a great mentor and ally for those in your organization across organizations and those out there that may not know yet. Patty can be an ally for me. I'd love to get your take in our final minutes on a couple things. One, the, what's next in cloud from your perspective, the things that you've seen, what you've been able to achieve, and how do you see your role evolving in the industry at Optum? >>So what's next in cloud, and we've talked about that a lot, is data. How do we manage all this data? How do we catalog this data, how to reuse this data, how to reshift this data? We have data in various different environments. We're a multi-cloud company. So how do we make sure that we don't have the same data everywhere? Or even if we do, how do we reconcile that? So data, data, data, right? And from data, get to information so that we can monetize it and we can share it. So that's the, that's for me is really next step. I mean we, we know the applications that we can build, we know the analytics that we can build, but if we don't have the right data, we're limiting ourselves. So that's definitely one aspect that I know that we wanna drive. And as far as my role, I was fortunate enough to be provided with the leadership of development of a platform for analytics, which yes, involves data. >>So I'm very excited about this, right? Cuz that's, that's next level for me. I've been typically in roles that protect revenue in the DevOps and operations role. And now I'm in a revenue generating role and it has a shift in mindset. But I, I really appreciate it and I'm really taking everything I've learned up to now as a DevOps team. I knew when the bad things came. So now I'm trying to prevent, prevent my team from pushing bad things down the pipe, right? So I'm just really excited about what's, what's, what's to come because there's so many opportunities for improving the products that we build. And I'm so excited to be part of this platform. >>There are the, the horizon of opportunities is really endless, which is exciting. And to your point about data, like I mentioned, for every company, whether it's your grocery store, a retailer, the postal service has to become a data driven company. Cuz as consumers we expect that we bring that into our business lives and we expect to be able to transact in business as easily as we do on the consumer side. And that all requires organizations to not just have access to data, but to be able to build the right data infrastructure, toing insights to act on that, to feed the AI and ML models so that products services can get better, more personalized and meet the demands of the ever demanding consumer, which I know I, one of them. I wanna ask you one more final question and that is, what do you think some of the biggest challenges have been with, with respect to tech innovation in the workforce over the past five years? What are some of those things that, that you've seen that you think we're on the right track moving forward to eliminate some of these? >>That is a good question. I think one of the biggest challenges for me has been not to remain in the status quo, right? Like not to do something because it's what we've been doing, but being in the cloud allows us with so many opportunities where we can fail fast. That let's give it a shot, let's do a quick sprint, let's figure out whether it is a possibility or not. Eliminate it if it's not, and then keep moving, right? Like we don't have the same development methodology before that we had to do three months, five months, six months. You can iterate in two week chunks, get it done, confirm your, your statement or not, or negate it, but at the very least have an answer, right? So that for me is the biggest challenge. We're aware of the thinking we're just not doing. So it'd be very exciting when we, when we pivot from that and really start innovating because we have the time >>Innovating because we have the time, as I mentioned, you know, with the demand of consumers, whether it's consumer in, in on the personal side, business side, those demands are there. But the, the exciting thing is to your point, the innovations are there. The capabilities are there, the data is there. We have a lot of what we need to be able to take advantage of that. So it's gonna be exciting to see what happens over the next few years. Patty, it's been such a pleasure having you on the cube today. Thank you so much for joining. You are clearly a, a leader in terms of women in the cloud. We appreciate what you're doing, your insights, your recommendations, and your insights as to what you see in the future. You've been a great guest. Thank you so much for joining me today. >>Thank you for having me Lisa. >>My pleasure For Patty Jordan, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cubes coverage of Women of the Cloud, brought to you by aws, a special program series. We thank you so much for watching. Take care.

>>Hello, welcome back to the cubes coverage of Monaco, crypto summit presented by digital bits. It's a conference where a lot of the people using digital bits and the industry coming together around the future of crypto in the applicates got a great guest garage, rod cot, founder, and CEO of an innovative company. Love this co I love this company, Luke mogul, Rob, thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate it. Oh, >>Thank you for having >>Us. Yeah. So I checked out what you guys are doing. You've got the sports metaverse angle going on with super valuable, cuz sports is super entertaining. Uh, people are engaged. There's huge fan base, huge online now, digital convergence going on with the physical, you know, you see all kinds of sports betting going on now everything's going digital. There's a whole nother consumer experience going on with sports and the game is still the same on the, on the field or so to, or the court. That's correct. Yeah. Now it's going to digital take a minute to explain what you guys are working on. >>Yeah, so yes, we are building out a sports ERs where we are bringing athletes, whether they're NBA stars, NFL stars, w N B a many of those athletes into meows giving them the ownership of the entire, um, meows commerce along with gameplay. So that's something from our perspective, this, uh, this is something that we're focused on. We're building out stadiums. Athletes can own stadiums. Athlete can create their own training centers, media hubs. Um, and imagine Lisa, Leslie for example, is building out a woman leadership sports academy, right? We have Michael Cooper building out defensive academy. So those are all the brands. We have 174 NBA w N B stars. And, um, and we are building out this, >>The brand is the brand, is the platform that's correct. That's the trend we're seeing. And it's, it's also an extension of their reach in community. So there's, they can convert their star power and athlete with owner's approval. If they probably write it on to the contracts, he, they can imagine all the complications, but they bring that online and extend that energy and brand equity yep. To fans and social network. Yeah. >>And many of these athletes are tremendous successful in their web two careers, right? Yeah. Um, some are current athletes, some are former athletes, but they have built such a brand persona where people are following them on Instagram. For example, Carlos Boozer. He has like almost 6 million followers between Twitter and Instagram and those kind of brands are looking or how do I give back to the community? How do I engage with my community and web three? And especially with our platform, we are giving that power back to the players. >>So you guys got some big names booers on there. You mentioned Carlos Boozer. You mentioned that Lisa, Leslie others among others, Michael Cooper throw back to the old Lakers, uh, magic. Johnson's kind actually here in crypto. We just saw him in the lobbies and in dinner and the other night, um, at Nobu, um, you got a lot of NBA support. Take a take, take, even explain how you're working this angle. Uh, you got some great traction, uh, momentum. Um, you got great pedigree, riot games in your career. Uh, you kind of get the world, the tech world, the media world, as it comes together. What's the secret sauce here? Is it the NBA relationship combination of the team explained >>It's really focusing on what, uh, we are building on me was focusing on players first, right? So players are literally, we call our platform as, uh, owned by the players, made for the players. Uh, and engagement is really all done through the players, right? So that's our key sauce. And when we worked out with NBA, we, we are part of the NBA BPA acceleration program for 2022 that is funded by a six Z, uh, and, and many others. Um, and our partnership with league is very critical. So it's not only partnered with player association partnered with leagues, whether it's NBA, w N B a NFL. So those are the venues. And this becomes almost a program, especially for athletes to really generate this lifetime engagement and royalty model because some of this famous athletes really want to give back to the communities. So like for example, I use Lisa Leslie a lot, but Lisa, Leslie really wants to empower women leadership, leadership, and really help, um, women in sports, for example. Right? So those are the angles that, um, that really people are excited about. >>Well, for the people watching that might not understand some of the ins and outs of sports and, and rod, your background in your team, it's interesting. The sports teams have been on the big day to train for many, many years. You look at all the stadiums. Now they've got mobile devices, they got wifi under the chairs. They use data and technology to manage the team. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> manage the stadium and venue and operations suppliers, whatnot. And then also the fans. So you, they, they got about a decade or so experience already in the digital world. This is not new to the, to the sports world. Yeah. So you guys come to the table kind of at a good time. >>Yeah. Especially the defi of the sports, right? So there's a defi of the finance, but this is the really, uh, a, a decentralization of the sports is something that there's a lot of traction. And there are many companies that are really focusing on that. Our focus obviously is players first, right? How do we give power to the players? Uh, and those are really driving the entire engagement. And also the brands >>How's the NBA feel about this because, you know, you got the NBA and you get the team, you got the owners. I mean, the democratization of the players, which I love by the way that angle kind of brings their power. Now's the new kind of balance of power. How is the NBA handling this? What's some of the conversations you've had with the, the organization. >>Yeah. So obviously there are a lot of things that, uh, people have to be careful about, right? They have existing contracts, existing, digital media rights. Um, so that's something that, uh, we have to be very tactful when we are working with NBA and NPA, uh, on what we can say, we cannot say. So that is obviously they have a lot of existing multimillion or billion dollar contracts that they cannot void with the web because the evolution of web three, >>You know, I love, uh, riffing on the notion of contract compliance when there's major structural change happening. Remember back in baseball, back in the days before the internet, the franchise rights was geographic territory. Mm-hmm <affirmative> well, if you're the New York Yankees, you're doing great. If you're Milwaukee, you're not doing too good, but then comes the internet. That's good. That's no geography. There's no boundaries. That's good. So you're gonna have stadiums have virtual Bo. So again, how do they keep up with the contracts? Yeah. I mean, this is gonna be a fundamental issue. >>That's >>Good. Good. And I think if they don't move, the players are gonna fill that void. >>That's correct. Yeah. And especially with this, this an IL deal, right. That happened for the players, uh, especially college athletes. So we are in process of onboarding 1.5 million college athletes. Uh, and those athletes are looking for not only paying for the tuition for the colleges, but also for engagement and generating this early on, uh, >>More okay. Rod, we're gonna make a prediction here in the cube, 20, 20 we're in Monaco, all the NBA, NHL, the teams they're gonna be run by player Dows. Yeah. What do you think? A very good prediction. Yeah. Very good prediction. Yeah. I mean you, I mean, that's a joke, I'm joking aside. I mean, it's kind of connecting the dots, but you know, whether that happens or not, what this means is if this continues to go down this road, that's correct. Get the players collectively could come together. Yeah. And flip the script. >>Yeah. And that's the entire decentralization, right. So it's like the web three has really disrupted this industry as you know. Um, and, and I know your community knows that too. >>Of course, course we do. We love it. >>Something from sports perspective, we are very excited. >>Well, I love it. Love talking. Let's get to the, to the weeds here on the product, under the hood, tell about the roadmap, obviously NFTs are involved. That's kind of sexy right now. I get the digital asset model on there. Uh, but there's a lot more under the coverage. You gotta have a platform, you gotta have the big data and then ultimately align into connecting other systems together. How do you view the tech roadmap and the product roadmap? What's your vision? >>Yeah. So the, the one thing that you had to be T full, uh, as a company, whether it's LUT, mogul or any other startup, is you have to be really part of the ecosystem. So the reason why we are here at Monaco is that we obviously are looking at partnership with digital bits, um, and those kind of partnership, whether it's fourth centric, centric are very critical for the ecosystem in the community to grow. Um, and that's one thing you cannot build a, another, uh, isolated metaverse right? So that's one thing. Many companies have done it, but obviously not. >>It's a wall garden doesn't work. >>Exactly. So you have to be more open platform. So one things that we did early on in our platform, we have open APIs and SDKs where not only you as an athlete can bring in your, uh, other eCommerce or web, uh, NFTs or anything you want, but you can also bring in other real estate properties. So when we are building out this metaverse, you start with real estate, then you build out obviously stadiums and arenas and academies training academies, but then athletes can bring their, uh, web commerce, right. Where it's NFT wearables shoe line. So >>Not an ecosystem on top of Luke Mo. So you're like, I'm almost like you think about a platform as a service and a cloud computing paradigm. Yeah. Look different, not decentralized, but similarly enabling others, do the heavy lifting on their behalf. Yeah. Is that right? >>So that's correct. Yes. So we are calling ourself as the sports platform as a service, right. So we want to add the word sports because we, uh, in, in many contexts, right. When you're building metaverse, you can get distracted with them, especially we are in Los Angeles. Right. >>Can I get a luxury box for the cube and some of the metaverse islands and the stadiums you're doing? >>We, we are working >>On it. We're >>Definitely working on, especially the, uh, Los Angeles, uh, stadium. Yeah. >>Well, we're looking for some hosts, anyone out there looking for some hosts, uh, for the metaverse bring your avatar. You can host the cube, bro. Thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate. What's the, what's next for you guys, obviously, continuing to build momentum. You got your playful, how many people on the team what's going on, give a plug for the company. What are you looking for share with the audience, some of the, some of your goals. Yeah. >>So, uh, the main thing we're looking for is really, um, from a brand perspective, if you are looking at buying properties, this would be an amazing time to buy virtual sports stadium. Um, so we are, obviously we have 175 stadiums in roadmap right now. We started with Los Angeles. Then we are in San Francisco, New York, Qatar, Dubai. So all those sports stadiums, whether they're basketball, football, soccer are all the properties. And, uh, from a community perspective, if you want to get an early access, we are all about giving back to the community. Uh, so you can buy it at a much better presale price right now. Uh, so that's one, the second thing is that if you have any innovative ideas or a player that you want to integrate into, we have an very open platform from a community engagement perspective. If you have something unique from a land sale perspective yeah. Or the NFD perspective plug, contact us at, at Raj lumo.com. >>And I'm assuming virtual team, you in LA area where where's your home. >>So, yeah, so I live in Malibu, um, and our office is in Santa Monica. We have an office in India. Uh, we have few developers also in Europe. So, uh, and then we are team of 34 people right now >>Looking to hire some folks >>We are looking for, what >>Are you, what are you looking for? >>So, uh, we are looking for a passionate sports, uh, fanatics. >>It's a lot, not hard to find. Yeah. >><laugh> who knows how to also code. Right? So from blockchain perspective, we are, uh, chain agnostic. Uh, but obviously right now we are building on polygon, but we are chain agnostic. So if you have any blockchain development experience, uh, that's something we, we are looking for. Yeah. >>RA, thanks for coming out. Luke Mo check him out. I'm John furry with the cube here in Monaco for the mono crypto summit presented by digital bits. We got all the action, a lot of great guests going on, stay with us for more coverage. Um, John furrier, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Women in Data Science, WiDS 2022, coming to live from Stanford University. I'm Lisa Martin. My next guest is here. Nandi Leslie, Doctor Nandi Leslie, Senior Engineering Fellow at Raytheon Technologies. Nandi, it's great to have you on the program. >> Oh it's my pleasure, thank you. >> This is your first WiDS you were saying before we went live. >> That's right. >> What's your take so far? >> I'm absolutely loving it. I love the comradery and the community of women in data science. You know, what more can you say? It's amazing. >> It is. It's amazing what they built since 2015, that this is now reaching 100,000 people 200 online event. It's a hybrid event. Of course, here we are in person, and the online event going on, but it's always an inspiring, energy-filled experience in my experience of WiDS. >> I'm thoroughly impressed at what the organizers have been able to accomplish. And it's amazing, that you know, you've been involved from the beginning. >> Yeah, yeah. Talk to me, so you're Senior Engineering Fellow at Raytheon. Talk to me a little bit about your role there and what you're doing. >> Well, my role is really to think about our customer's most challenging problems, primarily at the intersection of data science, and you know, the intersectional fields of applied mathematics, machine learning, cybersecurity. And then we have a plethora of government clients and commercial clients. And so what their needs are beyond those sub-fields as well, I address. >> And your background is mathematics. >> Yes. >> Have you always been a math fan? >> I have, I actually have loved math for many, many years. My dad is a mathematician, and he introduced me to, you know mathematical research and the sciences at a very early age. And so, yeah, I went on, I studied in a math degree at Howard undergrad, and then I went on to do my PhD at Princeton in applied math. And later did a postdoc in the math department at University of Maryland. >> And how long have you been with Raytheon? >> I've been with Raytheon about six years. Yeah, and before Raytheon, I worked at a small to midsize defense company, defense contracting company in the DC area, systems planning and analysis. And then prior to that, I taught in a math department where I also did my postdoc, at University of Maryland College Park. >> You have a really interesting background. I was doing some reading on you, and you have worked with the Navy. You've worked with very interesting organizations. Talk to the audience a little bit about your diverse background. >> Awesome yeah, I've worked with the Navy on submarine force security, and submarine tracking, and localization, sensor performance. Also with the Army and the Army Research Laboratory during research at the intersection of machine learning and cyber security. Also looking at game theoretic and graph theoretic approaches to understand network resilience and robustness. I've also supported Department of Homeland Security, and other government agencies, other governments, NATO. Yeah, so I've really been excited by the diverse problems that our various customers have you know, brought to us. >> Well, you get such great experience when you are able to work in different industries and different fields. And that really just really probably helps you have such a much diverse kind of diversity of thought with what you're doing even now with Raytheon. >> Yeah, it definitely does help me build like a portfolio of topics that I can address. And then when new problems emerge, then I can pull from a toolbox of capabilities. And, you know, the solutions that have previously been developed to address those wide array of problems, but then also innovate new solutions based on those experiences. So I've been really blessed to have those experiences. >> Talk to me about one of the things I heard this morning in the session I was able to attend before we came to set was about mentors and sponsors. And, you know, I actually didn't know the difference between that until a few years ago. But it's so important. Talk to me about some of the mentors you've had along the way that really helped you find your voice in research and development. >> Definitely, I mean, beyond just the mentorship of my my family and my parents, I've had amazing opportunities to meet with wonderful people, who've helped me navigate my career. One in particular, I can think of as and I'll name a number of folks, but Dr. Carlos Castillo-Chavez was one of my earlier mentors. I was an undergrad at Howard University. He encouraged me to apply to his summer research program in mathematical and theoretical biology, which was then at Cornell. And, you know, he just really developed an enthusiasm with me for applied mathematics. And for how it can be, mathematics that is, can be applied to epidemiological and theoretical immunological problems. And then I had an amazing mentor in my PhD advisor, Dr. Simon Levin at Princeton, who just continued to inspire me, in how to leverage mathematical approaches and computational thinking for ecological conservation problems. And then since then, I've had amazing mentors, you know through just a variety of people that I've met, through customers, who've inspired me to write these papers that you mentioned in the beginning. >> Yeah, you've written 55 different publications so far. 55 and counting I'm sure, right? >> Well, I hope so. I hope to continue to contribute to the conversation and the community, you know, within research, and specifically research that is computationally driven. That really is applicable to problems that we face, whether it's cyber security, or machine learning problems, or others in data science. >> What are some of the things, you're giving a a tech vision talk this afternoon. Talk to me a little bit about that, and maybe the top three takeaways you want the audience to leave with. >> Yeah, so my talk is entitled "Unsupervised Learning for Network Security, or Network Intrusion Detection" I believe. And essentially three key areas I want to convey are the following. That unsupervised learning, that is the mathematical and statistical approach, which tries to derive patterns from unlabeled data is a powerful one. And one can still innovate new algorithms in this area. Secondly, that network security, and specifically, anomaly detection, and anomaly-based methods can be really useful to discerning and ensuring, that there is information confidentiality, availability, and integrity in our data >> A CIA triad. >> There you go, you know. And so in addition to that, you know there is this wealth of data that's out there. It's coming at us quickly. You know, there are millions of packets to represent communications. And that data has, it's mixed, in terms of there's categorical or qualitative data, text data, along with numerical data. And it is streaming, right. And so we need methods that are efficient, and that are capable of being deployed real time, in order to detect these anomalies, which we hope are representative of malicious activities, and so that we can therefore alert on them and thwart them. >> It's so interesting that, you know, the amount of data that's being generated and collected is growing exponentially. There's also, you know, some concerning challenges, not just with respect to data that's reinforcing social biases, but also with cyber warfare. I mean, that's a huge challenge right now. We've seen from a cybersecurity perspective in the last couple of years during the pandemic, a massive explosion in anomalies, and in social engineering. And companies in every industry have to be super vigilant, and help the people understand how to interact with it, right. There's a human component. >> Oh, for sure. There's a huge human component. You know, there are these phishing attacks that are really a huge source of the vulnerability that corporations, governments, and universities face. And so to be able to close that gap and the understanding that each individual plays in the vulnerability of a network is key. And then also seeing the link between the network activities or the cyber realm, and physical systems, right. And so, you know, especially in cyber warfare as a remote cyber attack, unauthorized network activities can have real implications for physical systems. They can, you know, stop a vehicle from running properly in an autonomous vehicle. They can impact a SCADA system that's, you know there to provide HVAC for example. And much more grievous implications. And so, you know, definitely there's the human component. >> Yes, and humans being so vulnerable to those social engineering that goes on in those phishing attacks. And we've seen them get more and more personal, which is challenging. You talking about, you know, sensitive data, personally identifiable data, using that against someone in cyber warfare is a huge challenge. >> Oh yeah, certainly. And it's one that computational thinking and mathematics can be leveraged to better understand and to predict those patterns. And that's a very rich area for innovation. >> What would you say is the power of computational thinking in the industry? >> In industry at-large? >> At large. >> Yes, I think that it is such a benefit to, you know, a burgeoning scientist, if they want to get into industry. There's so many opportunities, because computational thinking is needed. We need to be more objective, and it provides that objectivity, and it's so needed right now. Especially with the emergence of data, and you know, across industries. So there are so many opportunities for data scientists, whether it's in aerospace and defense, like Raytheon or in the health industry. And we saw with the pandemic, the utility of mathematical modeling. There are just so many opportunities. >> Yeah, there's a lot of opportunities, and that's one of the themes I think, of WiDS, is just the opportunities, not just in data science, and for women. And there's obviously even high school girls that are here, which is so nice to see those young, fresh faces, but opportunities to build your own network and your own personal board of directors, your mentors, your sponsors. There's tremendous opportunity in data science, and it's really all encompassing, at least from my seat. >> Oh yeah, no I completely agree with that. >> What are some of the things that you've heard at this WiDS event that inspire you going, we're going in the right direction. If we think about International Women's Day tomorrow, "Breaking the Bias" is the theme, do you think we're on our way to breaking that bias? >> Definitely, you know, there was a panel today talking about the bias in data, and in a variety of fields, and how we are, you know discovering that bias, and creating solutions to address it. So there was that panel. There was another talk by a speaker from Pinterest, who had presented some solutions that her, and her team had derived to address bias there, in you know, image recognition and search. And so I think that we've realized this bias, and, you know, in AI ethics, not only in these topics that I've mentioned, but also in the implications for like getting a loan, so economic implications, as well. And so we're realizing those issues and bias now in AI, and we're addressing them. So I definitely am optimistic. I feel encouraged by the talks today at WiDS that you know, not only are we recognizing the issues, but we're creating solutions >> Right taking steps to remediate those, so that ultimately going forward. You know, we know it's not possible to have unbiased data. That's not humanly possible, or probably mathematically possible. But the steps that they're taking, they're going in the right direction. And a lot of it starts with awareness. >> Exactly. >> Of understanding there is bias in this data, regardless. All the people that are interacting with it, and touching it, and transforming it, and cleaning it, for example, that's all influencing the veracity of it. >> Oh, for sure. Exactly, you know, and I think that there are for sure solutions are being discussed here, papers written by some of the speakers here, that are driving the solutions to the mitigation of this bias and data problem. So I agree a hundred percent with you, that awareness is you know, half the battle, if not more. And then, you know, that drives creation of solutions >> And that's what we need the creation of solutions. Nandi, thank you so much for joining me today. It was a pleasure talking with you about what you're doing with Raytheon, what you've done and your path with mathematics, and what excites you about data science going forward. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you so much. It was my pleasure. >> Good, for Nandi Leslie, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women in Data Science 2022. Stick around, I'll be right back with my next guest. (upbeat flowing music)

(soft upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to this Cube Conversation I'm Lisa Martin. This is going to be a great conversation about corporate social responsibility, and I'm very pleased to have two great guests here with me today. Karen McCloskey joins us the director of internal communications and corporate philanthropy at NETSCOUT and Professor Sally Eaves is here as well the CEO of Aspirational Futures. She's also a professor of emerging tech and a CTO by background. Ladies welcome to the program it's great to have you on today. >> Thank you. >> Absolute pleasure. Thank you, great to join you both. >> We're going to get some great perspectives here. As I mentioned corporate social responsibility we're seeing that emerge across every industry and every company is really focused on that. Karen I want to start with you where tech companies are concerned we see corporate social responsibility really aligning with STEM and STEAM. Why is that? >> There is probably a couple of reasons, I sort of wrap it up as it's what employees do, it's part of their jobs, so they get excited about it and they want to share what they do with the next generation. And the other aspect that helps it align with tech is it involves the educational aspect. So we're teaching and we need up and coming students and employees and entrepreneurs with those skills. And the other part about STEM is when you think of it, it's typically K to 12 and then it rolls into college and it's working with students and the next generation. So the education and the pipeline or the education and the students speak to the pipeline aspect and then you add in people getting excited about their job and what they do and that's the employee engagement aspect so it really brings the two pieces together. >> I want to dig into that employee engagement in a minute but Sally I would like to get your perspective. Tell us a little bit about Aspirational Futures and then let's talk about the alignment between that and STEM and STEAM. >> Absolutely, so yeah, Aspirational Futures, is a non-profit kind of working across tech education and social impact and really looking at kind of opening up opportunities to the industry to a diversity of experience and using tech and data as a force for good. We do projects locally and across the world I'm kind of breaking down those barriers. It's going to be all about democratization of opportunity I would say. And in terms of STEM to STEAM that's where I see the journey going at the moment and effectively with that STEAM focus you're bringing the arts to an equal stage to the tech skills as well. So for me that's really important because it comes down to curiosity, encouraging people to get into the sector, showing what you can do, building creative confidence, emotional intelligence, those types of skills alongside the tech skills to actually build it. So it's that combination There's complimentary factors that come together. So for me STEAM is a great way to get holistic learning for life With the rate of change we've got at the moment kind of gives you that tool set to work from to be empowered and confident for the future. >> That confidence is so critical. >> Its really. >> For anybody of any age, right? But one of the things that we've seen that is in the inaugural ESG report that NETSCOUT just published is this digital divide. We've seen it for quite a while now but we also saw it grow during the pandemic, Sally from your perspective, what is that and how can tech companies help to fill that gap? >> It's a great point. I think one other thing that the pandemic did was made it more visible as well. So I think particularly we're working in certain spaces we've seen it more, but I think for everybody it's affected our daily lives in education from home, for example for the first time it's made gaps more visible. So absolutely huge to focus on that. And I think we're seeing it from the organizational perspective as well. We're seeing gaps around certain types of roles. We're seeing higher churn because of a lack of data literacy skills. So it's becoming something that's becoming a CUBE Conversation, you know, in day-to-day family life but in organizations across the world as well. And also it's about challenging assumptions. And it just a few weeks ago there was some research that came out at the University of Reading in the UK in conglomerate with other universities as well. And it was kind of showing that actually you can't make the assumption, for example, that teenagers that kind of call digital natures all the time actually have full confidence in using data either, It was actually showing there were gaps there too. So we've got to challenge assumptions. So literacy in all its forms whether it's data, whether it's financial is absolutely key and we've got to start earlier. So what I'm seeing more of is better outreach from tech companies and other organizations in the primary schools through to universities as well kind of internships and placements, but also another really interesting area that we do with the nonprofit is looking at data waste as well. You know, 90% of data there's archive isn't touched again after kind of three months, you think about the amount of data we're producing at the moment how can we reuse that as a force for good as a training opportunity? So let's think creatively let's be pragmatic address some of these data literacy gaps, but we have to do it at all levels of the community and also for adult learners too. That's usually important. >> Right, there's no, it knows no age and you're right that the visibility on it I think it can be a very good thing shining that light finally going we've got to do something. Karen talked to us about what NETSCOUT is doing. The digital divide is there you guys are really focused on helping to mitigate that. >> That's right. That's right. So as guardians of the connected world, that's our job with our customers and our products, but also with our people in our communities is getting people connected and how can we do that? And in what ways are we able to do that? And recently we engaged with Tech Goes Home which is based in Boston and they provide those first three pillars that everybody needs access to a device, access to the internet and skills to use that. And they work with families and students and they say their programs go from nine to 90. So they've got everybody covered. And what's exciting for us is it kind of falls from a volunteer perspective right in our wheelhouse. So they had to transition from in-person to distance learning with the pandemic and suddenly their program materials needed to be online and they needed to get people up and running without the benefit of an in-person class. What NETSCOUT volunteers were able to do was create those tutorials and those programs that they needed and we also have people all over the world and then we translated them into a bunch of different languages and they were able to then move forward with their programs. So Tech Goes Home and programs like that are really that first step in bridging the digital divide. And then once you've got the basics, the toolkit and the skills what else can you do? And Sally mentioned visibility it's what are the opportunities? What can I do now? I didn't realize there was a career path here, I need these skills to build a business help me learn more. So then there's that whole other aspect of furthering what they can do now that they have those skills and the learning and something like a hackathon might be a fun way to engage kids in those skills and help them go a little further with the tools they have. >> And NETSCOUT has done a number of hackathon programs last year I know you had an All-Girls Hackathon virtually in 2020. Talk to me about some of that and then I want to get Sally I'm going to get your perspectives on what you're doing as well. So our hackathons and I'll try and keep this brief because we've done a lot. There were actually brought forward as an employee idea. So that also speaks to our culture. It's like, hey, we should do more of this. We have partner with Shooting Star Foundation and one of our employees is one of their, or is their board chair. And the hackathons what they do and these are beginners hackathons. So we're talking middle high school and the theme is civic. So something good for society. And what we do is over a course of 12 hours not to mention all the pre-planning. When we had the in-person ones they were in our office they got to see employees up close run around the building to the extent that they could and build their project. And Sally I think you had also mentioned that creativity in that confidence. I mean what those kids did in a day was amazing. You know, they came in and they're all kind of looking around and they don't really know what to do. And at the end of the they had made new friends, they were standing up in front of executive judges, presenting their idea, and they all felt really good about it and they had fun. So I think it can be a fun impactful way to both engage employees because it's a heck of a team building experience and sort of bring students in and give them that visibility to what's possible in their tech career. >> And that confidence. Sally talked to me about hackathons from your perspective and what you're involved in? >> Absolutely, funny now I've just come from one. So I'm a Cop 26 at the moment and I've been involved in one with a university again, using that talent and building that empowerment around STG challenges. So in this particular case around sustainability, so absolutely love that and really echo Karen's thoughts there about how this is a reciprocal relationship, it's also super rewarding for all the employees as well, we're all learning and learning from each other's, which I think is a fantastic thing. And also another point about visibility. Now seeing someone in a role that you might want to do in the future, I think is hugely important as well. So as part of the nonprofit I run a series called 365 and that's all about putting visibility on role models in tech every single day of the year. So not for example just like International Women's Day or Girls in ICT Day, but every single day and for a diversity of experience, because I think it's really important to interview people for C-suite level. But equally I just did an interview with a 14 year old. He did an amazing project in their community to support a local hospital using a 3D printer. It makes it relatable, you can see yourself in that particular role in the future, and you can also show how tech can be used for good business, but also for good for society at the same time. I think that can challenge assumptions and show there's lots of different roles, there's lots of different skills that make a difference in a tech career. So coding could be really important but so is empathy, and so is communication skills. So again, going back to that STEAM focus there's something for everyone. I think that's really important to kind of knock down those boundaries, challenge assumptions, and drop the the STEM drop off we say make it a little bit more STEAM focused I think that can help challenge those assumptions and get more people curious, creative, confident about tech. >> I couldn't agree more, curious, creative and confident. The three Cs that will help anyone and also to sell it to your point showing the breadth and diversity of roles within tech coding is one of them. >> Sally: Absolutely. >> As might be the one of the ones that's the most known but there's so many opportunities to allow these kids to be able to see what they can be is game-changing, especially in today's climate. Karen talk to me about you mentioned in the beginning of our interview Karen, the employee engagement, I know that that environmental social governance is core to NETSCOUT's DNA but we're talking over 2,400 employees in 35 countries. Your folks really want to be engaged and have a purpose. Talk to me about how you got the employees together, it sounds like it was maybe from within. >> That's absolutely right. We have a to support employees when they bring forth these good ideas and the hackathon was one example of that. And the cool thing about the hackathons is that it leads to all these other community connections and people bring forth other ideas. So we had an in-person hackathon at our Allen office in 2019. Some of the employees there met staff from Collin College who were said, "Hey, we'd like to bring this hackathon to us." So then the employees said, "Hey, can we do a hackathon with Collin College?" It's so really it's employee driven, employee organized, supported by the company with the resources and other employees love to be part of that. And the event at Collin College brought out all those skills from the students. It was on climate change so relatively hot topic. And they did a fantastic job while they were there, but that employee engagement as you said, it comes from within. So they have the idea we have a way and a path that they can find what is needed in their community and deliver on that. And it really becomes a sense of pride and accomplishment that it wasn't a top-down mandate that you must go volunteer or paint this wall. They identified the need in the community, propose the project, get the volunteers, get the corporate support and go forth and do it. And it's really amazing to see what people do in their community. >> Well, it's incredibly rewarding and fulfilling but also very symbiotic. There's one thing that's great about the students or those that are from nine to 90, like you said, having a mentor or mentors and sponsors but it's also another thing for employees to be even more productive and proud of themselves to be able to mentor and sponsor those folks in the next generations coming up. I can imagine that employee productivity would likely increase because the employees are able to fulfill have something fulfilling or rewarding with these programs. Karen talk to me a little bit about employee productivity as a kind of a side benefit of this. >> Well, I was going to say during the hackathons I don't know how productive we are 'cause there's a lot of planning and pre-work that goes into it. But I think what happens is it's an incredible team building experience across the company. So you reaching out to executives hey would you be a judge for this event? And you know you're explaining what it is and where it is. And you're roping your coworkers into spending 12 hours with you on a Sunday. And then you're finding somebody who has access to a speaker. So you're talking to people about it it's outside your day-to-day job. And then when it's over, you're like, "Oh yeah, hey, I know somebody in that group I worked with them on the hackathon or I can go up and talk to this executive because we hung out in the hackathon room for X many hours on a Saturday." So it's another way to build those relationships which in the end make you more or help you be more productive as a whole across the company. >> Absolutely relationship building, networking, those are all critical components to having a successful career. Whether we're talking about STEAM or not. I want to unpack something Sally that you said in our remaining few minutes you talked about challenging assumptions. And I guess suppose I'm one of those ones that always assumes if I see a gen Z or they're going to know way more about how to use my phone than I do but you bring up a really good point that there are these assumptions that we need to focus on, shine the light on, address them and crack them wide open to show these folks from nine to 90 that there are so many opportunities out there, there are limitless out there I would say. >> Absolutely, it's all about breaking down those barriers. And that research I mentioned something like 43% of teenagers about kind of 16 to 21 years of age we're saying they don't feel data literate. And that assumption is incorrect so gain so making sure we include everyone in this conversation. So going as young as possible in terms of introducing people to these opportunities but making sure we don't leave any particular age group behind it's that breadth of engagement with all ages is absolutely key. But again showing there are so many different routes into tech as a career. There isn't one linear path, you can come from a different area and those skills will be hugely valid in a tech career. So absolutely challenging assumptions, changing the narrative about what a tech career looks like, I think is absolutely hugely important hence why I do that series because you want to see someone that's relatable to you, at your next level potentially, it's something you need a three steps ahead. It just makes it so important. So for me democratization of opportunity, breaking down barriers, showing that you can go around different ways and it's absolutely fine. And you know what that would probably you can learn from that experience, you can learn from mistakes all those things make a difference so don't be put off and don't let anyone hold you back and reach out for mentor. You mentioned sponsorship earlier on as well I think that's another thing as well kind of using the sphere of influence we develop in our careers and maybe through social media and can helping people along the way not just through mentorship but through active sponsorship as well. There's so many things we can do together. I think organizations are really listening to this is better embedding around DEI initiatives now than ever before and as Karen has been describing fantastic outreach into communities through hackathons, through linking up with schools. So I think we're getting a real contagion of change that's positive here. And I think the pandemic has helped. It's helped us all to kind of pause and reflect, what we stand for as people, as organizations all the way through and I'm really excited that we can really harness this energy and take it forward and really make a difference here by coming together. >> And that is such a great silver lining all of those points Sally that you mentioned. Karen, I want to wrap with you. There's great momentum within NETSCOUT I mentioned, over 2,400 employees actively so many people in the employee community actively engaging in the hackathons and the opportunities to show from nine year olds to 90 year olds the opportunities that STEAM delivers. So what's next for NETSCOUT, what can we anticipate? >> More hackathons, more focused on the digital divide. I just want to, as Sally was speaking, something occurred to me when you said it's never a clear path on the tech journey. I would love to be listening to one of those conversations 10 years from now and have somebody say, oh, when you were asked that question that you're always asked what got you on your journey? What started? I'd love to hear someone say, "Oh, I went to this hackathon once "and it is something and ever since then I got interested in it." That would be a lot of fun. I would love to see that. And for NETSCOUT we're going to continue to do what we do best. We focus on where we can make a difference, we go in wholeheartedly, we engage with volunteers and we'll just keep doing what we're doing. >> Excellent ladies what a great conversation. I love the lights that you're shining on these very important topics there. You're right, I talked to a lot of people about their career paths and they're very, zig-zaggy. Its the exception to find one, you know, that we're studying computer science or engineering, but Karen I have no doubt with the focus that NETSCOUT's putting that Sally that your organization is putting on things like hackathons, getting people out there, educated becoming data literate that no doubt that the narrative will change in the next few years that I went to this hackathon that NETSCOUT did and here I am now. So great work, very important work. I think the pandemic has brought some silver linings there to what your organizations are both doing and look forward to seeing the next generation that you're inspiring. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Real pleasure. >> Likewise. For Sally Eaves and Karen McCloskey, I'm Lisa Martin you're watching theCUBE Conversation. (soft upbeat music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Q. With digital coverage >>of exa scale day made possible by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We're back at the celebration of Exa Scale Day. This is Dave Volant, and I'm pleased to welcome to great guests Brian Dance Berries Here. Here's what The ISS Program Science office at the Johnson Space Center. And Dr Mark Fernandez is back. He's the Americas HPC technology officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Gentlemen, welcome. >>Thank you. Yeah, >>well, thanks for coming on. And, Mark, Good to see you again. And, Brian, I wonder if we could start with you and talk a little bit about your role. A T. I s s program Science office as a scientist. What's happening these days? What are you working on? >>Well, it's been my privilege the last few years to be working in the, uh, research integration area of of the space station office. And that's where we're looking at all of the different sponsors NASA, the other international partners, all the sponsors within NASA, and, uh, prioritizing what research gets to go up to station. What research gets conducted in that regard. And to give you a feel for the magnitude of the task, but we're coming up now on November 2nd for the 20th anniversary of continuous human presence on station. So we've been a space faring society now for coming up on 20 years, and I would like to point out because, you know, as an old guy myself, it impresses me. That's, you know, that's 25% of the US population. Everybody under the age of 20 has never had a moment when they were alive and we didn't have people living and working in space. So Okay, I got off on a tangent there. We'll move on in that 20 years we've done 3000 experiments on station and the station has really made ah, miraculously sort of evolution from, ah, basic platform, what is now really fully functioning national lab up there with, um, commercially run research facilities all the time. I think you can think of it as the world's largest satellite bus. We have, you know, four or five instruments looking down, measuring all kinds of things in the atmosphere during Earth observation data, looking out, doing astrophysics, research, measuring cosmic rays, X ray observatory, all kinds of things, plus inside the station you've got racks and racks of experiments going on typically scores, you know, if not more than 50 experiments going on at any one time. So, you know, the topic of this event is really important. Doesn't NASA, you know, data transmission Up and down, all of the cameras going on on on station the experiments. Um, you know, one of one of those astrophysics observatory's you know, it has collected over 15 billion um uh, impact data of cosmic rays. And so the massive amounts of data that that needs to be collected and transferred for all of these experiments to go on really hits to the core. And I'm glad I'm able toe be here and and speak with you today on this. This topic. >>Well, thank you for that, Bryan. A baby boomer, right? Grew up with the national pride of the moon landing. And of course, we've we've seen we saw the space shuttle. We've seen international collaboration, and it's just always been something, you know, part of our lives. So thank you for the great work that you guys were doing their mark. You and I had a great discussion about exa scale and kind of what it means for society and some of the innovations that we could maybe expect over the coming years. Now I wonder if you could talk about some of the collaboration between what you guys were doing and Brian's team. >>Uh, yeah, so yes, indeed. Thank you for having me early. Appreciate it. That was a great introduction. Brian, Uh, I'm the principal investigator on Space Born computer, too. And as the two implies, where there was one before it. And so we worked with Bryant and his team extensively over the past few years again high performance computing on board the International Space Station. Brian mentioned the thousands of experiments that have been done to date and that there are currently 50 orm or going on at any one time. And those experiments collect data. And up until recently, you've had to transmit that data down to Earth for processing. And that's a significant amount of bandwidth. Yeah, so with baseball and computer to we're inviting hello developers and others to take advantage of that onboard computational capability you mentioned exa scale. We plan to get the extra scale next year. We're currently in the era that's called PETA scale on. We've been in the past scale era since 2000 and seven, so it's taken us a while to make it that next lead. Well, 10 years after Earth had a PETA scale system in 2017 were able to put ah teraflop system on the International space station to prove that we could do a trillion calculations a second in space. That's where the data is originating. That's where it might be best to process it. So we want to be able to take those capabilities with us. And with H. P. E. Acting as a wonderful partner with Brian and NASA and the space station, we think we're able to do that for many of these experiments. >>It's mind boggling you were talking about. I was talking about the moon landing earlier and the limited power of computing power. Now we've got, you know, water, cool supercomputers in space. I'm interested. I'd love to explore this notion of private industry developing space capable computers. I think it's an interesting model where you have computer companies can repurpose technology that they're selling obviously greater scale for space exploration and apply that supercomputing technology instead of having government fund, proprietary purpose built systems that air. Essentially, you use case, if you will. So, Brian, what are the benefits of that model? The perhaps you wouldn't achieve with governments or maybe contractors, you know, kind of building these proprietary systems. >>Well, first of all, you know, any any tool, your using any, any new technology that has, you know, multiple users is going to mature quicker. You're gonna have, you know, greater features, greater capabilities, you know, not even talking about computers. Anything you're doing. So moving from, you know, governor government is a single, um, you know, user to off the shelf type products gives you that opportunity to have things that have been proven, have the technology is fully matured. Now, what had to happen is we had to mature the space station so that we had a platform where we could test these things and make sure they're gonna work in the high radiation environments, you know, And they're gonna be reliable, because first, you've got to make sure that that safety and reliability or taken care of so that that's that's why in the space program you're gonna you're gonna be behind the times in terms of the computing power of the equipment up there because, first of all and foremost, you needed to make sure that it was reliable and say, Now, my undergraduate degree was in aerospace engineering and what we care about is aerospace engineers is how heavy is it, how big and bulky is it because you know it z expensive? You know, every pound I once visited Gulfstream Aerospace, and they would pay their employees $1000 that they could come up with a way saving £1 in building that aircraft. That means you have more capacity for flying. It's on the orders of magnitude. More important to do that when you're taking payloads to space. So you know, particularly with space born computer, the opportunity there to use software and and check the reliability that way, Uh, without having to make the computer, you know, radiation resistance, if you will, with heavy, you know, bulky, um, packaging to protect it from that radiation is a really important thing, and it's gonna be a huge advantage moving forward as we go to the moon and on to Mars. >>Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, your point about cots commercial off the shelf technology. I mean, that's something that obviously governments have wanted to leverage for a long, long time for many, many decades. But but But Mark the issue was always the is. Brian was just saying the very stringent and difficult requirements of space. Well, you're obviously with space Born one. You got to the point where you had visibility of the economics made sense. It made commercial sense for companies like Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And now we've sort of closed that gap to the point where you're sort of now on that innovation curve. What if you could talk about that a little bit? >>Yeah, absolutely. Brian has some excellent points, you know, he said, anything we do today and requires computers, and that's absolutely correct. So I tell people that when you go to the moon and when you go to the Mars, you probably want to go with the iPhone 10 or 11 and not a flip phone. So before space born was sent up, you went with 2000 early two thousands computing technology there which, like you said many of the people born today weren't even around when the space station began and has been occupied so they don't even know how to program or use that type of computing. Power was based on one. We sent the exact same products that we were shipping to customers today, so they are current state of the art, and we had a mandate. Don't touch the hardware, have all the protection that you can via software. So that's what we've done. We've got several philosophical ways to do that. We've implemented those in software. They've been successful improving in the space for one, and now it's space born to. We're going to begin the experiments so that the rest of the community so that the rest of the community can figure out that it is economically viable, and it will accelerate their research and progress in space. I'm most excited about that. Every venture into space as Brian mentioned will require some computational capability, and HP has figured out that the economics air there we need to bring the customers through space ball into in order for them to learn that we are reliable but current state of the art, and that we could benefit them and all of humanity. >>Guys, I wanna ask you kind of a two part question. And, Brian, I'll start with you and it z somewhat philosophical. Uh, I mean, my understanding was and I want to say this was probably around the time of the Bush administration w two on and maybe certainly before that, but as technology progress, there was a debate about all right, Should we put our resource is on moon because of the proximity to Earth? Or should we, you know, go where no man has gone before and or woman and get to Mars? Where What's the thinking today, Brian? On that? That balance between Moon and Mars? >>Well, you know, our plans today are are to get back to the moon by 2024. That's the Artemus program. Uh, it's exciting. It makes sense from, you know, an engineering standpoint. You take, you know, you take baby steps as you continue to move forward. And so you have that opportunity, um, to to learn while you're still, you know, relatively close to home. You can get there in days, not months. If you're going to Mars, for example, toe have everything line up properly. You're looking at a multi year mission you know, it may take you nine months to get there. Then you have to wait for the Earth and Mars to get back in the right position to come back on that same kind of trajectory. So you have toe be there for more than a year before you can turn around and come back. So, you know, he was talking about the computing power. You know, right now that the beautiful thing about the space station is, it's right there. It's it's orbiting above us. It's only 250 miles away. Uh, so you can test out all of these technologies. You can rely on the ground to keep track of systems. There's not that much of a delay in terms of telemetry coming back. But as you get to the moon and then definitely is, you get get out to Mars. You know, there are enough minutes delay out there that you've got to take the computing power with you. You've got to take everything you need to be able to make those decisions you need to make because there's not time to, um, you know, get that information back on the ground, get back get it back to Earth, have people analyze the situation and then tell you what the next step is to do. That may be too late. So you've got to think the computing power with you. >>So extra scale bring some new possibilities. Both both for, you know, the moon and Mars. I know Space Born one did some simulations relative. Tomorrow we'll talk about that. But But, Brian, what are the things that you hope to get out of excess scale computing that maybe you couldn't do with previous generations? >>Well, you know, you know, market on a key point. You know, bandwidth up and down is, of course, always a limitation. In the more computing data analysis you can do on site, the more efficient you could be with parsing out that that bandwidth and to give you ah, feel for just that kind of think about those those observatory's earth observing and an astronomical I was talking about collecting data. Think about the hours of video that are being recorded daily as the astronauts work on various things to document what they're doing. They many of the biological experiments, one of the key key pieces of data that's coming back. Is that video of the the microbes growing or the plants growing or whatever fluid physics experiments going on? We do a lot of colloids research, which is suspended particles inside ah liquid. And that, of course, high speed video. Is he Thio doing that kind of research? Right now? We've got something called the I s s experience going on in there, which is basically recording and will eventually put out a syriza of basically a movie on virtual reality recording. That kind of data is so huge when you have a 360 degree camera up there recording all of that data, great virtual reality, they There's still a lot of times bringing that back on higher hard drives when the space six vehicles come back to the Earth. That's a lot of data going on. We recorded videos all the time, tremendous amount of bandwidth going on. And as you get to the moon and as you get further out, you can a man imagine how much more limiting that bandwidth it. >>Yeah, We used to joke in the old mainframe days that the fastest way to get data from point a to Point B was called C Tam, the Chevy truck access method. Just load >>up a >>truck, whatever it was, tapes or hard drive. So eso and mark, of course space born to was coming on. Spaceport one really was a pilot, but it proved that the commercial computers could actually work for long durations in space, and the economics were feasible. Thinking about, you know, future missions and space born to What are you hoping to accomplish? >>I'm hoping to bring. I'm hoping to bring that success from space born one to the rest of the community with space born to so that they can realize they can do. They're processing at the edge. The purpose of exploration is insight, not data collection. So all of these experiments begin with data collection. Whether that's videos or samples are mold growing, etcetera, collecting that data, we must process it to turn it into information and insight. And the faster we can do that, the faster we get. Our results and the better things are. I often talk Thio College in high school and sometimes grammar school students about this need to process at the edge and how the communication issues can prevent you from doing that. For example, many of us remember the communications with the moon. The moon is about 250,000 miles away, if I remember correctly, and the speed of light is 186,000 miles a second. So even if the speed of light it takes more than a second for the communications to get to the moon and back. So I can remember being stressed out when Houston will to make a statement. And we were wondering if the astronauts could answer Well, they answered as soon as possible. But that 1 to 2 second delay that was natural was what drove us crazy, which made us nervous. We were worried about them in the success of the mission. So Mars is millions of miles away. So flip it around. If you're a Mars explorer and you look out the window and there's a big red cloud coming at you that looks like a tornado and you might want to do some Mars dust storm modeling right then and there to figure out what's the safest thing to do. You don't have the time literally get that back to earth have been processing and get you the answer back. You've got to take those computational capabilities with you. And we're hoping that of these 52 thousands of experiments that are on board, the SS can show that in order to better accomplish their missions on the moon. And Omar, >>I'm so glad you brought that up because I was gonna ask you guys in the commercial world everybody talks about real time. Of course, we talk about the real time edge and AI influencing and and the time value of data I was gonna ask, you know, the real time, Nous, How do you handle that? I think Mark, you just answered that. But at the same time, people will say, you know, the commercial would like, for instance, in advertising. You know, the joke the best. It's not kind of a joke, but the best minds of our generation tryingto get people to click on ads. And it's somewhat true, unfortunately, but at any rate, the value of data diminishes over time. I would imagine in space exploration where where you're dealing and things like light years, that actually there's quite a bit of value in the historical data. But, Mark, you just You just gave a great example of where you need real time, compute capabilities on the ground. But but But, Brian, I wonder if I could ask you the value of this historic historical data, as you just described collecting so much data. Are you? Do you see that the value of that data actually persists over time, you could go back with better modeling and better a i and computing and actually learn from all that data. What are your thoughts on that, Brian? >>Definitely. I think the answer is yes to that. And, you know, as part of the evolution from from basically a platform to a station, we're also learning to make use of the experiments in the data that we have there. NASA has set up. Um, you know, unopened data access sites for some of our physical science experiments that taking place there and and gene lab for looking at some of the biological genomic experiments that have gone on. And I've seen papers already beginning to be generated not from the original experimenters and principal investigators, but from that data set that has been collected. And, you know, when you're sending something up to space and it to the space station and volume for cargo is so limited, you want to get the most you can out of that. So you you want to be is efficient as possible. And one of the ways you do that is you collect. You take these earth observing, uh, instruments. Then you take that data. And, sure, the principal investigators air using it for the key thing that they designed it for. But if that data is available, others will come along and make use of it in different ways. >>Yeah, So I wanna remind the audience and these these these air supercomputers, the space born computers, they're they're solar powered, obviously, and and they're mounted overhead, right? Is that is that correct? >>Yeah. Yes. Space borne computer was mounted in the overhead. I jokingly say that as soon as someone could figure out how to get a data center in orbit, they will have a 50 per cent denser data station that we could have down here instead of two robes side by side. You can also have one overhead on. The power is free. If you can drive it off a solar, and the cooling is free because it's pretty cold out there in space, so it's gonna be very efficient. Uh, space borne computer is the most energy efficient computer in existence. Uh, free electricity and free cooling. And now we're offering free cycles through all the experimenters on goal >>Eso Space born one exceeded its mission timeframe. You were able to run as it was mentioned before some simulations for future Mars missions. And, um and you talked a little bit about what you want to get out of, uh, space born to. I mean, are there other, like, wish list items, bucket bucket list items that people are talking about? >>Yeah, two of them. And these air kind of hypothetical. And Brian kind of alluded to them. Uh, one is having the data on board. So an example that halo developers talk to us about is Hey, I'm on Mars and I see this mold growing on my potatoes. That's not good. So let me let me sample that mold, do a gene sequencing, and then I've got stored all the historical data on space borne computer of all the bad molds out there and let me do a comparison right then and there before I have dinner with my fried potato. So that's that's one. That's very interesting. A second one closely related to it is we have offered up the storage on space borne computer to for all of your raw data that we process. So, Mr Scientist, if if you need the raw data and you need it now, of course, you can have it sent down. But if you don't let us just hold it there as long as they have space. And when we returned to Earth like you mentioned, Patrick will ship that solid state disk back to them so they could have a new person, but again, reserving that network bandwidth, uh, keeping all that raw data available for the entire duration of the mission so that it may have value later on. >>Great. Thank you for that. I want to end on just sort of talking about come back to the collaboration between I S s National Labs and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and you've got your inviting project ideas using space Bourne to during the upcoming mission. Maybe you could talk about what that's about, and we have A We have a graphic we're gonna put up on DSM information that you can you can access. But please, mark share with us what you're planning there. >>So again, the collaboration has been outstanding. There. There's been a mention off How much savings is, uh, if you can reduce the weight by a pound. Well, our partners ice s national lab and NASA have taken on that cost of delivering baseball in computer to the international space station as part of their collaboration and powering and cooling us and giving us the technical support in return on our side, we're offering up space borne computer to for all the onboard experiments and all those that think they might be wanting doing experiments on space born on the S s in the future to take advantage of that. So we're very, very excited about that. >>Yeah, and you could go toe just email space born at hp dot com on just float some ideas. I'm sure at some point there'll be a website so you can email them or you can email me david dot volonte at at silicon angle dot com and I'll shoot you that that email one or that website once we get it. But, Brian, I wanna end with you. You've been so gracious with your time. Uh, yeah. Give us your final thoughts on on exa scale. Maybe how you're celebrating exa scale day? I was joking with Mark. Maybe we got a special exa scale drink for 10. 18 but, uh, what's your final thoughts, Brian? >>Uh, I'm going to digress just a little bit. I think I think I have a unique perspective to celebrate eggs a scale day because as an undergraduate student, I was interning at Langley Research Center in the wind tunnels and the wind tunnel. I was then, um, they they were very excited that they had a new state of the art giant room size computer to take that data we way worked on unsteady, um, aerodynamic forces. So you need a lot of computation, and you need to be ableto take data at a high bandwidth. To be able to do that, they'd always, you know, run their their wind tunnel for four or five hours. Almost the whole shift. Like that data and maybe a week later, been ableto look at the data to decide if they got what they were looking for? Well, at the time in the in the early eighties, this is definitely the before times that I got there. They had they had that computer in place. Yes, it was a punchcard computer. It was the one time in my life I got to put my hands on the punch cards and was told not to drop them there. Any trouble if I did that. But I was able thio immediately after, uh, actually, during their run, take that data, reduce it down, grabbed my colored pencils and graph paper and graph out coefficient lift coefficient of drag. Other things that they were measuring. Take it back to them. And they were so excited to have data two hours after they had taken it analyzed and looked at it just pickled them. Think that they could make decisions now on what they wanted to do for their next run. Well, we've come a long way since then. You know, extra scale day really, really emphasizes that point, you know? So it really brings it home to me. Yeah. >>Please, no, please carry on. >>Well, I was just gonna say, you know, you talked about the opportunities that that space borne computer provides and and Mark mentioned our colleagues at the I S s national lab. You know, um, the space station has been declared a national laboratory, and so about half of the, uh, capabilities we have for doing research is a portion to the national lab so that commercial entities so that HP can can do these sorts of projects and universities can access station and and other government agencies. And then NASA can focus in on those things we want to do purely to push our exploration programs. So the opportunities to take advantage of that are there marks opening up the door for a lot of opportunities. But others can just Google S s national laboratory and find some information on how to get in the way. Mark did originally using s national lab to maybe get a good experiment up there. >>Well, it's just astounding to see the progress that this industry is made when you go back and look, you know, the early days of supercomputing to imagine that they actually can be space born is just tremendous. Not only the impacts that it can have on Space six exploration, but also society in general. Mark Wayne talked about that. Guys, thanks so much for coming on the Cube and celebrating Exa scale day and helping expand the community. Great work. And, uh, thank you very much for all that you guys dio >>Thank you very much for having me on and everybody out there. Let's get the XO scale as quick as we can. Appreciate everything you all are >>doing. Let's do it. >>I've got a I've got a similar story. Humanity saw the first trillion calculations per second. Like I said in 1997. And it was over 100 racks of computer equipment. Well, space borne one is less than fourth of Iraq in only 20 years. So I'm gonna be celebrating exa scale day in anticipation off exa scale computers on earth and soon following within the national lab that exists in 20 plus years And being on Mars. >>That's awesome. That mark. Thank you for that. And and thank you for watching everybody. We're celebrating Exa scale day with the community. The supercomputing community on the Cube Right back

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of biz ops Manifesto unveiled Brought to you by Biz Ops Coalition >>Hey, Welcome back, everybody. Jeffrey here with the Cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the biz. Opps manifesto Unveil Something has been in the works for a little while. Today's a formal unveiling and we're excited to have three of the core founding members of the manifesto Authors of the manifesto, if you will joining us again. We've had them all on individually. Now we're gonna have a great power panel. First up, we have met Kirsten returning. He's the founder and CEO of Task Top make good to see again. Where you dialing in from? >>Great to see you again, Jeff. I'm dialing from Vancouver, Canada. >>Vancouver, Canada. One of my favorite cities in the whole wide world. Also, we've got Tom Davenport coming from across the country. He's a distinguished professor and author from Babson College. Tom, great to see. And I think you said you're a fund Exotic place on the East Coast. >>Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. >>Nice. Great to see you again. And also joining surge. Lucio. He is the VP and general manager Enterprise Software division at Broadcom Surge. Great to see you again. Where you coming in from? >>From Boston. Right next to kick off. Terrific. >>So welcome back, everybody again. Congratulations. On this day I know it's It's been a lot of work to get here for this unveil, but let's just jump into it. Biz Opps Manifesto What was the initial reason to do this? And how did you decide to do it in a kind of a coalition way, bringing together a group of people versus just making it an internal company, uh, initiative that, you know, you could do better stuff within your own company Surge. Why don't we start with you? >>Yeah, so? So I think we are really a critical juncture, right? Many large enterprises are basically struggling with their digital transformation. In fact, many recognized that the the Business Society collaboration has been one of the major impediments to drive that kind of transformation. And if we look at the industry today, many people or whether we're talking about vendors or system integrators, consulting firms are talking about the same kind of concepts but using very different language. And so we believe that bringing a lot these different players together assed part of the coalition and formalizing, uh, basically the core principles and values in a busy office manifesto. We can really start to have kind of a much bigger movement where we can all talk about kind of the same concepts. And we can really start to provide kind of a much better support for large organizations to transform eso, whether it is technology or services or trading. I think that that's really the value of bringing all of these players together >>and Mick to you. Why did you get involved in this in this effort? >>So I've been closely involved the actual movement since it started two decades ago with that manifesto, and I think we got a lot of improvement at the team level. And I think, as started just noted, we really need to improving. At the business level, every companies trying to become a software innovator trying to make sure that they can pick them, adapt quickly in the changing market economy and what everyone's dealing with in terms of needing to deliver value to customers. Sooner. However, agile practices have really focused that these metrics these measures and understanding processes that help teams be productive. Those things now need to be elevated to the business as a whole, and that just hasn't happened. Organizations are agile. Transmissions are actually failing because they're measuring activities and how they're becoming more agile. Have teams air functioning, not how much quickly they're delivering value to the customer. So we need to now move. Asked that. And that's exactly what the buzz off there's also manifested. Provides, >>right? Right And Tom to you. You've been covering tech for a very long time. You've been looking at really hard challenges and and a lot of work around analytics and data on data evolution. So there's a definitely a data angle here. I wonder if you kind of share your perspective of of what you got excited Thio to sign on to this manifesto? >>Sure. Well, I have. You know, for the past 15 or 20 years, I've been focusing on Data Analytics and AI. But before that, I was a process management guy and a knowledge management guy and a in general. I think, you know, we've just kind of optimized at too narrow a level. Whether you're talking about agile or Dev ops or, um, ml ops. Any of these kind of obs oriented movements, we're making individual project, um, performance and productivity better, But we're not changing the business effectively enough. And that's the thing that appealed to me about the biz ops idea that we're finally creating a closer connection between what we do with technology and how it changes the business and provides value to it. >>That's great, uh, surge back to you, right? I mean, people have been talking about digital transformation for a long time, and it's been, you know, kind of trucking along. And then Cove it hit, and it was instant lights, which everyone's working from home. You've got a lot more reliance on your digital tools, digital communication both within your customer base and your partner base, but also then you're employees. When if you could share how that really pushed this all along, right, because now suddenly the acceleration of digital transformation is higher. Even more importantly, you've got much more critical decisions to make into what you do next. So kind of your portfolio management of projects has been elevated significantly. When maybe revenues are down on. Do you really have Thio prioritize and get it right? >>Yeah. I mean, I'll just start by quoting city An Adele basically recently said that there's bean two years of digital transformation just last two months, and in many ways that's true. Um, but But yet when we look at large enterprises, they're still struggling with kind of a changes in culture that they really need Thio drive to be able to describe themselves. And not surprisingly, you know, when we look at certain parts of the industry, you know, we see some things which are very disturbing, right. About 40% of the personal loans today are being origin dated by Finn tax of a like of Sophie or or ah Lendingclub, right, Not your traditional brick and worked for bank. And so the while there is kind of ah, much more of an appetite, and it's it's more of a survival type driver these days. The reality is that in order for these large enterprises to truly transform and engage on these digital transformation, they need to start to really aligned the business 90 you know, in many ways and make cover that actually really emerge from the court desire to really improve software predictability, but we've which we have really missed is all the way. Start to aligning the software predictability to business predictability and to be able to have continuously continuous improvement and measurement off business outcomes. So by lining, but of this dis kind of inward metrics that I t is typically being using to business outcomes, we think we can start to really help different stakeholders within the organization to collaborate. So I think there is more than ever. There is an imperative to act now, um, and and results. I think it's kind of the right approach to drive that kind of transformation, >>right? I want to follow up on the culture comment with Utah because you've talked before about kind of process, flow and process flow throughout a whore, unorganized ation. And, you know, we talk about people process and tech all the time, and I think the tech is the easy part compared to actually changing the people the way they think and then the actual processes that they put in place. It's a much more difficult issue than just a tech issue to get this digital transformation in your organization. >>Yeah, you know, I've always found that the soft stuff the you know, the culture of the behavior of the values is the hard stuff to change and mawr and mawr. We we realized that to be successful with any kind of digital transformation, you have tow change, people's behaviors and attitudes. Um, we haven't made much progress in that area as we might have. I mean, I've done some surveys suggesting that most organizations still don't have data driven cultures, and in many cases, there is a lower percentage of companies that say they have that then did a few years ago. So we're kind of moving in the wrong direction, which means I think that we have to start explicitly addressing that cultural behavioral dimension and not just assuming that it will happen if we if we build a system, you know, if if we build it, they won't necessarily come right, >>right? So I want to go toe to you, Nick, because, you know, we're talking about work flows and flow. Andi, you've written about flow both in terms of, you know, moving things along a process and trying to find bottlenecks, identify bottlenecks which is now even more important again when these decisions are much more critical because you have a lot less ah, wiggle room in tough times. But you also talked about flow from the culture side on the people's side. So I wonder if you could just share your thoughts on, you know, using flow as a way to think about things to get the answers better? >>Yeah, absolutely. And I'll refer back to what Tom just said. If you're optimize, you need to optimize your system. You need to optimize how you innovate and how you deliver value to the business into the customer. Now what we've noticed in the data since that that we've learned from customers value streams, enterprise organizations, value streams is that what's taking six months and to and to deliver that value, the flow is that slow. You've got a bunch of unhappy developers. Unhappy customers, when you're innovating, have so high performing organizations we can measure their intent flow time in days. All of a sudden, that feedback loop the satisfaction your developers measurably goes up. So not only do you have people context switching last year, delivering so much more value to customers at a lower cost because you've optimized for flow rather than optimizing for these thes other approximately six that we use, which is how efficient my annual team. How quickly can we deploy software? Those are important, but they do not provide the value of agility, of fast learning, of adaptability, of the business. And that's exactly what the bishops manifesto pushes your organization to. You need to put in place this new operate model that's based on flow on the delivery of business value and on bringing value to market much more quickly than you were before, >>right? I love that. I'm gonna go back to Utah, him on that to follow up, because I think I don't think people think enough about how they prioritize what they're optimizing for. Because, you know, if you're optimizing for a vs B, you know you could have a very different product that that you kick out. You know, my favorite example with With Clayton Christensen and Innovator's Dilemma talking about the three inch our drive, if you optimize it for power, you know, is one thing. If you optimize it for vibration is another thing, and sure enough, you know they missed it on the Palm because it was the it was the game council which which drove that whole business. So when you're talking to customers and we think we're here with cloud all the time people optimizing for cost efficiency instead of thinking about it as an innovation tool, how do you help them? Kind of rethink and really, you know, forced them to to look at the at the prioritization and make sure they're prioritizing on the right thing is make just that. What do you optimizing for? >>Oh yeah, you have one of the most important aspects of any decision or attempt to resolve a problem in an organization is the framing process. And, um, you know, it's it's a difficult aspect toe of the decision toe frame it correctly in the first place. Um, there. It's not a technology issue. In many cases, it's largely a human issue. But if you frame that decision or that problem incorrectly too narrowly, say, or you frame it as an either or situation when you could actually have some of both, um, it's very difficult for the process toe work out correctly. So in many cases, I think we need to think mawr at the beginning about how we frame this issue or this decision in the best way possible before we charge off and build a system to support it. You know, it's worth that extra time to think. Think carefully about how the decision has been structured. Right? >>Surge. I wanna go back to you and talk about the human factors because we just discussed you could put in great technology. But if the culture doesn't adopt it and people don't feel good about it, you know it's not gonna be successful. And that's going to reflect poorly on the technology. Even if I had nothing to do with it. And you know, when you look at the core values of the best hopes manifesto, you know a big one is trust and collaboration. You know, learn, responded pivot. Wonder if you can share your thoughts on trying to get that cultural shift s so that you can have success with the people or excuse me with the technology in the process and helping customers, you know, take this more trustworthy and kind of proactive position. >>So I think I think at the ground level, it really starts with the realization that we were all different. We come from different backgrounds. Oftentimes we tend Thio. Blame the data. It's not uncommon my experience that we spend the first, you know, 30 minutes of any kind of one hour the conversation to debate the ability of the data on DSO, one of the first kind of probably manifestations that we've had. Our revelations as we start to engage with our customers is by just exposing high Fidelity data set two different stakeholders from their different lands. We start to enable these different stakeholders to not debate the data, but that's really collaborate to find a solution. So in many ways, when when when we think about kind of the types of changes were trying Thio truly affect around data driven decision making? It's all about bringing the data in context the context that is relevant and understandable for different stakeholders. Whether we're talking about an operator developed for a business analyst, so that's that's the first thing. The second layer, I think, is really to provide context to what people are doing in their specific silo. So I think one of the best examples I have is if you start to be able to align business k p i. Whether you are accounting, you know, with sales per hour or the engagement of your users on your mobile application, whatever it is, if you start to connect that k p I business K p I to the key piece that developers might be looking at, whether it is now the number of defects or velocity or whatever over metrics that they are used to to actually track, you start to be able to actually contextual eyes in what we are. The affecting, basically metric that that is really relevant. And what we see is that this is a much more systematic way to approach the transformation than say, You know, some organizations kind of creating some of these new products or services or initiatives to to drive engagement, right? So, you know, if you look at zoom, for instance, Zoom giving away, it's service thio education is all about. I mean, there's obviously a marketing aspect in there, but it's it's fundamentally about trying to drive also the engagement of their own teams and because now they're doing something for good, and many organizations are trying to do that. But you only can do this kind of things in a limited way. And so you really want to start to rethink? Oh, you connect everybody kind of business objective fruit data. And I always start to get people to stare at the same data from their own lands and collaborating on the data. Right? >>Right. That's good. Uh, Tom, I want to go back to you. You've been studying I t for a long time writing lots of books and and getting into it. Um, Why now? You know what? Why now? Are we finally aligning business objectives with objects? You know, why didn't this happen before? And, you know, what are the factors that are making now? The time for this. This this move with the with the biz ops. >>Well, in much of the past, I t waas sort of a back office related activity. You know, it was important for, um, producing your paychecks and, uh, capturing the customer orders, but the business wasn't built around it. Now, every organization needs to be a software business of data business. A digital business. The anti has been raised considerably. And if you aren't making that connection between your business objectives and the technology that supports it. You run a pretty big risk of, you know, going out of business or losing out to competitors. Totally so. And even if you're in a new industry that hasn't historically been terribly, um, technology oriented customer expectations flow from, you know, the digital native companies that they work with to basically every industry. So you're compared against the best in the world. So we don't really have the luxury anymore of screwing up our I T projects or building things that don't really work for the business. Um, it's mission critical that we do that well, almost every time, >>right. And I just I just wanna fall by that time, in terms of the you've talked extensively about kind of these evolutions of data analytics, from artisanal stage to the big data stage, the data economy stage the ai driven stage. What I find interesting about all the stages you always put a start date. You never put it in date. Um, so you know, is the is the big data. I'm just gonna use that generically moment in time. Finally, here. Where were, you know, off mahogany row with the data scientists, But actually could start to see the promise of delivering the right insight to the right person at the right time to make that decision. >>Well, I think it is true that in general, these previous stages never seem to go away. The three artisanal stuff is still being done, but we would like for less and less of it to be artisanal. We can't really afford for everything to be artisanal anymore. It's too labor and time consuming to do things that way. So we shift Mawr and Mawr of it to be done through automation and be to be done with a higher level of productivity. And, um, you know, at some point maybe we we reached the stage where we don't do anything artisanal e anymore. I'm not sure we're there yet, but, you know, we are We are making progress, >>right? Right. And make back to you in terms of looking at agile because you're you're such a student of agile. When when you look at the opportunity with biz ops, um, and taking the lessons from agile, you know what's been the inhibitor to stop this in the past. And what are you so excited about? you know, taking this approach will enable >>Yeah, I think both surgeon Tom hit on this. Is that in agile? What's happened is that we've been, you know, measuring tiny subsets of the value stream, right? We need to elevate the data's there, developers air working on these tools of delivering features. The foundations for for great culture are there. I spent two decades as a developer, and when I was really happy when I was able to deliver value to customers, the quicker is able to do that. The fewer impediments are in my way, the quicker was deployed and running the cloud, the happier I waas and that's exactly what's happening if we could just get the right data elevated to the business, not just to the agile teams, but really these values of ours are to make sure that you've got these data driven decisions with meaningful data that's oriented and delivering value to customers. None of these legacies that Tom touched on, which has cost center metrics from a nightie, came from where for I t being a cost center and something that provided email on back office systems. So we need thio rapidly shift to those new, meaningful metrics, their customer and business centric. And make sure that every development organization is focused on those as well as the business itself that we're measuring value. And they were helping that value flow without interruption. >>I love that because if you don't measure it, you can't improve on it. And you gotta but you gotta be measuring the right thing. So, gentlemen, thank you again for for your time. Uh, congratulations on the on the unveil of the biz ops manifesto and bringing together this coalition of industry experts to get behind this. And, you know, there's probably never been a more important time than now to make sure that your prioritization is in the right spot. And you're not wasting resource is where you're not gonna get the r. O. I. So, uh, congratulations again. And thank you for sharing your thoughts with us here on the Cube. Thank >>you. All >>right, So we have surged. Tom and Mick. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. It's a biz ops manifesto unveiled. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Yeah,

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage, a BizOps manifesto unveiled brought to you by biz ops coalition. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the biz ops manifesto. Unveil. Something has been in the works for a little while. Today's the formal unveiling, and we're excited to have three of the core founding members of the manifesto authors of the manifesto. If you will, uh, joining us again, we've had them all on individually. Now we're going to have a great power panel. First up. We're gonna have Mitt Kirsten returning he's the founder and CEO of Tasktop mic. Good to see you again. Where are you dialing in from? >>Great to see you again, Jeff I'm dialing from Vancouver, >>We're Canada, Vancouver, Canada. One of my favorite cities in the whole wide world. Also we've got Tom Davenport come in from across the country. He's a distinguished professor and author from Babson college, Tom. Great to see you. And I think you said you're at a fun, exotic place on the East coast >>Realm of Memphis shoes. That's on Cape Cod. >>Great to see you again and also joining surge Lucio. He is the VP and general manager enterprise software division at Broadcom surge. Great to see you again, where are you coming in from? >>Uh, from Boston right next to Cape Cod. >>Terrific. So welcome back, everybody again. Congratulations on this day. I know it's been a lot of work to get here for this unveil, but let's just jump into it. The biz ops manifesto, what was the initial reason to do this? And how did you decide to do it in a kind of a coalition, a way bringing together a group of people versus just making it an internal company, uh, initiative that, you know, you can do better stuff within your own company, surge, why don't we start with you? >>Yeah, so, so I think we were at a really critical juncture, right? Many, um, large enterprises are basically struggling with their digital transformation. Um, in fact, um, many recognized that, uh, the, the business side, it collaboration has been, uh, one of the major impediments, uh, to drive that kind of transformation. That, and if we look at the industry today, many people are, whether we're talking about vendors or, um, you know, system integrators, consulting firms are talking about the same kind of concepts, but using very different language. And so we believe that bringing all these different players together, um, as part of the coalition and formalizing, uh, basically the core principles and values in a BizOps manifesto, we can really start to F could have a much bigger movement where we can all talk about kind of the same concepts and we can really start to provide, could have a much better support for large organizations to, to transform. Uh, so whether it is technology or services or, um, or training, I think that that's really the value of bringing all of these players together, right. >>And mic to you. Why did you get involved in this, in this effort? >>So I've been closely involved the agile movement since it started two decades with that manifesto. And I think we got a lot of improvement at the team level, and I think that was just no. Did we really need to improve at the business level? Every company is trying to become a software innovator, trying to make sure that they can pivot quickly and the changing market economy and what everyone's dealing with in terms of needing to deliver value to customers sooner. However, agile practices have really focused on these metrics, these measures and understanding processes that help teams be productive. Those things now need to be elevated to the business as a whole. And that just hasn't happened. Uh, organizations are actually failing because they're measuring activities and how they're becoming more agile, how teams are functioning, not how much quickly they're delivering value to the customer. So we need to now move past that. And that's exactly what the manifesto provides. Right, >>Right, right. And Tom, to you, you've been covering tech for a very long time. You've been looking at really hard challenges and a lot of work around analytics and data and data evolution. So there's a definitely a data angle here. I wonder if you could kind of share your perspective of what you got excited to, uh, to sign onto this manifesto. >>Sure. Well, I have, you know, for the past 15 or 20 years, I've been focusing on data and analytics and AI, but before that I was a process management guy and a knowledge management guy. And in general, I think, you know, we've just kind of optimize that to narrow a level, whether you're talking about agile or dev ops or ML ops, any of these kinds of ops oriented movements, we're making individual project, um, performance and productivity better, but we're not changing the business, uh, effectively enough. And that's the thing that appealed to me about the biz ops idea, that we're finally creating a closer connection between what we do with technology and how it changes the business and provides value to it. >>Great. Uh, surge back to you, right? I mean, people have been talking about digital transformation for a long time and it's been, you know, kind of trucking along and then covert hit and it was instant Lightswitch. Everyone's working from home. You've got a lot more reliance on your digital tools, digital communication, uh, both within your customer base and your partner base, but also then your employees when you're, if you could share how that really pushed this all along. Right? Because now suddenly the acceleration of digital transformation is higher. Even more importantly, you got much more critical decisions to make into what you do next. So kind of your portfolio management of projects has been elevated significantly when maybe revenues are down, uh, and you really have to, uh, to prioritize and get it right. >>Yeah. Maybe I'll just start by quoting Satina Nello basically recently said that they're speeding the two years of digital preservation just last two months in any many ways. That's true. Um, but yet when we look at large enterprises, they're still struggling with a kind of a changes in culture. They really need to drive to be able to disrupt themselves. And not surprisingly, you know, when we look at certain parts of the industry, you know, we see some things which are very disturbing, right? So about 40% of the personal loans today are being, uh, origin data it's by fintechs, uh, of a like of Sophie or, uh, or a lending club, right? Not to a traditional brick and mortar for BEC. And so the, well, there is kind of a much more of an appetite and it's a, it's more of a survival type of driver these days. >>Uh, the reality is that's in order for these large enterprises to truly transform and engage on this digital transformation, they need to start to really align the business nightie, you know, in many ways and make cover. Does agile really emerge from the core desire to truly improve software predictability between which we've really missed is all the way we start to aligning the software predictability to business predictability, and to be able to have continual sleep continuous improvement and measurement of business outcomes. So by aligning that of these, uh, discuss inward metrics, that's, it is typically being using to business outcomes. We think we can start to really ELP, uh, different stakeholders within the organization to collaborate. So I think there is more than ever. There's an imperative to acts now. Um, and, and resolves, I think is kind of the right approach to drive that kind of transformation. Right. >>I want to follow up on the culture comment, uh, with you, Tom, because you've talked before about kind of process flow and process flow throughout a whore and an organization. And, you know, we talk about people process and tech all the time. And I think the tech is the easy part compared to actually changing the people the way they think. And then the actual processes that they put in place. It's a much more difficult issue than just the tech issue to get this digital transformation in your organization. >>Yeah. You know, I've always found that the soft stuff about, you know, the culture of a behavior, the values is the hard stuff to change and more and more, we, we realized that to be successful with any kind of digital transformation you have to change people's behaviors and attitudes. Um, we haven't made as much progress in that area as we might have. I mean, I've done some surveys suggesting that most organizations still don't have data driven cultures. And in many cases there is a lower percentage of companies that say they have that then, um, did a few years ago. So we're kind of moving in the wrong direction, which means I think that we have to start explicitly addressing that, um, cultural, behavioral dimension and not just assuming that it will happen if we, if we build system, if we build it, they won't necessarily come. Right. >>Right. So I want to go to you Nick. Cause you know, we're talking about workflows and flow, um, and, and you've written about flow both in terms of, um, you know, moving things along a process and trying to find bottlenecks, identify bottlenecks, which is now even more important again, when these decisions are much more critical. Cause you have a lot less, uh, wiggle room in tough times, but you also talked about flow from the culture side and the people side. So I wonder if you can just share your thoughts on, you know, using flow as a way to think about things, to get the answers better. >>Yeah, absolutely. And I'll refer back to what Tom has said. If you're optimized, you need to optimize your system. You need to optimize how you innovate and how you deliver value to the business and the customer. Now, what we've noticed in the data, since that we've learned from customers, value streams, enterprise organizations, value streams, is that when it's taking six months at the end to deliver that value with the flow is that slow. You've got a bunch of unhappy developers, unhappy customers when you're innovating half so high performing organizations, we can measure third and 10 float time and dates. All of a sudden that feedback loop, the satisfaction your developer's measurably goes up. So not only do you have people context, switching glass, you're delivering so much more value to customers at a lower cost because you've optimized for flow rather than optimizing for these other approximate tricks that we use, which is how efficient is my agile team. How quickly can we deploy software? Those are important, but they do not provide the value of agility of fast learning of adaptability to the business. And that's exactly what the biz ops manifesto pushes your organization to do. You need to put in place this new operating model that's based on flow on the delivery of business value and on bringing value to market much more quickly than you were before. Right. >>I love that. And I'm going back to you, Tom, on that to follow up. Cause I think, I don't think people think enough about how they prioritize what they're optimizing for. Cause you know, if you're optimizing for a versus B, you know, you can have a very different product that you kick out and let you know. My favorite example is with Clayton Christianson and innovator's dilemma talking about the three inch hard drive. If you optimize it for power, you know, is one thing, if you optimize it for vibration is another thing and sure enough, you know, they missed it on the poem because it was the, it was the game console, which, which drove that whole business. So when you, when you're talking to customers and we think we hear it with cloud all the time, people optimizing for cost efficiency, instead of thinking about it as an innovation tool, how do you help them kind of rethink and really, you know, force them to, to look at the, at the prioritization and make sure they're prioritizing on the right thing is make just said, what are you optimizing for? >>Oh yeah. Um, you have one of the most important aspects of any decision or, um, attempt to resolve a problem in an organization is the framing process. And, um, you know, it's, it's a difficult aspect of the decision to frame it correctly in the first place. Um, there, it's not a technology issue. In many cases, it's largely a human issue, but if you frame that decision or that problem incorrectly to narrowly say, or you frame it as an either or situation where you could actually have some of both, um, it, it's very difficult for the, um, process to work out correctly. So in many cases that I think we need to think more at the beginning about how we bring this issue or this decision in the best way possible before we charge off and build a system to support it. You know, um, it's worth that extra time to think, think carefully about how the decision has been structured, right >>Surgery. I want to go back to you and talk about the human factors because as we just discussed, you can put it in great technology, but if the culture doesn't adopt it and people don't feel good about it, you know, it's not going to be successful and that's going to reflect poorly on the technology, even if it had nothing to do with it. And you know, when you look at the, the, the core values, uh, of the Bezos manifesto, you know, a big one is trust and collaboration, you know, learn, respond and pivot. I wonder if you can share your thoughts on, on trying to get that cultural shift, uh, so that you can have success with the people or excuse me, with the technology in the process and helping customers, you know, take this more trustworthy and kind of proactive, uh, position. >>So I think, I think at the ground level, it truly starts with the realization that we're all different. We come from different backgrounds. Um, oftentimes we tend to blame the data. It's not uncommon my experiments that we spend the first 30 minutes of any kind of one hour conversation to debate the validity of the data. Um, and so, um, one of the first kind of, uh, probably manifestations that we've had or revelations as we start to engage with our customers is spike, just exposing, uh, high-fidelity data sets to different stakeholders from their different lens. We start to enable these different stakeholders to not debate the data. That's really collaborate to find a solution. So in many ways, when, when, when we think about kind of the types of changes we're trying to, to truly affect around data driven decision making, it's all about bringing the data in context, in the context that is relevant and understandable for, for different stakeholders, whether we're talking about an operator or develop for a business analyst. >>So that's, that's the first thing. The second layer I think, is really to provide context to what people are doing in their specific cycle. And so I think one of the best examples I have is if you start to be able to align business KPI, whether you are counting, you know, sales per hour, or the engagements of your users on your mobile applications, whatever it is, you can start to connect that PKI to the business KPI, to the KPIs that developers might be looking at, whether it is the number of defects or a velocity or whatever, you know, metrics that they are used to to actually track you start to, to be able to actually contextualize in what we are the effecting, basically a metric that is really relevant in which we see is that DC is a much more systematic way to approach the transformation than say, you know, some organizations kind of creating, uh, some of these new products or services or initiatives, um, to, to drive engagements, right? >>So if you look at zoom, for instance, zoom giving away a it service to, uh, to education, he's all about, I mean, there's obviously a marketing aspect in therapists. It's fundamentally about trying to drive also the engagement of their own teams. And because now they're doing something for good and the organizations are trying to do that, but you only can do this kind of things in a limited way. And so you really want to start to rethink how you connect to, everybody's kind of a business objective fruit data, and now you start to get people to stare at the same data from their own lens and collaborate on all the data. Right, >>Right. That's a good, uh, Tom, I want to go back to you. You've been studying it for a long time, writing lots of books and getting into it. Um, why now, you know, what w why now are we finally aligning business objectives with, with it objectives? You know, why didn't this happen before? And, you know, what are the factors that are making now the time for this, this, this move with the, uh, with the biz ops? >>Well, and much of the past, it was sort of a back office related activity. And, you know, it was important for, um, uh, producing your paychecks and, uh, um, capturing the customer orders, but the business wasn't built around it now, every organization needs to be a software business, a data business, a digital business, the auntie has been raised considerably. And if you aren't making that connection between your business objectives and the technology that supports it, you run a pretty big risk of, you know, going out of business or losing out to competitors. Totally. So, um, and, uh, even if you're in a, an industry that hasn't historically been terribly, um, technology oriented customer expectations flow from, uh, you know, the digital native, um, companies that they work with to basically every industry. So you're compared against the best in the world. So we don't really have the luxury anymore of screwing up our it projects or building things that don't really work for the business. Um, it's mission critical that we do that well. Um, almost every time, I just want to follow up by that, Tom, >>In terms of the, you've talked extensively about kind of these evolutions of data and analytics from artismal stage to the big data stage, the data economy stage, the AI driven stage and what I find diff interesting that all those stages, you always put a start date. You never put an end date. Um, so you know, is the, is the big data I'm just going to use that generically a moment in time finally here, where we're, you know, off mahogany row with the data scientists, but actually can start to see the promise of delivering the right insight to the right person at the right time to make that decision. >>Well, I think it is true that in general, these previous stages never seemed to go away. The, um, the artisinal stuff is still being done, but we would like for less than less of it to be artisinal, we can't really afford for everything to be artisinal anymore. It's too labor and time consuming to do things that way. So we shift more and more of it to be done through automation and B to be done with a higher level of productivity. And, um, you know, at some point maybe we reached the stage where we don't do anything artisanally anymore. I'm not sure we're there yet, but, you know, we are, we are making progress. Right, >>Right. And Mick, back to you in terms of looking at agile, cause you're, you're such a, a student of agile when, when you look at the opportunity with ops, um, and taking the lessons from agile, you know, what's been the inhibitor to stop this in the past. And what are you so excited about? You know, taking this approach will enable. >>Yeah. I think both Sergeant Tom hit on this is that in agile what's happened is that we've been measuring tiny subsets of the value stream, right? We need to elevate the data's there. Developers are working on these tools that delivering features that the foundations for, for great culture are there. I spent two decades as a developer. And when I was really happy is when I was able to deliver value to customers, the quicker I was able to do that the fewer impediments are in my way, that quicker was deployed and running in the cloud, the happier I was, and that's exactly what's happening. If we can just get the right data, uh, elevated to the business, not just to the agile teams, but really these values of ours are to make sure that you've got these data driven decisions with meaningful data that's oriented around delivering value to customers. Not only these legacies that Tom touched on, which has cost center metrics from an ITK, from where, for it being a cost center and something that provided email and then back office systems. So we need to rapidly shift to those new, meaningful metrics that are customized business centric and make sure that every development the organization is focused on those as well as the business itself, that we're measuring value and that we're helping that value flow without interruptions. >>I love that mic. Cause if you don't measure it, you can't improve on it and you gotta, but you gotta be measuring the right thing. So gentlemen, uh, thank you again for, for your time. Congratulations on the, uh, on the unveil of the biz ops manifesto and together this coalition >>Of, of, uh, industry experts to get behind this. And, you know, there's probably never been a more important time than now to make sure that your prioritization is in the right spot and you're not wasting resources where you're not going to get the ROI. So, uh, congratulations again. And thank you for sharing your thoughts with us here on the cube. Alright, so we had surge, Tom and Mick I'm. Jeff, you're watching the cube, it's a biz ops manifesto and unveil. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of BizOps manifesto, unveiled brought to you by biz ops coalition and welcome back Friday, Jeff Frick here with the cube we're in our Palo Alto studios. And we'd like to welcome you back to our continuing coverage of biz ops manifesto, unveil exciting day to really, uh, kind of bring this out into public. There's been a little bit of conversation, but today's really the official unveiling and we're excited to have our next guest to share a little bit more information on it. He's Patrick tickle. He's a chief product officer for planned view. Patrick. Great to see you. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for the invite. So why the biz ops manifesto, why the biz optical edition now when you guys have been at it, it's relatively mature marketplace businesses. Good. What was missing? Why, why this, uh, why this coalition? >>Yeah, so, you know, again, why is, why is biz ops important and why is this something I'm, you know, I'm so excited about, but I think companies as well, right. Well, you know, in some ways or another, this is a topic that I've been talking to, you know, the market and our customers about for a long time. And it's, you know, I really applaud, you know, this whole movement, right. And, um, in resonates with me, because I think one of the fundamental flaws, frankly, of the way we've talked about technology and business literally for decades, uh, has been this idea of, uh, alignment. Those who know me, I occasionally get off on this little rant about the word alignment, right. But to me, the word alignment is, is actually indicative of the, of the, of the flaw in a lot of our organizations and biz ops is really, I think now trying to catalyze and expose that flaw. >>Right. Because, you know, I always say that, you know, you know, alignment implies silos, right. Instantaneously, as soon as you say there's alignment, there's, there's obviously somebody who's got a direction and other people that have to line up and that, that kind of siloed, uh, nature of organizations. And then frankly, the passive nature of it. Right. I think so many technology organizations are like, look, the business has the strategy you guys need to align. Right. And, and, you know, as a product leader, right. That's where I've been my whole career. Right. I can tell you that I never sit around. I almost never use the word alignment. Right. I mean, whether I never sit down and say, you know, the product management team has to get aligned with Deb, right. Or the dev team has to get aligned with the delivery and ops teams. I mean, what I say is, you know, are we on strategy, right? >>Like we've, we have a strategy as a, as a full end to end value stream. Right. And that there's no silos. And I mean, look, every on any given day we got to get better. Right. But the context, the context we operate is not about alignment. Right. It's about being on strategy. And I think I've talked to customers a lot about that, but when I first read the manifesto, I was like, Oh yeah, this is exactly. This is breaking down. Maybe trying to eliminate the word alignment, you know, from a lot of our organizations, because we literally start thinking about one strategy and how we go from strategy to delivery and have it be our strategy, not someone else's that we're all aligning to it. And it's a great way to catalyze that conversation. That I've, it's been in my mind for years, to be honest. Right. >>So, so much to unpack there. One of the things obviously, uh, stealing a lot from, from dev ops and the dev ops manifesto from 20 years ago. And as I look through some of the principles and I looked through some of the values, which are, you know, really nicely laid out here, you know, satisfy customers, do continuous delivery, uh, measure, output against real results. Um, the ones that, that jumps out though is really about, you know, change, change, right? Requirements should change frequently. They do change frequently, but I'm curious to get your take from a, from a software development point, it's easy to kind of understand, right. We're making this widget and our competitors, beta widget plus X, and now we need to change our plans and make sure that the plus X gets added to the plan. Maybe it wasn't in the plan, but you talked a lot about product strategy. So in this kind of continuous delivery world, how does that meld with, I'm actually trying to set a strategy, which implies the direction for a little bit further out on the horizon and to stay on that while at the same time, you're kind of doing this real time continual adjustments. Cause you're not working off a giant PRD or MRD anymore. >>Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. You know, one of the terms, you know, that we use internally a lot and even with my customers, our customers is we talked about this idea of rewiring, right. And I think, you know, it's kind of a, now an analogy for transformation. And I think a lot of us have to rewire the way we think about things. Right. And I think at Planview where we have a lot of customers who live in that, you know, who operationalize that traditional PPM world. Right. And are shifting to agile and transforming that rewire is super important. And, and to your point, right, it's, you've just, you've got to embrace this idea of, you know, just iterative getting better every day and iterating, iterating, iterating as to building annual plans or, you know, I get customers occasionally who asked me for two or three year roadmap. >>Right. And I literally looked at them and I go, there's no, there's no scenario where I can build a two or three year roadmap. Right. You, you, you think you want that, but that's not, that's not the way we run. Right. And I will tell you the biggest thing that for us, you know, that I think is matched the planning, uh, you know, patents is a word I like to use a lot. So the thing that we've like, uh, that we've done from a planning perspective, I think is matched impedance to continuous delivery is instituting the whole program, implement, you know, the program, increment planning, capabilities and methodologies, um, in the scaled agile world. Right. And over the last 18 months to two years, we really have now, you know, instrumented our company across three value streams. You know, we do quarterly PI program increment 10 week planning, you know, and that becomes, that becomes the Terra firma of how we plant. >>Right. And it's, what are we doing for the next 10 weeks? And we iterate within those 10 weeks, but we also know that 10 weeks from now, we're going to, we're going to adjust iterate again. Right. And that shifting of that planning model, you know, to being as cross-functional is that as that big room planning kind of model is, um, and also, uh, you know, on that shorter increment, when you get those two things in place, all sudden the impedance really starts to match up, uh, with continuous delivery and it changes, it changes the way you plan and it changes the way you work. Right? >>Yeah. Their thing. Right. So obviously a lot of these things are kind of process driven, both within the values, as well as the principles, but there's a whole lot, really about culture. And I just want to highlight a couple of the values, right? We already talked about business outcomes, um, trust and collaboration, uh, data driven decisions, and then learn, respond and pivot. Right. A lot of those are cultural as much as they are process. So again, is it the, is it the need to really kind of just put them down on paper and you know, I can't help, but think of, you know, the hammering up the, uh, the thing in the Lutheran church with their, with their manifesto, is it just good to get it down on paper? Because when you read these things, you're like, well, of course we should trust people. And of course we need an environment of collaboration and of course we want data driven decisions, but as we all know saying it and living, it are two very, very different things. >>Yeah. Good question. I mean, I think there's a lot of ways you bring that to life you're right. And just hanging up, you know, I think we've all been through the hanging up posters around your office, which these days, right. Unless you're going to hang a poster and everybody's home office. Right. You can't even, you can't even fake it that you think that might work. Right. So, um, you know, you really, I think we've attacked that in a variety of ways. Right. And you definitely have to, you know, you've got to make the shift to a team centric culture, right. Empowered teams, you know, that's a big deal. Right. You know, a lot of, a lot of the people that, you know, we lived in a world of quote unquote, where we were lived in a deep resource management world for a long, long time. >>And right. A lot of our customers still do that, but you know, kind of moving to that team centric world is, uh, is really important and core the trust. Um, I think training is super important, right. We've, you know, we've internally, right. We've trained hundreds employees over the last a year and a half on the fundamentals really of safe. Right. Not necessarily, you know, we've had, we've had teams delivering in scrum and the continuous delivery for, you know, for years, but the scaling aspect of it, uh, is where we've done a lot of training and investment. Um, and then, you know, I think, uh, leadership has to be bought in. Right. You know? And so when we pie plan, you know, myself and Cameron and the other members of our leadership, you know, we're NPI planning, you know, for, for four days. Right. I mean, it's, it's, you've got to walk the walk, you know, from top to bottom and you've got to train on the context. Right. And then you, and then, and, and then once you get through a few cycles where you've done a pivot, right. Or you brought a new team in, and it just works, it becomes kind of this virtuous circle where he'll go, man, this really works so much better than what we used to do. Right. >>Right. The other really key principle to this whole thing is, is aligning, you know, the business leaders and the business prioritization, um, so that you can get to good outcomes with the development and the delivery. Right. And we, we know again, and kind of classic dev ops to get the dev and the production people together. So they can, you know, quickly ship code that works. Um, but adding the business person on there really puts, puts a little extra responsibility that they, they understand the value of a particular feature or particular priority. Uh, they, they can make the, the, the trade offs and that they kind of understand the effort involved too. So, you know, bringing them into this continuous again, kind of this continuous development process, um, to make sure that things are better aligned and really better prioritize. Cause ultimately, you know, we don't live in an infinite resources situation and people got to make trade offs. They got to make decisions as to what goes and what doesn't go in for everything that goes. Right. I always say you pick one thing. Okay. That's 99 other things that couldn't go. So it's really important to have, you know, this, you said alignment of the business priorities as well as, you know, the execution within, within the development. >>Yeah. I think that, you know, uh, you know, I think it was probably close to two years ago. Forester started talking about the age of the customer, right. That, that was like their big theme at the time. Right. And I think to me what that, the age of the customer actually translates to and Mick, Mick and I are both big fans of this whole idea of the project and product shift, mixed book, you know, it was a great piece on a, you're talking about, you know, as part of the manifesto is one of the authors as well, but this shift from project to product, right? Like the age of the customer, in my opinion, the, the embodiment of that is the shift to a product mentality. Right. And, and the product mentality in my opinion, is what brings the business and technology teams together, right? >>Once you, once you're focused on a customer experience is delivered through a product or a service. That's when I that's, when I started to go with the alignment problem goes away, right. Because if you look at software companies, right, I mean, we run product management models yeah. With software development teams, customer success teams, right. That, you know, the software component of these products that people are building is obviously becoming bigger and bigger, you know, in an, in many ways, right. More and more organizations are trying to model themselves over as operationally like software companies. Right. Um, they obviously have lots of other components in their business than just software, but I think that whole model of customer experience equaling product, and then the software component of product, the product is the essence of what changes that alignment equation and brings business and teams together because all of a sudden, everyone knows what the customer's experiencing. Right. And, and that, that, that makes a lot of things very clear, very quickly. >>Right. I'm just curious how far along this was as a process before, before COBIT hit, right. Because serendipitous, whatever. Right. But the sudden, you know, light switch moment, everybody had to go work from home and in March 15th compared to now we're in October and this is going to be going on for a while. And it is a new normal and whatever that whatever's going to look like a year from now, or two years from now is TBD, you know, had you guys already started on this journey cause again, to sit down and actually declare this coalition and declare this manifesto is a lot different than just trying to do better within your own organization. >>Yeah. So we had started, uh, you know, w we definitely had started independently, you know, some, some, you know, I think people in the community know that, uh, we, we came together with a company called lean kit a handful of years ago, and I give John Terry actually one of the founders LeanKit immense credit for, you know, kind of spearheading our cultural change and not, and not because of, we were just gonna be, you know, bringing agile solutions to our customers, but because, you know, he believed that it was going to be a fundamentally better way for us to work. Right. And we kind of, you know, we started with John and built, you know, out of concentric circles of momentum and, and we've gotten to the place where now it's just part of who we are, but, but I do think that, you know, COVID has, you know, um, I think pre COVID a lot of companies, you know, would, would adopt, you know, the would adopt digital slash agile transformation. >>Um, traditional industries may have done it as a reaction to disruption. Right. You know, and in many cases, the disruption to these traditional industries was, I would say a product oriented company, right. That probably had a larger software component, and that disruption caused a competitive issue, uh, or a customer issue that caused companies and tried to respond by transforming. I think COVID, you know, all of a sudden flatten that out, right. We literally all got disrupted. Right. And so all of a sudden, every one of us is dealing with some degree of market uncertainty, customer uncertainty, uh, and also, you know, none of us were insulated from the need to be able to pivot faster, deliver incrementally, you know, and operate in a different, completely more agile way, uh, you know, post COVID. Right. Yeah. That's great. >>So again, a very, very, very timely, you know, a little bit of serendipity, a little bit of planning. And, you know, as, as with all important things, there's always a little bit of lock in, uh, and a lot of hard work involved. So a really interesting thank you for, for your leadership, Patrick. And, you know, it really makes a statement. I think when you have a bunch of leaderships across an industry coming together and putting their name on a piece of paper, uh, that's aligned around us some principles and some values, which again, if you read them who wouldn't want to get behind these, but if it takes, you know, something a little bit more formal, uh, to kind of move the ball down the field, and then I totally get it and a really great work. Thanks for, uh, thanks for doing it. >>Oh, absolutely. No. Like I said, the first time I read it, I was like, yep. Like you said, this is all, it's all makes complete sense, but just documenting it and saying it and talking about it moves the needle. I'll tell you as a company, you gotta, we're pushing really hard on, uh, you know, on our own internal strategy on diversity and inclusion. Right. And, and like, once we wrote the words down about what, you know, what we aspire to be from a diversity and inclusion perspective, it's the same thing. Everybody reads the words that goes, why wouldn't we do this? Right. But until you write it down and kind of have again, a manifesto or a Terra firma of what you're trying to accomplish, you know, then you can rally behind it. Right. As opposed to it being something that's, everybody's got their own version of the flavor. Right. And I think it's a very analogous, you know, kind of, uh, initiative. Right. And, uh, and it's happening, both of those things right. Are happening across the industry these days. Right. >>And measure it too. Right. And measure it, measure, measure, measure, get a baseline. Even if you don't like to measure, even if you don't like what the, even if you can argue against the math, behind the measurement, measure it. And at least you can measure it again and you can, and you've got some type of a comp and that is really the only way to, to move it forward. We're Patrick really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for, uh, for taking a few minutes out of your day. >>It's great to be here. It's an awesome movement and we're glad to be a part of it. >>All right. Thanks. And if you want to check out the biz ops, Manifesta go to biz ops, manifesto.org, read it. You might want to sign it. It's there for you. And thanks for tuning in on this segment will continuing coverage of the biz op manifesto unveil you're on the cube. I'm Jeff, thanks for watching >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of biz ops manifesto unveiled brought to you by biz ops coalition. >>Hey, welcome back, everybody Jeffrey here with the cube. We're coming to you from our Palo Alto studios. And welcome back to this event is the biz ops manifesto unveiling. So the biz ops manifesto and the biz ops coalition had been around for a little while, but today's the big day. That's kind of the big public unveiling, or we're excited to have some of the foundational people that, you know, have put their, put their name on the dotted, if you will, to support this initiative and talk about why that initiative is so important. And so the next guest we're excited to have is dr. Mick Kirsten. He is the founder and CEO of Tasktop mic. Great to see you coming in from Vancouver, Canada, I think, right? Yes. Great to be here, Jeff. Thank you. Absolutely. I hope your air is a little better out there. I know you had some of the worst air of all of us, a couple, a couple of weeks back. So hopefully things are, uh, are getting a little better and we get those fires under control. Yeah. >>Things have cleared up now. So yeah, it's good. It's good to be close to the U S and it's going to have the Arabic cleaner as well. >>Absolutely. So let's, let's jump into it. So you you've been an innovation guy forever starting way back in the day and Xerox park. I was so excited to do an event at Xerox park for the first time last year. I mean, that, that to me represents along with bell labs and, and some other, you know, kind of foundational innovation and technology centers, that's gotta be one of the greatest ones. So I just wonder if you could share some perspective of getting your start there at Xerox park, you know, some of the lessons you learned and what you've been able to kind of carry forward from those days. >>Yeah. I was fortunate to join Xerox park in the computer science lab there at a fairly early point in my career, and to be working on open source programming languages. So back then in the computer science lab, where some of the inventions around programming around software development games, such as object programming, and a lot of what we had around really modern programming levels constructs, those were the teams I had the fortunate of working with, and really our goal was. And of course, there's, as, as you noticed, there's just this DNA of innovation and excitement and innovation in the water. And really it was the model that was all about changing the way that we work was looking at for how we can make it 10 times easier to white coat. But this is back in 99. And we were looking at new ways of expressing, especially business concerns, especially ways of enabling people who are wanting to innovate for their business to express those concerns in code and make that 10 times easier than what that would take. >>So we create a new open source programming language, and we saw some benefits, but not quite quite what we expected. I then went and actually joined Charles Stephanie, that former to fucking from Microsoft who was responsible for, he actually got Microsoft word as a sparking into Microsoft and into the hands of bill Gates and that company that was behind the whole office suite and his vision. And then when I was trying to execute with, working for him was to make PowerPoint like a programming language to make everything completely visual. And I realized none of this was really working, that there was something else, fundamentally wrong programming languages, or new ways of building software. Like let's try and do with Charles around intentional programming. That was not enough. >>That was not enough. So, you know, the agile movement got started about 20 years ago, and we've seen the rise of dev ops and really this kind of embracing of, of, of sprints and, you know, getting away from MRDs and PRDs and these massive definitions of what we're going to build and long build cycles to this iterative process. And this has been going on for a little while. So what was still wrong? What was still missing? Why the biz ops coalition, why the biz ops manifesto? >>Yeah, so I basically think we nailed some of the things that the program language levels of teams can have effective languages deployed to soften to the cloud easily now, right? And at the kind of process and collaboration and planning level agile two decades, decades ago was formed. We were adopting and all the, all the teams I was involved with and it's really become a self problem. So agile tools, agile teams, agile ways of planning, uh, are now very mature. And the whole challenge is when organizations try to scale that. And so what I realized is that the way that agile was scaling across teams and really scaling from the technology part of the organization to the business was just completely flawed. The agile teams had one set of doing things, one set of metrics, one set of tools. And the way that the business was working was planning was investing in technology was just completely disconnected and using a whole different set of measures. Pretty >>Interesting. Cause I think it's pretty clear from the software development teams in terms of what they're trying to deliver. Cause they've got a feature set, right. And they've got bugs and it's easy to, it's easy to see what they deliver, but it sounds like what you're really honing in on is this disconnect on the business side, in terms of, you know, is it the right investment? You know, are we getting the right business ROI on this investment? Was that the right feature? Should we be building another feature or should we building a completely different product set? So it sounds like it's really a core piece of this is to get the right measurement tools, the right measurement data sets so that you can make the right decisions in terms of what you're investing, you know, limited resources. You can't, nobody has unlimited resources. And ultimately you have to decide what to do, which means you're also deciding what not to do. And it sounds like that's a really big piece of this, of this whole effort. >>Yeah. Jeff, that's exactly it, which is the way that the agile team measures their own way of working is very different from the way that you measure business outcomes. The business outcomes are in terms of how happy your customers are, but are you innovating fast enough to keep up with the pace of a rapidly changing economy, roughly changing market. And those are, those are all around the customer. And so what I learned on this long journey of supporting many organizations transformations and having them try to apply those principles of agile and dev ops, that those are not enough, those measures technical practices, uh, those measured sort of technical excellence of bringing code to the market. They don't actually measure business outcomes. And so I realized that it really was much more around having these entwined flow metrics that are customer centric and business centric and market centric where we need it to go. Right. >>So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about your book because you're also a bestselling author from project to product and, and, and you, you brought up this concept in your book called the flow framework. And it's really interesting to me cause I know, you know, flow on one hand is kind of a workflow and a process flow and, and you know, that's how things get done and, and, and embrace the flow. On the other hand, you know, everyone now in, in a little higher level existential way is trying to get into the flow right into the workflow and, you know, not be interrupted and get into a state where you're kind of at your highest productivity, you know, kind of your highest comfort, which flow are you talking about in your book? Or is it a little bit of both? >>That's a great question. It's not one I get asked very often cause to me it's absolutely both. So that the thing that we want to get, that we've learned how to master individual flow, that there's this beautiful book by me, how you teaches me how he does a beautiful Ted talk by him as well about how we can take control of our own flow. So my question with the book with question replies, how can we bring that to entire teams and really entire organizations? How can we have everyone contributing to a customer outcome? And this is really what if you go to the biz ops manifesto, it says, I focus on outcomes on using data to drive whether we're delivering those outcomes rather than a focus on proxy metrics, such as, how quickly did we implement this feature? No, it's really how much value did the customer go to the future? >>And how quickly did you learn and how quickly did you use that data to drive to that next outcome? Really that with companies like Netflix and Amazon have mastered, how do we get that to every large organization, every it organization and make everyone be a software innovator. So it's to bring that, that concept of flow to these end to end value streams. And the fascinating thing is we've actually seen the data. We've been able to study a lot of value streams. We see when flow increases, when organizations deliver value to a customer faster, developers actually become more happy. So things like that and point out promoter scores, rise, and we've got empirical data for this. So that the beautiful thing to me is that we've actually been able to combine these two things and see the results and the data that you increase flow to the customer. Your developers are more, >>I love it. I love it, right, because we're all more, we're all happier when we're in the flow and we're all more productive when we're in the flow. So I, that is a great melding of, of two concepts, but let's jump into the, into the manifesto itself a little bit. And you know, I love that you took this approach really of having kind of four key values and then he gets 12 key principles. And I just want to read a couple of these values because when you read them, it sounds pretty brain dead. Right? Of course. Right. Of course you should focus on business outcomes. Of course you should have trust and collaboration. Of course you should have database decision making processes and not just intuition or, you know, whoever's the loudest person in the room, uh, and to learn and respond and pivot. But what's the value of actually just putting them on a piece of paper, because again, this is not this, these are all good, positive things, right? When somebody reads these to you or tells you these are sticks it on the wall, of course. But unfortunately of course isn't always enough. >>No. And I think what's happened is some of these core principles originally from the agile manifesto in two decades ago, uh, the whole dev ops movement of the last decade of flow feedback and continue learning has been key. But a lot of organizations, especially the ones undergoing digital transformations have actually gone a very different way, right? The way that they measure value, uh, in technology and innovation is through costs for many organizations. The way that they actually are looking at that they're moving to cloud is actually as a reduction in cost. Whereas the right way of looking at moving to cloud is how much more quickly can we get to the value to the customer? How quickly can we learn from that? And how quickly can we drive the next business outcome? So really the key thing is, is to move away from those old ways of doing things of funding projects and cost centers, to actually funding and investing in outcomes and measuring outcomes through these flow metrics, which in the end are your fast feedback and how quickly you're innovating for your customer. >>So these things do seem very obvious when you look at them. But the key thing is what you need to stop doing to focus on these. You need to actually have accurate realtime data of how much value you fund to the customer every week, every month, every quarter. And if you don't have that, your decisions are not driven on data. If you don't know what your bottleneck is. And this is something that in decades of manufacturing, a car manufacturers, other manufacturers, master, they always know where the bottom back in their production processes. You ask a random CIO when a global 500 company where their bottleneck is, and you won't get a clear answer because there's not that level of understanding. So have to actually follow these principles. You need to know exactly where you fall. And I guess because that's, what's making your developers miserable and frustrated, then having them context, which I'm trash. So the approach here is important and we have to stop doing these other things, >>Right? There's so much there to unpack. I love it. You know, especially the cloud conversation because so many people look at it wrong as, as, as a cost saving a device, as opposed to an innovation driver and they get stuck, they get stuck in the literal. And I, you know, I think at the same thing, always about Moore's law, right? You know, there's a lot of interesting real tech around Moore's law and the increasing power of microprocessors, but the real power, I think in Moore's laws is the attitudinal change in terms of working in a world where you know that you've got all this power and what you build and design. I think it's funny to your, your comment on the flow and the bottleneck, right? Cause, cause we know manufacturing, as soon as you fix one bottleneck, you move to your next one, right? You always move to your next point of failure. So if you're not fixing those things, you know, you're not, you're not increasing that speed down the line, unless you can identify where that bottleneck is or no matter how many improvements you make to the rest of the process, it's still going to get hung up on that one spot. >>That's exactly it. And you also make it sound so simple, but again, if you don't have the data driven visibility of where the bottom line is, and these bottlenecks are adjusted to say, it's just whack-a-mole right. So we need to understand is the bottleneck because our security reviews are taking too long and stopping us from getting value for the customer. If it's that automate that process. And then you move on to the next bottleneck, which might actually be that deploying yourself into the cloud was taking too long. But if you don't take that approach of going flow first, rather than again, that sort of cost reduction. First, you have to think of that approach of customer centricity and you only focused on optimizing costs. Your costs will increase and your flow will slow down. And this is just one of these fascinating things. Whereas if you focus on getting back to the customer and reducing your cycles on getting value, your flow time from six months to two weeks or two, one week or two event, as we see with, with tech giants, you actually can both lower your costs and get much more value that for us to get that learning loop going. >>So I think I've seen all of these cloud deployments and one of the things that's happened that delivered almost no value because there was such big bottlenecks upfront in the process and actually the hosting and the AP testing was not even possible with all of those inefficiencies. So that's why going float for us rather than costs where we started our project versus silky. >>I love that. And, and, and, and it, it begs repeating to that right within the subscription economy, you know, you're on the hook to deliver value every single month because they're paying you every single month. So if you're not on top of how you're delivering value, you're going to get sideways because it's not like, you know, they pay a big down payment and a small maintenance fee every month, but once you're in a subscription relationship, you know, you have to constantly be delivering value and upgrading that value because you're constantly taking money from the customer. So it's such a different kind of relationship than kind of the classic, you know, big bang with a maintenance agreement on the back end really important. Yeah. >>And I think in terms of industry shifts that that's it that's, what's catalyzed. This interesting shift is in this SAS and subscription economy. If you're not delivering more and more value to your customers, someone else's and they're winning the business, not you. So one way we know is to delight our customers with great user experiences. Well, that really is based on how many features you delivered or how much, how big, how many quality improvements or scalar performance improvements you delivered. So the problem is, and this is what the business manifesto, as well as the full frame of touch on is if you can't measure how much value you delivered to a customer, what are you measuring? You just backed again, measuring costs and that's not a measure of value. So we have to shift quickly away from measuring cost to measuring value, to survive in the subscription economy. >>We could go for days and days and days. I want to shift gears a little bit into data and, and, and a data driven, um, decision making a data driven organization cause right day has been talked about for a long time, the huge big data meme with, with Hadoop over, over several years and, and data warehouses and data lakes and data oceans and data swamps, and can go on and on and on. It's not that easy to do, right? And at the same time, the proliferation of data is growing exponentially. We're just around the corner from, from IOT and 5g. So now the accumulation of data at machine scale, again, this is going to overwhelm and one of the really interesting principles, uh, that I wanted to call out and get your take right, is today's organizations generate more data than humans can process. So informed decisions must be augmented by machine learning and artificial intelligence. I wonder if you can, again, you've got some great historical perspective, um, reflect on how hard it is to get the right data, to get the data in the right context, and then to deliver it to the decision makers and then trust the decision makers to actually make the data and move that down. You know, it's kind of this democratization process into more and more people and more and more frontline jobs making more and more of these little decisions every day. >>Yeah. I definitely think the front parts of what you said are where the promises of big data have completely fallen on their face into the swamps as, as you mentioned, because if you don't have the data in the right format, you've cannot connect collected at the right way. You want that way, the right way you can't use human or machine learning effectively. And there've been the number of data warehouses in a typical enterprise organization. And the sheer investment is tremendous, but the amount of intelligence being extracted from those is, is, is a very big problem. So the key thing that I've noticed is that if you can model your value streams, so yes, you understand how you're innovating, how you're measuring the delivery of value and how long that takes. What is your time to value these metrics like full time? You can actually use both the intelligence that you've got around the table and push that down as well, as far as getting to the organization, but you can actually start using that those models to understand and find patterns and detect bottlenecks that might be surprising, right? >>Well, you can detect interesting bottlenecks when you shift to work from home. We detected all sorts of interesting bottlenecks in our own organization that were not intuitive to me that had to do with, you know, more senior people being overloaded and creating bottlenecks where they didn't exist. Whereas we thought we were actually an organization that was very good at working from home because of our open source roots. So that data is highly complex. Software value streams are extremely complicated. And the only way to really get the proper analyst and data is to model it properly and then to leverage these machine learning and AI techniques that we have. But that front part of what you said is where organizations are just extremely immature in what I've seen, where they've got data from all their tools, but not modeled in the right way. Right, right. >>Right. Well, all right. So before I let you go, you know, let's say you get a business leader, he buys in, he reads the manifesto, he signs on the dotted line and he says, Mick, how do I get started? I want to be more aligned with, with the development teams. You know, I'm in a very competitive space. We need to be putting out new software features and engaging with our customers. I want to be more data-driven how do I get started? Well, you know, what's the biggest inhibitor for most people to get started and get some early wins, which we know is always the key to success in any kind of a new initiative. >>Right? So I think you can reach out to us through the website, uh, there's the manifesto, but the key thing is just to get you set up it's to get started and to get the key wins. So take a probably value stream that's mission critical. It could be your new mobile and web experiences or, or part of your cloud modernization platform or your analytics pipeline, but take that and actually apply these principles to it and measure the end to end flow of value. Make sure you have a value metric that everyone is on the same page on the people, on the development teams, the people in leadership all the way up to the CEO. And one of the, what I encourage you to start is actually that content flow time, right? That is the number one metric. That is how you measure it, whether you're getting the benefit of your cloud modernization, that is the one metric that Adrian Cockcroft. When the people I respect tremendously put into his cloud for CEOs, the metric, the one, the one way to measure innovation. So basically take these principles, deploy them on one product value stream, measure, sentiment, flow time, and then you'll actually be well on your path to transforming and to applying the concepts of agile and dev ops all the way to, to the business, to the way >>You're offering model. >>Well, Mick really great tips, really fun to catch up. I look forward to a time when we can actually sit across the table and, and get into this. Cause I just, I just love the perspective and, you know, you're very fortunate to have that foundational, that foundational base coming from Xerox park and they get, you know, it's, it's a very magical place with a magical history. So to, to incorporate that into, continue to spread that well, uh, you know, good for you through the book and through your company. So thanks for sharing your insight with us today. >>Thanks so much for having me, Jeff. >>All right. And go to the biz ops manifesto.org, read it, check it out. If you want to sign it, sign it. They'd love to have you do it. Stay with us for continuing coverage of the unveiling of the business manifesto on the cube. I'm Jeff. Rick. Thanks for watching. See you next time >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of biz ops manifesto unveiled brought to you by biz ops coalition. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the cube come due from our Palo Alto studios today for a big, big reveal. We're excited to be here. It's the biz ops manifesto unveiling a thing's been in the works for awhile and we're excited to have our next guest. One of the, really the powers behind this whole effort. And he's joining us from Boston it's surge, Lucio, the vice president, and general manager enterprise software division at Broadcom surge. Great to see you. >>Hi, good to see you, Jeff. Glad to be here. >>So you've been in this business for a very long time. You've seen a lot of changes in technology. What is the biz ops manifesto? What is this coalition all about? Why do we need this today and in 2020? >>Yeah. So, so I've been in this business for close to 25 years, right? So about 20 years ago, the agile manifesto was created. And the goal of the agile manifesto was really to address the uncertainty around software development and the inability to predict the efforts to build software. And, uh, if you, if you roll that kind of 20 years later, and if you look at the current state of the industry, uh, the product, the project management Institute, estimates that we're wasting about a million dollars, every 20 seconds in digital transformation initiatives that do not deliver on business results. In fact, we were recently served a third of the, uh, a number of executives in partnership with Harvard business review and 77% of those executives think that one of the key challenges that they have is really at the collaboration between business and it, and that that's been kind of a case for, uh, almost 20 years now. >>Um, so the, the, the key challenge we're faced with is really that we need a new approach and many of the players in the industry, including ourselves, I've been using different terms, right? Some are being, are talking about value stream management. Some are talking about software delivery management. If you look at the site, reliability engineering movement, in many ways, it embodies a lot of these kind of concepts and principles. So we believed that it became really imperative for us to crystallize around, could have one concept. And so in many ways, the, uh, the BizOps concept and the business manifesto are bringing together a number of ideas, which have been emerging in the last five years or so, and, and defining the key values and principles to finally help these organizations truly transform and become digital businesses. And so the hope is that by joining our forces and defining public key principles and values, we can help the industry, uh, not just, uh, by, you know, providing them with support, but also, uh, tools and consulting that is required for them to truly achieve the kind of transformation that everybody's seeking. >>Right, right. So COVID now we're six months into it, approximately seven months into it. Um, a lot of pain, a lot of bad stuff still happening. We've got a ways to go, but one of the things that on the positive side, right, and you've seen all the memes and social media is, is a driver of digital transformation and a driver of change. Cause we had this light switch moment in the middle of March and there was no more planning. There was no more conversation. You've suddenly got remote workforces, everybody's working from home and you got to go, right. So the reliance on these tools increases dramatically, but I'm curious, you know, kind of short of, of the beginnings of this effort in short of kind of COVID, which, you know, came along unexpectedly. I mean, what were those inhibitors because we've been making software for a very long time, right? The software development community has, has adopted kind of rapid change and, and iterative, uh, delivery and, and sprints, what was holding back the connection with the business side to make sure that those investments were properly aligned with outcomes. >>Well, so, so you have to understand that it is, is kind of a its own silos. And traditionally it has been treated as a cost center within large organizations and not as a value center. And so as a result could have a traditional dynamic between it and the business is basically one of a kind of supplier up to kind of a business. Um, and you know, if you, if you go back to, uh, I think you'll unmask a few years ago, um, basically at this concept of the machines to build the machines and you went as far as saying that, uh, the machines or the production line is actually the product. So, um, meaning that the core of the innovation is really about, uh, building, could it be engine to deliver on the value? And so in many ways, you know, we have missed on this shift from, um, kind of it becoming this kind of value center within the enterprises. >>And, and he talks about culture. Now, culture is a, is a sum total of beavers. And the reality is that if you look at it, especially in the last decade, uh, we've agile with dev ops with, um, I bring infrastructures, uh, it's, it's way more volatile today than it was 10 years ago. And so the, when you start to look at the velocity of the data, the volume of data, the variety of data to analyze this system, um, it's, it's very challenging for it to actually even understand and optimize its own processes, let alone, um, to actually include business as sort of an integral part of kind of a delivery chain. And so it's both kind of a combination of, of culture, um, which is required as well as tools, right? To be able to start to bring together all these data together, and then given the volume variety of philosophy of the data, uh, we have to apply some core technologies, which have only really, truly emerged in the last five to 10 years around machine learning and analytics. And so it's really kind of a combination of those freaks, which are coming together today to really help organizations kind of get to the next level. Right, >>Right. So let's talk about the manifesto. Let's talk about, uh, the coalition, uh, the BizOps coalition. I just liked that you put down these really simple, you know, kind of straightforward core values. You guys have four core values that you're highlighting, you know, business outcomes, over individual projects and outputs, trust, and collaboration, oversight, load teams, and organizations, data driven decisions, what you just talked about, uh, you know, over opinions and judgment and learned, respond and pivot. I mean, surgery sounds like pretty basic stuff, right? I mean, aren't, isn't everyone working to these values already. And I think he touched on it on culture, right? Trust and collaboration, data driven decisions. I mean, these are fundamental ways that people must run their business today, or the person that's across the street, that's doing it. It's going to knock them out right off their blog. >>Yeah. So that's very true. But, uh, so I'll, I'll mention in our survey, we did, uh, I think about six months ago and it was in partnership with, uh, with, uh, an industry analyst and we serve at a, again, a number of it executives to understand how many we're tracking business outcomes I'm going to do with the software executives. It executives we're tracking business outcomes. And the, there were less than 15% of these executives were actually tracking the outcomes of a software delivery. And you see that every day. Right? So in my own teams, for instance, we've been adopting a lot of these core principles in the last year or so, and we've uncovered that 16% of our resources were basically aligned around initiatives, which are not strategic for us. Um, I take, you know, another example, for instance, one of our customers in the, uh, in the airline industry and Harvard, for instance, that a number of, uh, um, that they had software issues that led to people searching for flights and not returning any kind of availability. >>And yet, um, you know, the, it teams, whether it's operations, software environments were completely oblivious to that because they were completely blindsided to it. And so the connectivity between kind of the inwards metrics that RT is using, whether it's database time, cycle time, or whatever metric we use in it are typically completely divorced from the business metrics. And so at its core, it's really about starting to align the business metrics with what the, the software delivery chain, right? This, uh, the system, which is really a core differentiator for these organizations. It's about connecting those two things and, and starting to, um, infuse some of the agile culture and principles. Um, that's emerged from the software side into the business side. Um, of course the lean movement and other movements have started to change some of these dynamic on the, on the business side. And so I think this, this is the moment where we are starting to see kind of the imperative to transform. Now, you know, Covina obviously has been a key driver for that. The, um, the technology is right to start to be able to weave data together and really kind of, uh, also the cultural shifts, uh, Prue agile through dev ops through, uh, the SRE movement, uh frulein um, business transformation, all these things are coming together and that are really creating kind of the conditions for the BizOps manifesto to exist. >>So, uh, Clayton Christianson, great, uh, Harvard professor innovator's dilemma might still my all time favorite business books, you know, talks about how difficult it is for incumbents to react to, to disruptive change, right? Because they're always working on incremental change because that's what their customers are asking for. And there's a good ROI when you talk about, you know, companies not measuring the right thing. I mean, clearly it has some portion of their budget that has to go to keeping the lights on, right. That that's always the case, but hopefully that's an, an ever decreasing percentage of their total activity. So, you know, what should people be measuring? I mean, what are kind of the new metrics, um, in, in biz ops that drive people to be looking at the right things, measuring the right things and subsequently making the right decisions, investment decisions on whether they should do, you know, move project a along or project B. >>So there, there are only two things, right? So, so I think what you're talking about is portfolio management, investment management, right. And, um, which, which is a key challenge, right? Um, in my own experience, right? Uh, driving strategy or a large scale kind of software organization for years, um, it's very difficult to even get kind of a base data as to who is doing what, uh, um, I mean, some of our largest customers we're engaged with right now are simply trying to get a very simple answer, which is how many people do I have and that specific initiative at any point in time, and just tracking that information is extremely difficult. So, and again, back to a product project management Institute, um, there, they have estimated that on average, it organizations have anywhere between 10 to 20% of their resources focused on initiatives, which are not strategically aligned. >>So, so that's one dimensional portfolio management. I think the key aspect though, that we are, we're really keen on is really around kind of the alignment of a business metrics to the it metrics. Um, so I'll use kind of two simple examples, right? And my background is around quality and I've always believed that the fitness for purpose is really kind of a key, um, uh, philosophy if you will. And so if you start to think about quality as fitness for purpose, you start to look at it from a customer point of view, right. And fitness for purpose for a core banking application or mobile application are different, right? So the definition of a business value that you're trying to achieve is different. Um, and so the, and yeah, if you look at our, it, operations are operating there, we're using kind of a same type of, uh, kind of inward metrics, uh, like a database off time or a cycle time, or what is my point of velocity, right? >>And so the challenge really is this inward facing metrics that it is using, which are divorced from ultimately the outcome. And so, you know, if I'm, if I'm trying to build a poor banking application, my core metric is likely going to be uptight, right? If I'm trying to build a mobile application or maybe your social, a mobile app, it's probably going to be engagement. And so what you want is for everybody across it, to look at these metric and what are the metrics within the software delivery chain, which ultimately contribute to that business metric. And some cases cycle time may be completely irrelevant, right? Again, my core banking app, maybe I don't care about cycle time. And so it's really about aligning those metrics and be able to start to, um, Charles you mentioned, uh, around the, the, um, uh, around the disruption that we see is, or the investors is the dilemma now is really around the fact that many it organizations are essentially applying the same approaches of, for innovation, like for basically scrap work, then they would apply to kind of over more traditional projects. And so, you know, there's been a lot of talk about two-speed it, and yes, it exists, but in reality are really organizations, um, truly differentiating, um, all of the operate, their, their projects and products based on the outcomes that they're trying to achieve. And this is really where BizOps is trying to affect. >>I love that, you know, again, it doesn't seem like brain surgery, but focus on the outcomes, right. And it's horses for courses, as you said, this project, you know, what you're measuring and how you define success, isn't necessarily the same as, as on this other project. So let's talk about some of the principles we talked about the values, but, you know, I think it's interesting that, that, that the BizOps coalition, you know, just basically took the time to write these things down and they don't seem all that super insightful, but I guess you just got to get them down and have them on paper and have them in front of your face. But I want to talk about, you know, one of the key ones, which you just talked about, which is changing requirements, right. And working in a dynamic situation, which is really what's driven, you know, this, the software to change in software development, because, you know, if you're in a game app and your competitor comes out with a new blue sword, you got to come out with a new blue sword. >>So whether you had that on your Kanban wall or not. So it's, it's really this embracing of the speed of change and, and, and, and making that, you know, the rule, not the exception. I think that's a phenomenal one. And the other one you talked about is data, right? And that today's organizations generate more data than humans can process. So informed decisions must be generated by machine learning and AI, and, you know, in the, the big data thing with Hadoop, you know, started years ago, but we are seeing more and more that people are finally figuring it out, that it's not just big data, and it's not even generic machine learning or artificial intelligence, but it's applying those particular data sets and that particular types of algorithms to a specific problem, to your point, to try to actually reach an objective, whether that's, you know, increasing the, your average ticket or, you know, increasing your checkout rate with, with, with shopping carts that don't get left behind in these types of things. So it's a really different way to think about the world in the good old days, probably when you got started, when we had big, giant, you know, MRDs and PRDs and sat down and coded for two years and came out with a product release and hopefully not too many patches subsequently to that. >>It's interesting. Right. Um, again, back to one of these surveys that we did with, uh, with about 600, the ITA executives, and, uh, and, and we, we purposely designed those questions to be pretty open. Um, and, and one of them was really wrong requirements and, uh, and it was really a wrong, uh, kind of what do you, what is the best approach? What is your preferred approach towards requirements? And if I were to remember correctly, over 80% of the it executives set that the best approach they'll prefer to approach these core requirements to be completely defined before software development starts, let me pause there we're 20 years after the agile manifesto, right? And for 80% of these idea executives to basically claim that the best approach is for requirements to be fully baked before salt, before software development starts, basically shows that we still have a very major issue. >>And again, our hypothesis in working with many organizations is that the key challenge is really the boundary between business and it, which is still very much contract based. If you look at the business side, they basically are expecting for it deliver on time on budget, right. But what is the incentive for it to actually delivering on the business outcomes, right? How often is it measured on the business outcomes and not on an SLA or on a budget type criteria? And so that's really the fundamental shift that we need to, we really need to drive up as an industry. Um, and you know, we, we talk about kind of this, this imperative for organizations to operate that's one, and back to the, the, um, you know, various Doris dilemna the key difference between these larger organization is, is really kind of, uh, if you look at the amount of capital investment that they can put into pretty much anything, why are they losing compared to, um, you know, startups? What, why is it that, uh, more than 40% of, uh, personal loans today or issued not by your traditional brick and mortar banks, but by, um, startups? Well, the reason, yes, it's the traditional culture of doing incremental changes and not disrupting ourselves, which Christiansen covered the length, but it's also the inability to really fundamentally change kind of a dynamic picture. We can business it and, and, and partner right. To, to deliver on a specific business outcome. >>All right. I love that. That's a great, that's a great summary. And in fact, getting ready for this interview, I saw you mentioning another thing where, you know, the, the problem with the agile development is that you're actually now getting more silos. Cause you have all these autonomous people working, you know, kind of independently. So it's even a harder challenge for, for the business leaders to, to, as you said, to know, what's actually going on, but, but certainly I w I want to close, um, and talk about the coalition. Um, so clearly these are all great concepts. These are concepts you want to apply to your business every day. Why the coalition, why, you know, take these concepts out to a broader audience, including either your, your competition and the broader industry to say, Hey, we, as a group need to put a stamp of approval on these concepts, these values, these principles. >>So first I think we, we want, um, everybody to realize that we are all talking about the same things, the same concepts. I think we were all from our own different vantage point, realizing that things after change, and again, back to, you know, whether it's value stream management or site reliability engineering, or biz ops, we're all kind of using slightly different languages. Um, and so I think one of the important aspects of BizOps is for us, all of us, whether we're talking about, you know, consulting agile transformation experts, uh, whether we're talking about vendors, right, provides kind of tools and technologies or these large enterprises to transform for all of us to basically have kind of a reference that lets us speak around kind of, um, in a much more consistent way. The second aspect is for, to me is for, um, DS concepts to start to be embraced, not just by us or trying, or, you know, vendors, um, system integrators, consulting firms, educators, thought leaders, but also for some of our old customers to start to become evangelists of their own in the industry. >>So we, our, our objective with the coalition needs to be pretty, pretty broad. Um, and our hope is by, by starting to basically educate, um, our, our joint customers or partners, that we can start to really foster these behaviors and start to really change some of dynamics. So we're very pleased at if you look at, uh, some of the companies which have joined the, the, the, the manifesto. Um, so we have vendors such as desktop or advance, or, um, uh, PagerDuty for instance, or even planned view, uh, one of my direct competitors, um, but also thought leaders like Tom Davenport or, uh, or cap Gemini or, um, um, smaller firms like, uh, business agility, institutes, or agility elf. Um, and so our goal really is to start to bring together, uh, fall years, people would have been LP, large organizations, do digital transformation vendors. We're providing the technologies that many of these organizations use to deliver on this digital preservation and for all of us to start to provide the kind of, uh, education support and tools that the industry needs. Yeah, >>That's great surge. And, uh, you know, congratulations to you and the team. I know this has been going on for a while, putting all this together, getting people to sign onto the manifesto, putting the coalition together, and finally today getting to unveil it to the world in, in a little bit more of a public, uh, opportunity. So again, you know, really good values, really simple principles, something that, that, uh, shouldn't have to be written down, but it's nice cause it is, and now you can print it out and stick it on your wall. So thank you for, uh, for sharing this story and again, congrats to you and the team. >>Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it. >>Oh, my pleasure. Alrighty, surge. If you want to learn more about the BizOps manifest to go to biz ops manifesto.org, read it and you can sign it and you can stay here for more coverage. I'm the cube of the biz ops manifesto unveiled. Thanks for watching. See you next >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of this ops manifesto unveiled brought to you by bill. >>Hey, welcome back, everybody Jeffrey here with the cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the biz ops manifesto unveiling. It's been in the works for awhile, but today's the day that it actually kind of come out to the, to the public. And we're excited to have a real industry luminary here to talk about what's going on, why this is important and share his perspective. And we're happy to have from Cape Cod, I believe is Tom Davenport. He is a distinguished author and professor at Babson college. We could go on, he's got a lot of great titles and, and really illuminary in the area of big data and analytics Thomas. Great to see you. >>Thanks Jeff. Happy to be here with you. >>Great. So let's just jump into it, you know, and getting ready for this. I came across your LinkedIn posts. I think you did earlier this summer in June and right off the bat, the first sentence just grabbed my attention. I'm always interested in new attempts to address longterm issues, uh, in how technology works within businesses, biz ops. What did you see in biz ops, uh, that, that kind of addresses one of these really big longterm problems? >>Well, yeah, but the longterm problem is that we've had a poor connection between business people and it people between business objectives and the, it solutions that address them. This has been going on, I think since the beginning of information technology and sadly it hasn't gone away. And so biz ops is a new attempt to deal with that issue with, you know, a new framework, eventually a broad set of solutions that increase the likelihood that we'll actually solve a business problem with an it capability. >>Right. You know, it's interesting to compare it with like dev ops, which I think a lot of people are probably familiar with, which was, you know, built around, uh, agile software development and a theory that we want to embrace change that that changes. Okay. Uh, and we want to be able to iterate quickly and incorporate that. And that's been happening in the software world for, for 20 plus years. What's taken so long to get that to the business side, because as the pace of change has changed on the software side, you know, that's a strategic issue in terms of execution on the business side that they need now to change priorities. And, you know, there's no PRDs and MRDs and big, giant strategic plans that sit on the shelf for five years. That's just not the way business works anymore. It took a long time to get here. >>Yeah, it did. And you know, there have been previous attempts to make a better connection between business and it, there was the so called alignment framework that a couple of friends of mine from Boston university developed, I think more than 20 years ago, but you know, now we have better technology for creating that linkage. And the, you know, the idea of kind of ops oriented frameworks is pretty pervasive now. So I think it's time for another serious attempt at it. Right. >>And do you think doing it this way, right. With the, with the biz ops coalition, you know, getting a collection of, of, of kind of likeminded individuals and companies together, and actually even having a manifesto, which we're making this declarative statement of, of principles and values, you think that's what it takes to kind of drive this kind of beyond the experiment and actually, you know, get it done and really start to see some results in, in, uh, in production in the field. >>I think certainly, um, no one vendor organization can pull this off single handedly. It does require a number of organizations collaborating and working together. So I think our coalition is a good idea and a manifesto is just a good way to kind of lay out what you see as the key principles of the idea. And that makes it much easier for everybody to understand and act on. >>I think it's just, it's really interesting having, you know, having them written down on paper and having it just be so clearly articulated both in terms of the, of the values as well as, as the, uh, the principles and the values, you know, business outcomes matter trust and collaboration, data driven decisions, which is the number three or four, and then learn, respond and pivot. It doesn't seem like those should have to be spelled out so clearly, but, but obviously it helps to have them there. You can stick them on the wall and kind of remember what your priorities are, but you're the data guy. You're the analytics guy, uh, and a big piece of this is data and analytics and moving to data-driven decisions. And principle number seven says, you know, today's organizations generate more data than humans can process and informed decisions can be augmented by machine learning and artificial intelligence right up your alley. You know, you've talked a number of times on kind of the mini stages of analytics. Um, and how has that's evolved over, over time, you know, as you think of analytics and machine learning, driving decisions beyond supporting decisions, but actually starting to make decisions in machine time. What's that, what's that thing for you? What does that make you, you know, start to think, wow, this is, this is going to be pretty significant. >>Yeah. Well, you know, this has been a longterm interest of mine. Um, the last generation of AI, I was very interested in expert systems. And then, um, I think, uh, more than 10 years ago, I wrote an article about automated decision-making using what was available then, which was rule-based approaches. Um, but you know, this addresses an issue that we've always had with analytics and AI. Um, you know, we, we tended to refer to those things as providing decision support. The problem is that if the decision maker didn't want their support, didn't want to use them in order to make a decision, they didn't provide any value. And so the nice thing about automating decisions, um, with now contemporary AI tools is that we can ensure that data and analytics get brought into the decision without any possible disconnection. Now, I think humans still have something to add here, and we often will need to examine how that decision is being made and maybe even have the ability to override it. But in general, I think at least for, you know, repetitive tactical decisions, um, involving a lot of data, we want most of those, I think to be at least recommended if not totally made by an algorithm or an AI based system, and that I believe would add to the quality and the precision and the accuracy of decisions and in most organizations, >>No, I think, I think you just answered my next question before I, before Hey, asked it, you know, we had dr. Robert Gates on a former secretary of defense on a few years back, and we were talking about machines and machines making decisions. And he said at that time, you know, the only weapon systems, uh, that actually had an automated trigger on it were on the North Korea and South Korea border. Um, everything else, as you said, had to go through a sub person before the final decision was made. And my question is, you know, what are kind of the attributes of the decision that enable us to more easily automated? And then how do you see that kind of morphing over time, both as the data to support that as well as our comfort level, um, enables us to turn more and more actual decisions over to the machine? >>Well, yeah, it's suggested we need, um, data and, um, the data that we have to kind of train our models has to be high quality and current. And we, we need to know the outcomes of that data. You know, um, most machine learning models, at least in business are supervised. And that means we need to have labeled outcomes in the, in the training data. But I, you know, um, the pandemic that we're living through is a good illustration of the fact that, that the data also have to be reflective of current reality. And, you know, one of the things that we're finding out quite frequently these days is that, um, the data that we have do not reflect, you know, what it's like to do business in a pandemic. Um, I wrote a little piece about this recently with Jeff cam at wake forest university, we called it data science quarantined, and we interviewed with somebody who said, you know, it's amazing what eight weeks of zeros will do to your demand forecast. We just don't really know what happens in a pandemic. Um, our models maybe have to be put on the shelf for a little while and until we can develop some new ones or we can get some other guidelines into making decisions. So I think that's one of the key things with automated decision making. We have to make sure that the data from the past and that's all we have of course, is a good guide to, you know, what's happening in the present and the future as far as we understand it. Yeah. >>I used to joke when we started this calendar year 2020, it was finally the year that we know everything with the benefit of hindsight, but it turned out 20, 20 a year. We found out we actually know nothing and everything thought we knew, but I wanna, I wanna follow up on that because you know, it did suddenly change everything, right? We got this light switch moment. Everybody's working from home now we're many, many months into it, and it's going to continue for a while. I saw your interview with Bernard Marr and you had a really interesting comment that now we have to deal with this change. We don't have a lot of data and you talked about hold fold or double down. And, and I can't think of a more, you know, kind of appropriate metaphor for driving the value of the BizOps when now your whole portfolio strategy, um, these to really be questioned and, and, you know, you have to be really, uh, well, uh, executing on what you are, holding, what you're folding and what you're doubling down with this completely new environment. >>Well, yeah, and I hope I did this in the interview. I would like to say that I came up with that term, but it actually came from a friend of mine. Who's a senior executive at Genpact. And, um, I, um, used it mostly to talk about AI and AI applications, but I think you could, you could use it much more broadly to talk about your entire sort of portfolio of digital projects. You need to think about, well, um, given some constraints on resources and a difficult economy for a while, which of our projects do we want to keep going on pretty much the way we were and which ones are not that necessary anymore? You see a lot of that in AI, because we had so many pilots, somebody told me, you know, we've got more pilots around here than O'Hare airport and AI. Um, and then, but the ones that involve double down they're even more important to you. They are, you know, a lot of organizations have found this out in the pandemic, on digital projects. It's more and more important for customers to be able to interact with you, um, digitally. And so you certainly wouldn't want to, um, cancel those projects or put them on hold. So you double down on them and get them done faster and better. >>Right, right. Uh, another, another thing that came up in my research that you quoted, um, was, was from Jeff Bezos, talking about the great bulk of what we do is quietly, but meaningfully improving core operations. You know, I think that is so core to this concept of not AI and machine learning and kind of the general sense, which, which gets way too much buzz, but really applied right. Applied to a specific problem. And that's where you start to see the value. And, you know, the, the BizOps, uh, manifesto is, is, is calling it out in this particular process. But I'd love to get your perspective as you know, you speak generally about this topic all the time, but how people should really be thinking about where are the applications where I can apply this technology to get direct business value. >>Yeah, well, you know, even talking about automated decisions, um, uh, the kind of once in a lifetime decisions, uh, the ones that, um, ag Lafley, the former CEO of Procter and gamble used to call the big swing decisions. You only get a few of those. He said in your tenure as CEO, those are probably not going to be the ones that you're automating in part because, um, you don't have much data about them. You're only making them a few times and in part, because, um, they really require that big picture thinking and the ability to kind of anticipate the future, that the best human decision makers, um, have. Um, but, um, in general, I think where they are, the projects that are working well are, you know, when I call the low hanging fruit ones, the, some people even report to it referred to it as boring AI. >>So, you know, sucking data out of a contract in order to compare it to a bill of lading for what arrived at your supply chain companies can save or make a lot of money with that kind of comparison. It's not the most exciting thing, but AI, as you suggested is really good at those narrow kinds of tasks. It's not so good at the, at the really big moonshots, like curing cancer or, you know, figuring out well what's the best stock or bond under all circumstances or even autonomous vehicles. Um, we, we made some great progress in that area, but everybody seems to agree that they're not going to be perfect for quite a while. And we really don't want to be driving around on them very much unless they're, you know, good and all kinds of weather and with all kinds of pedestrian traffic and you know, that sort of thing, right? That's funny you bring up contract management. >>I had a buddy years ago, they had a startup around contract management and was like, and this was way before we had the compute power today and cloud proliferation. I said, you know, how, how can you possibly build software around contract management? It's language, it's legal, ease. It's very specific. And he's like, Jeff, we just need to know where's the contract. And when does it expire? And who's the signatory. And he built a business on those, you know, very simple little facts that weren't being covered because their contracts contractor in people's drawers and files and homes, and Lord only knows. So it's really interesting, as you said, these kind of low hanging fruit opportunities where you can extract a lot of business value without trying to, you know, boil the ocean. >>Yeah. I mean, if you're Amazon, um, uh, Jeff Bezos thinks it's important to have some kind of billion dollar projects. And he even says it's important to have a billion dollar failure or two every year. But I think most organizations probably are better off being a little less aggressive and, you know, sticking to, um, what AI has been doing for a long time, which is, you know, making smarter decisions based on, based on data. >>Right? So Tom, I want to shift gears one more time before, before we let you go on on kind of a new topic for you, not really new, but you know, not, not a, the vast majority of, of your publications and that's the new way to work, you know, as, as the pandemic hit in mid March, right. And we had this light switch moment, everybody had to work from home and it was, you know, kind of crisis and get everybody set up. Well, you know, now we're five months, six months, seven months. A number of companies have said that people are not going to be going back to work for a while. And so we're going to continue on this for a while. And then even when it's not what it is now, it's not going to be what it was before. So, you know, I wonder, and I know you, you, uh, you teased, you're working on a new book, you know, some of your thoughts on, you know, kind of this new way to work and, and the human factors in this new, this new kind of reality that we're kind of evolving into, I guess. >>Yeah. I missed was an interest of mine. I think, um, back in the nineties, I wrote an article called, um, a coauthored, an article called two cheers for the virtual office. And, you know, it was just starting to emerge. Then some people were very excited about it. Some people were skeptical and, uh, we said two cheers rather than three cheers because clearly there's some shortcomings. And, you know, I keep seeing these pop up. It's great that we can work from our homes. It's great that we can accomplish most of what we need to do with a digital interface, but, um, you know, things like innovation and creativity and certainly, um, uh, a good, um, happy social life kind of requires some face to face contact every now and then. And so I, you know, I think we'll go back to an environment where there is some of that. >>Um, we'll have, um, times when people convene in one place so they can get to know each other face to face and learn from each other that way. And most of the time, I think it's a huge waste of people's time to commute into the office every day and to jump on airplanes, to, to, um, give every little, um, uh, sales call or give every little presentation. Uh, we just have to really narrow down what are the circumstances where face to face contact really matters. And when can we get by with, with digital, you know, I think one of the things in my current work I'm finding is that even when you have AI based decision making, you really need a good platform in which that all takes place. So in addition to these virtual platforms, we need to develop platforms that kind of structure the workflow for us and tell us what we should be doing next, then make automated decisions when necessary. And I think that ultimately is a big part of biz ops as well. It's not just the intelligence of an AI system, but it's the flow of work that kind of keeps things moving smoothly throughout your organization. >>Yeah. I think such, such a huge opportunity as you just said, cause I forget the stats on how often we're interrupted with notifications between email texts, Slack, a sauna, Salesforce, the list goes on and on. So, you know, to put an AI layer between the person and all these systems that are begging for attention, and you've written a book on the attention economy, which is a whole nother topic, we'll say for another day, you know, it really begs, it really begs for some assistance because you know, you just can't get him picked, you know, every two minutes and really get quality work done. It's just not, it's just not realistic. And you know what? I don't think that's a feature that we're looking for. I agree. Totally. Alright, Tom. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation. I gotta dig into the library. It's very long. So I might start at the attention economy. I haven't read that one in to me. I think that's the fascinating thing in which we're living. So thank you for your time and, uh, great to see you. >>My pleasure, Jeff. Great to be here. >>All right. Take care. Alright. He's Tom I'm Jeff. You are watching the continuing coverage of the biz ops manifesto and Vale. Thanks for watching the cube. We'll see you next time.

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage, a BizOps manifesto unveiled brought to you by biz ops coalition. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the biz ops manifesto. Unveil. Something has been in the works for a little while. Today's the formal unveiling, and we're excited to have three of the core of founding members of the manifesto authors of the manifesto. If you will, uh, joining us again, we've had them all on individually. Now we're going to have a great power panel first up. We're gab Mitt, Kirsten returning he's the founder and CEO of Tasktop mic. Good to see you again. Where are you dialing in from? >>Great to see you again, Jeff I'm dialing from Vancouver, >>We're Canada, Vancouver, Canada. One of my favorite cities in the whole wide world. Also we've got Tom Davenport come in from across the country. He's a distinguished professor and author from Babson college, Tom. Great to see you. And I think you said you're at a fun, exotic place on the East coast >>Realm of Memphis shoe sits on Cape Cod. >>Great to see you again and also joining surge Lucio. He is the VP and general manager enterprise software division at Broadcom surge. Great to see you again, where are you coming in from? >>Uh, from Boston right next to kickoff. >>Terrific. So welcome back, everybody again. Congratulations on this day. I know it's, it's been a lot of work to get here for this unveil, but let's just jump into it. The biz ops manifesto, what was the initial reason to do this? And how did you decide to do it in a kind of a coalition, a way bringing together a group of people versus just making it an internal company, uh, initiative that, you know, you can do better stuff within your own company, surge, why don't we start with you? >>Yeah, so, so I think we were at a really critical juncture, right? Many, um, large enterprises are basically struggling with their digital transformation. Um, in fact, um, many recognize that, uh, the, the business side, it collaboration has been, uh, one of the major impediments, uh, to drive that kind of transformation. And if we look at the industry today, many people are, whether we're talking about vendors or, um, you know, system integrators, consulting firms are talking about the same kind of concepts, but using very different language. And so we believe that bringing all these different players together, um, as part of the coalition and formalizing, uh, basically the core principles and values in a BizOps manifesto, we can really start to F could have a much bigger movement where we can all talk about kind of the same concepts and we can really start to provide, could have a much better support for large organizations to transform. Uh, so whether it is technology or services or, um, we're training, I think that that's really the value of bringing all of these players together, right. >>And Nick to you, why did you get involved in this, in this effort? >>So Ben close and follow the agile movement since it started two decades ago with that manifesto. >>And I think we got a lot of improvement at the team level, and I think as satisfies noted, uh, we really need to improve at the business level. Every company is trying to become a software innovator, uh, trying to make sure that they can adapt quickly and the changing market economy and what everyone's dealing with in terms of needing to deliver the customer sooner. However, agile practices have really focused on these metrics, these measures and understanding processes that help teams be productive. Those things now need to be elevated to the business as a whole. And that just hasn't happened. Uh, organizations are actually failing because they're measuring activities and how they're becoming more agile, how teams are functioning, not how much quickly they're delivering value to the customer. So we need to now move past that. And that's exactly what the that's manifested provides. Right, >>Right, right. And Tom, to you, you've been covering tech for a very long time. You've been looking at really hard challenges and a lot of work around analytics and data and data evolution. So there's a definitely a data angle here. I wonder if you could kind of share your perspective of what you got excited to, uh, to sign onto this manifesto. >>Sure. Well, I have, you know, for the past 15 or 20 years, I've been focusing on data and analytics and AI, but before that I was a process management guy and a knowledge management guy. And in general, I think, you know, we've just kind of optimized that to narrow a level, whether you're talking about agile or dev ops or ML ops, any of these kinds of ops oriented movements, we're making individual project, um, performance and productivity better, but we're not changing the business, uh, effectively enough. And that's the thing that appealed to me about the biz ops idea that we're finally creating a closer connection between what we do with technology and how it changes the business and provides value to it. >>Great. Uh, surge back to you, right? I mean, people have been talking about digital transformation for a long time and it's been, you know, kind of trucking along and then covert hit and it was instant lights, which everyone's working from home. You've got a lot more reliance on your digital tools, digital communication, uh, both within your customer base and your partner base, but also then your employees when you're, if you could share how that really pushed this all along. Right? Because now suddenly the acceleration of digital transformation is higher. Even more importantly, you got much more critical decisions to make into what you do next. So kind of your portfolio management of projects has been elevated significantly when maybe revenues are down, uh, and you really have to, uh, to prioritize and get it right. >>Yeah. Maybe I'll just start by quoting Satina Nello basically recently said that they're speeding the two years of digital preservation just last two months in any many ways. That's true. Um, but, but yet when we look at large enterprises, they're >>Still struggling with the kind of a changes in culture that they really need to drive to be able to disrupt themselves. And not surprisingly, you know, when we look at certain parts of the industry, you know, we see some things which are very disturbing, right? So about 40% of the personal loans today, or being, uh, origin data it's by fintechs, uh, of a like of Sophie or, uh, or a lending club, right? Not to a traditional brick and mortar for BEC. And so the, well, there is kind of a much more of an appetite and it's a, it's more of a survival type of driver these days. Uh, the reality is that's in order for these large enterprises to truly transform and engage with this digital transformation, they need to start to really align the business. And it, you know, in many ways, uh, make covered that agile really emerged from the core desire to truly improve software predictability between which we've really missed is all that we, we start to aligning the software predictability to business predictability and to be able to have continual sleep continuous improvement and measurement of business outcomes. So by aligning kind of these, uh, kind of inward metrics, that's, it is typically being using to business outcomes. We think we can start to really ELP different stakeholders within the organization to collaborate. So I think there is more than ever. There's an imperative to act now. Um, and, and resolves, I think is kind of the right approach to drive that transformation. Right. >>I want to follow up on the culture comment, uh, with Utah, because you've talked before about kind of process flow and process flow throughout a whore and an organization. And, you know, we talk about people process and tech all the time. And I think the tech is the easy part compared to actually changing the people the way they think. And then the actual processes that they put in place. It's a much more difficult issue than just the tech issue to get this digital transformation in your organization. >>Yeah. You know, I've always found that the soft stuff about, you know, the culture of the behavior, the values is the hard stuff to change and more and more, we, we realized that to be successful with any kind of digital transformation you have to change people's behaviors and attitudes. Um, we haven't made as much progress in that area as we might have. I mean, I've done some surveys suggesting that, um, most organizations still don't have data-driven cultures. And in many cases there is a lower percentage of companies that say they have that then, um, did a few years ago. So we're kind of moving in the wrong direction, which means I think that we have to start explicitly addressing that, um, cultural, behavioral dimension and not just assuming that it will happen if we, if we build a system, >>If we build it, they won't necessarily come. Right. >>Right. So I want to go to, to you Nick cause you know, we're talking about workflows and flow, um, and, and you've written about flow both in terms of, um, you know, moving things along a process and trying to find bottlenecks, identify bottlenecks, which is now even more important again, when these decisions are much more critical. Cause you have a lot less, uh, wiggle room in tough times, but you also talked about flow from the culture side and the people side. So I wonder if you can just share your thoughts on, you know, using flow as a way to think about things, to get the answers better. >>Yeah, absolutely. And I'll refer back to what Tom has said. If you're optimized, you need to optimize your system. You need to optimize how you innovate and how you deliver value to the business and the customer. Now, what we've noticed in the data, since that we've learned from customers, value streams, enterprise organizations, value streams, is that when it's taking six months at the end to deliver that value with the flow is that slow. You've got a bunch of unhappy developers, unhappy customers when you're innovating house. So high performing organizations we can measure at antenna flow time and dates. All of a sudden that feedback loop, the satisfaction, your developers measurably, it goes up. So not only do you have people context, switching glass, you're delivering so much more value to customers at a lower cost because you've optimized for flow rather than optimizing for these, these other approximate tricks that we use, which is how efficient is my adult team. How quickly can we deploy software? Those are important, but they do not provide the value of agility of fast learning of adaptability to the business. And that's exactly what the biz ops manifesto pushes your organization to do. You need to put in place this new operating model that's based on flow on the delivery of business value and on bringing value to market much more quickly than you were before. Right. >>I love that. And I'm gonna back to you Tom, on that to follow up. Cause I think, I don't think people think enough about how they prioritize what they're optimizing for, because you know, if you're optimizing for a versus B, you know, you can have a very different product that, that you kick out. And, you know, my favorite example is with Clayton Christianson and innovator's dilemma talking about the three inch hard drive, if you optimize it for power, you know, is one thing, if you optimize it for vibration is another thing and sure enough, you know, they missed it on the poem because it was the, it was the game console, which, which drove that whole business. So when you're talking to customers and we think we hear it with cloud all the time, people optimizing for a cost efficiency, instead of thinking about it as an innovation tool, how do you help them kind of rethink and really, you know, force them to, to look at the, at the prioritization and make sure they're prioritizing on the right thing is make just that, what are you optimizing for? >>Oh yeah. Um, you have one of the most important aspects of any decision or attempt to resolve a problem in an organization is the framing process. And, um, you know, it's, it's a difficult aspect to have the decision to confirm it correctly in the first place. Um, there, it's not a technology issue. In many cases, it's largely a human issue, but if you frame >>That decision or that problem incorrectly to narrowly say, or you frame it as an either or situation where you could actually have some of both, um, it, it's very difficult for the, um, process to work out correctly. So in many cases, I think we need to think more at the beginning about how we bring this issue or this decision in the best way possible before we charge off and build a system to support it. You know, um, it's worth that extra time to think, think carefully about how the decision has been structured. Right, >>Sir, I want to go back to you and talk about the human factors because as we just discussed, you can put it in great technology, but if the culture doesn't adopt it and people don't feel good about it, you know, it's not going to be successful and that's going to reflect poorly on the technology, even if that had nothing to do with it. And you know, when you look at the, the, the, the core values, uh, of the Bezos manifesto, you know, a big one is trust and collaboration, you know, learn, respond, and pivot. Wonder if you can share your thoughts on, on trying to get that cultural shift, uh, so that you can have success with the people, or excuse me, with the technology in the process and helping customers, you know, take this more trustworthy and kind of proactive, uh, position. >>So I think, I think at the ground level, it truly starts with the realization that we're all different. We come from different backgrounds. Uh, oftentimes we tend to blame the data. It's not uncommon my experiments that we spend the first 30 minutes of any kind of one hour conversation to debate the validity of the data. Um, and so, um, one of the first kind of, uh, probably manifestations that we've had or revelations as we start to engage with our customers is spoke just exposing, uh, high-fidelity data sets to different stakeholders from their different lens. We start to enable these different stakeholders to not debate the data. That's really collaborate to find a solution. So in many ways, when, when, when we think about kind of the types of changes we're trying to, to truly affect around data driven decision making, he told about bringing the data in context and the context that is relevant and understandable for, for different stakeholders, whether we're talking about an operator or develop for a business analyst. >>So that's, that's the first thing. The second layer I think, is really to provide context to what people are doing in their specific silo. And so I think one of the best examples I have is if you start to be able to align business KPI, whether you are counting, you know, sales per hour, or the engagements of your users on your mobile applications, whatever it is, you can start to connect that PKI to business KPI, to the KPIs that developers might be looking at, whether it is all the number of defects or velocity or whatever over your metrics that you're used to, to actually track you start to be able to actually contextualize in what we are, the effecting, basically a metric of that that is really relevant. And then what we see is that this is a much more systematic way to approach the transformation than say, you know, some organizations kind of creating some of these new products or services or initiatives, um, to, to drive engagements, right? >>So if you look at zoom, for instance, zoom giving away a it service to, uh, to education, he's all about, I mean, there's obviously a marketing aspect in there, but it's, it's fundamentally about trying to drive also the engagement of their own teams. And because now they're doing something for good and many organizations are trying to do that, but you only can do this kind of things in the limited way. And so you really want to start to rethink how you connect to, everybody's kind of a business objective fruit data, and now you start to get people to stare at the same data from their own lens and collaborate on all the data. Right, >>Right. That's a good, uh, Tom, I want to go back to you. You've been studying it for a long time, writing lots of books and getting into it. Um, why now, you know, what, why, why now are we finally aligning business objectives with, with it objectives? You know, why didn't this happen before? And, you know, what are the factors that are making now the time for this, this, this move with the, uh, with the biz ops? >>Well, and much of a past, it was sort of a back office related activity. And, you know, it was important for, um, uh, producing your paychecks and, uh, capturing the customer orders, but the business wasn't built around it now, every organization needs to be a software business, a data business, a digital business, the auntie has been raised considerably. And if you aren't making that connection between your business objectives and the technology that supports it, you run a pretty big risk of, you know, going out of business or losing out to competitors. Totally. So, um, and even if you're in, uh, an industry that hasn't historically been terribly, um, technology oriented customer expectations flow from, uh, you know, the digital native, um, companies that they work with to basically every industry. So you're compared against the best in the world. So we don't really have the luxury anymore of screwing up our it projects or building things that don't really work for the business. Um, it's mission critical that we do that well. Um, almost every time, I just want to fall by that, Tom, >>In terms of the, you've talked extensively about kind of these evolutions of data and analytics from artismal stage to the big data stage, the data economy stage, the AI driven stage and what I find diff interesting that all those stages, you always put a start date, you never put an end date. Um, so you know, is the, is the big data I'm just going to use that generically a moment in time finally here where we're, you know, off mahogany row with the data scientists, but actually can start to see the promise of delivering the right insight to the right person at the right time to make that decision. >>Well, I think it is true that in general, these previous stages never seemed to go away. The, um, the artisinal stuff is still being done, but we would like for less and less of it to be artisinal, we can't really afford for everything to be artisinal anymore. It's too labor and, and time consuming to do things that way. So we shift more and more of it to be done through automation and B to be done with a higher level of productivity. And, um, you know, at some point maybe we reached the stage where we don't do anything artisanally anymore. I'm not sure we're there yet, but we are, we are making progress. Right. >>Right. And Mick, back to you in terms of looking at agile, cause you're, you're such a student of agile. When, when you look at the opportunity with biz ops and taking the lessons from agile, you know, what's been the inhibitor to stop this in the past. And what are you so excited about? You know, taking this approach will enable. >>Yeah. I think both search and Tom hit on this is that in agile what's happened is that we've been measuring tiny subsets of the value stream, right? We need to elevate the data's there. Developers are working on these tools that delivering features that the foundations for for great culture are there. I spent two decades as a developer. And when I was really happy is when I was able to deliver value to customers, the quicker I was able to do that the fewer impediments are in my way, that quicker was deployed and running in the cloud, the happier I was, and that's exactly what's happening. If we can just get the right data, uh, elevated to the business, not just to the agile teams, but really this, these values of ours are to make sure that you've got these data driven decisions with meaningful data that's oriented around delivering value to customers. Not only these legacies that Tom touched on, which has cost center metrics. So when, from where for it being a cost center and something that provided email and then back office systems. So we need to rapidly shift to those new, meaningful metrics that are customized business centric and make sure that every development the organization is focused on those as well as the business itself, that we're measuring value. And that will help you that value flow without interruptions. >>I love that mic. Cause if you don't measure it, you can't improve on it and you gotta, but you gotta be measuring the right thing. So gentlemen, uh, thank you again for, for your time. Uh, congratulations on the, uh, on the unveil of the biz ops manifesto and bringing together this coalition, uh, of, of, uh, industry experts to get behind this. And, you know, there's probably never been a more important time than now to make sure that your prioritization is in the right spot and you're not wasting resources where you're not going to get the ROI. So, uh, congratulations again. And thank you for sharing your thoughts with us here on the cube. >>Thank you. >>Alright, so we had surge Tom and Mick I'm. Jeff, you're watching the cube. It's a biz ops manifesto unveil. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of biz ops manifesto unveiled brought to you by biz ops coalition. >>Hey, welcome back. Variety. Jeff Frick here with the cube. We're in our Palo Alto studios, and we'd like to welcome you back to our continuing coverage of biz ops manifesto unveil some exciting day to really, uh, kind of bring this out into public. There's been a little bit of conversation, but today's really the official unveiling and we're excited to have our next guest is share a little bit more information on it. He's Patrick tickle. He's a chief product officer for planned view. Patrick. Great to see you. >>Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for the invite. So why >>The biz ops manifesto, why the biz ops coalition now when you guys have been at it, it's relatively mature marketplace businesses. Good. What was missing? Why, why this, why this coalition? >>Yeah. So, you know, again, why is, why is biz ops important and why is this something that I'm, you know, I'm so excited about, but I think companies as well, right? Well, no, in some ways or another, this is a topic that I've been talking to the market and our customers about for a long time. And it's, you know, I really applaud this whole movement. Right. And, um, it resonates with me because I think one of the fundamental flaws, frankly, of the way we have talked about technology and business literally for decades, uh, has been this idea of, uh, alignment. Those who know me, I occasionally get off on this little rant about the word alignment, right. But to me, the word alignment is, is actually indicative of the, of the, of the flaw in a lot of our organizations and biz ops is really, I think now trying to catalyze and expose that flaw. >>Right. Because, you know, I always say that, you know, you know, alignment implies silos, right. Instantaneously, as soon as you say there's alignment, there's, there's obviously somebody who's got a direction and other people that have to line up and that kind of siloed, uh, nature of organizations then frankly, the passive nature of it. Right. I think so many technology organizations are like, look, the business has the strategy you guys need to align. Right. And, and, you know, as a product leader, right. That's where I've been my whole career. Right. I can tell you that I never sit around. I almost never use the word alignment. Right. I mean, whether, you know, I never sit down and say, you know, the product management team has to get aligned with dev, right. Or the dev team has to get aligned with the delivery and ops teams. I mean, what I say is, you know, are we on strategy, right? >>Like we've, we have a strategy as a, as a full end to end value stream. Right. And that there's no silos. And I mean, look, every on any given day we got to get better. Right. But the context, the context we operate is not about alignment. Right. It's about being on strategy. And I think I've talked to customers a lot about that, but when I first read the manifesto, I was like, Oh yeah, this is exactly. This is breaking down. Maybe trying to eliminate the word alignment, you know, from a lot of our organizations, because we literally start thinking about one strategy and how we go from strategy to delivery and have it be our strategy, not someone else's that we're all aligning to. And I, and it's a great way to catalyze that conversation that I've, it's been in my mind for years, to be honest. Right. >>So, so much to unpack there. One of the things obviously, uh, stealing a lot from, from dev ops and the dev ops manifesto from 20 years ago. And, and as I look through some of the principles and I looked through some of the values, which are, you know, really nicely laid out here, you know, satisfy customer, do continuous delivery, uh, measure, output against real results. Um, the ones that, that jumps out though is really about, you know, change, change, right? Requirements should change frequently. They do change frequently, but I'm curious to get your take from a, from a software development point, it's easy to kind of understand, right. We're making this widget and our competitors, beta widget plus X, and now we need to change our plans and make sure that the plus X gets added to the plan. Maybe it wasn't in the plan, but you talked a lot about product strategy. So in this kind of continuous delivery world, how does that meld with, I'm actually trying to set a strategy, which implies the direction for a little bit further out on the horizon and to stay on that while at the same time, you're kind of doing this real time continual adjustments because you're not working off a giant PRD or MRD anymore. >>Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. You know, one of the terms, you know, that we use internally a lot and even with my customers, our customers is we talk about this idea of rewiring, right. And I think, you know, it's kind of a, now an analogy for transformation. And I think a lot of us have to rewire the way we think about things. Right. And I think at Planview where we have a lot of customers who live in that, you know, who operationalize that traditional PPM world. Right. And are shifting to agile and transforming that rewire is super important. And, and to your point, right, it's, you've just, you've got to embrace this idea of, you know, just iterative getting better every day and iterating, iterating, iterating as opposed to building annual plans or, you know, I get customers occasionally who asked me for two or three year roadmap. >>Right. And I literally looked at them and I go, there's no, there's no scenario where I can build a two or three year roadmap. Right. You, you, you think you want that, but that's not, that's not the way we run. Right. And I will tell you the biggest thing that for us, you know, that I think is matched the planning, uh, you know, patents is a word I like to use a lot. So the thing that we've like, uh, that we've done from a planning perspective, I think is matched impedance to continuous delivery is instituting the whole program, implement, you know, the program, increment planning, capabilities, and methodologies, um, in the scaled agile world. Right. And over the last 18 months to two years, we really have now, you know, instrumented our company across three value streams. You know, we do quarterly PI program increment 10 week planning, you know, and that becomes, that becomes the Terra firma of how we plan. >>Right. And it's, what are we doing for the next 10 weeks? And we iterate within those 10 weeks, but we also know that 10 weeks from now, we're gonna, we're gonna adjust iterate again. Right. And that shifting of that planning model to, you know, to being as cross-functional is that as that big room planning kind of model is, um, and also, uh, you know, on that shorter increment, when you get those two things in place, also the impedance really starts to match up, uh, with continuous delivery and it changes, it changes the way you plan and it changes the way you work. Right? >>Yeah. Their thing. Right. So obviously a lot of these things are kind of process driven, both within the values, as well as the principles, but there's a whole lot, really about culture. And I just want to highlight a couple of the values, right? We already talked about business outcomes, um, trust and collaboration, uh, data driven decisions, and then learn, respond and pivot. Right. A lot of those are cultural as much as they are process. So again, is it the, is it the need to really kind of just put them down on paper and, you know, I can't help, but think of, you know, the hammer and up the, a, the thing in the Lutheran church with it, with their manifesto, is it just good to get it down on paper? Because when you read these things, you're like, well, of course we should trust people. And of course we need an environment of collaboration and of course we want data driven decisions, but as we all know saying it and living, it are two very, very different things. >>Yeah. Good question. I mean, I think there's a lot of ways to bring that to life you're right. And just hanging up, you know, I think we've all been through the hanging up posters around your office, which these days, right. Unless you're going to hang a poster in everybody's home office. Right. You can't even, you can't even fake it that you think that might work. Right. So, um, you know, you really, I think we've attacked that in a variety of ways. Right. And you definitely have to, you know, you've got to make the shift to a team centric culture, right. Empowered teams, you know, that's a big deal. Right. You know, a lot of, a lot of the people that, you know, we lived in a world of quote, unquote work. We lived in a deep resource management world for a long, long time, and right. >>A lot of our customers still do that, but, you know, kind of moving to that team centric world is, uh, is really important and core to the trust. Um, I think training is super important, right. I mean, we've, you know, we've internally, right. We've trained hundreds employees over the last a year and a half on the fundamentals really of safe. Right. Not necessarily, you know, we've had, we've had teams delivering in scrum and the continuous delivery for, you know, for years, but the scaling aspect of it, uh, is where we've done a lot of training investment. Um, and then, you know, I think a leadership has to be bought in. Right. You know? And so when we pie plan, you know, myself and Cameron and the other members of our leadership, you know, we're NPI planning, you know, for, for four days. Right. I mean, it's, it's, you've got to walk the walk, you know, from top to bottom and you've got to train on the context. Right. And then you, and then, and, and then once you get through a few cycles where you've done a pivot, right. Or you brought a new team in, and it just works, it becomes kind of this virtuous circle where he'll go, man, this really works so much better than what we used to do. Right. >>Right. The other really key principle to this whole thing is, is aligning, you know, the business leaders and the business prioritization, um, so that you can get to good outcomes with the development and the delivery. Right. And we know again, and kind of classic dev ops to get the dev and the production people together. So they can, you know, quickly ship code that works. Um, but adding the business person on there really puts, puts a little extra responsibility that they, they understand the value of a particular feature or particular priority. Uh, they, they can make the, the, the trade offs and that they kind of understand the effort involved too. So, you know, bringing them into this continuous again, kind of this continuous development process, um, to make sure that things are better aligned and really better prioritize. Cause ultimately, you know, we don't live in an infinite resources situation and people gotta make trade offs. They gotta make decisions as to what goes and what doesn't go in for everything that goes. Right. I always say you pick one thing. Okay. That's 99 other things that couldn't go. So it's really important to have, you know, this, you said alignment of the business priorities as well as, you know, the execution within, within the development. >>Yeah. I think that, you know, uh, you know, I think it was probably close to two years ago. Forester started talking about the age of the customer, right. That, that was like their big theme at the time. Right. And I think to me what that, the age of the customer actually translates to and Mick, Mick and I are both big fans of this whole idea of the project, the product shift, mixed book, you know, it was a great piece on a, you're talking to Mick, you know, as part of the manifesto is one of the authors as well, but this shift from project to product, right? Like the age of the customer, in my opinion, the, the, the embodiment of that is the shift to a product mentality. Right. And, and the product mentality in my opinion, is what brings the business and technology teams together, right? >>Once you, once you're focused on a customer experience, that's delivered through a product or a service that's when I that's, when I started to go with the alignment problem goes away, right. Because if you look at software companies, right, I mean, we run product management models, you know, with software development teams, customer success teams, right. That, you know, the software component of these products that people are building is obviously becoming bigger and bigger, you know, in an, in many ways, right. More and more organizations are trying to model themselves over as operationally like software companies. Right. Um, they obviously have lots of other components in their business than just software, but I think that whole model of customer experience equaling product, and then the software component of product, the product is the essence of what changes that alignment equation and brings business and teams together because all of a sudden, everyone knows what the customer's experiencing. Right. And, and that, that, that makes a lot of things very clear, very quickly. >>Right. I'm just curious how far along this was as a process before, before covert hit, right. Because serendipitous, whatever. Right. But th the sudden, you know, light switch moment, everybody had to go work from home and in March 15th compared to now, we're in October, and this is going to be going on for a while, and it is a new normal and whatever that whatever's going to look like a year from now, or two years from now is TBD, you know, had you guys already started on this journey cause again, to sit down and actually declare this coalition and declare this manifesto is a lot different than just trying to do better within your own organization. >>Yeah. So we had started, uh, you know, w we definitely had started independently, you know, some, some, you know, I think people in the community know that, uh, we, we came together with a company called lean kit a handful of years ago, and I give John Terry actually one of the founders leaned to immense credit for, you know, kind of spearheading our cultural change and not, and not because of, we were just going to be, you know, bringing agile solutions to our customers, but because, you know, he believed that it was going to be a fundamentally better way for us to work. Right. And we kind of, you know, when we started with John and built, you know, out of concentric circles of momentum and, and we've gotten to the place where now it's just part of who we are, but, but I do think that, you know, COVID has, you know, um, I think pre COVID a lot of companies, you know, would, would adopt, you know, the, you would adopt digital slash agile transformation. >>Um, traditional industries may have done it as a reaction to disruption. Right. You know, and in many cases, the disruption to these traditional industries was, I would say a product oriented company, right. That probably had a larger software component, and that disruption caused a competitive issue or a customer issue that caused companies and tried to respond by transforming. I think COVID, you know, all of a sudden flatten that out, right. We literally all got disrupted. Right. And, and so all of a sudden, every one of us is dealing with some degree of market uncertainty, customer uncertainty, uh, and also know none of us were insulated from the need to be able to pivot faster, deliver incrementally, you know, and operate in a different, completely more agile way, uh, you know, post COVID. Right. Yeah. That's great. >>So again, a very, very, very timely, you know, a little bit of serendipity, a little bit of, of planning. And, you know, as, as with all important things, there's always a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work involved. So a really interesting thank you for, for your leadership, Patrick. And, you know, it really makes a statement. I think when you have a bunch of leaderships across an industry coming together and putting their name on a piece of paper, uh, that's aligned around us some principles and some values, which again, if you read them who wouldn't want to get behind these, but if it takes, you know, something a little bit more formal, uh, to kind of move the ball down the field, and then I totally get it and a really great work. Thanks for, uh, thanks for doing it. >>Oh, absolutely. No. Like I said, the first time I read it, I was like, yeah, like you said, this is all, this all makes complete sense, but just documenting it and saying it and talking about it moves the needle. I'll tell you as a company, you gotta, we're pushing really hard on, uh, you know, on our own internal strategy on diversity inclusion. Right? And, and like, once we wrote the words down about what, you know, what we aspire to be from a diversity and inclusion perspective, it's the same thing. Everybody reads the words and goes, why wouldn't we do this? Right. But until you write it down and kind of have again, a manifesto or a Terrafirma of what you're trying to accomplish, you know, then you can rally behind it. Right. As opposed to it being something that's, everybody's got their own version of the flavor. Right. And I think it's a very analogous, you know, kind of, uh, initiative, right. And, uh, and this happening, both of those things, right. Are happening across the industry these days. Right. >>And measure it too. Right. And measure it, measure, measure, measure, get a baseline. Even if you don't like to measure, even if you don't like what the, even if you can argue against the math, behind the measurement, measure it, and at least you can measure it again and you can, and you've got some type of a comp and that is really the only way to, to move it forward. Well, Patrick really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for, uh, for taking a few minutes out of your day. >>It's great to be here. It's an awesome movement and we're glad >>That'd be part of it. All right. Thanks. And if you want to check out the biz ops, Manifesta go to biz ops, manifesto.org, read it. You might want to sign it. It's there for you. And thanks for tuning in on this segment will continuing coverage of the biz op manifesto unveil here on the cube. I'm Jeff, thanks for watching >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of biz ops manifesto unveiled brought to you by biz ops coalition. >>Hey, welcome back, everybody Jeffrey here with the cube. We're coming to you from our Palo Alto studios. And welcome back to this event is the biz ops manifesto unveiling. So the biz ops manifesto and the biz ops coalition had been around for a little while, but today's the big day. That's kind of the big public unveiling or excited to have some of the foundational people that, you know, have put their, put their name on the dotted, if you will, to support this initiative and talk about why that initiative is so important. And so the next guest we're excited to have is dr. Mick Kirsten. He is the founder and CEO of Tasktop mic. Great to see you coming in from Vancouver, Canada, I think, right? Yes. Thank you. Absolutely. I hope your air is a little better out there. I know you had some of the worst air of all of us, a couple, a couple of weeks back. So hopefully things are, uh, are getting a little better and we get those fires under control. Yeah. >>Things have cleared up now. So yeah, it's good. It's good to be close to the U S and it's going to have the Arabic cleaner as well. >>Absolutely. So let's, let's jump into it. So you you've been an innovation guy forever starting way back in the day and Xerox park. I was so excited to do an event at Xerox park for the first time last year. I mean, that, that to me represents along with bell labs and, and some other, you know, kind of foundational innovation and technology centers, that's gotta be one of the greatest ones. So I just wonder if you could share some perspective of getting your start there at Xerox park, you know, some of the lessons you learned and what you've been able to kind of carry forward from those days. >>Yeah. I was fortunate to join Xerox park in the computer science lab there at a very early point in my career, and to be working on open source programming languages. So back then in the computer science lab, where some of the inventions around programming around software development teams, such as object oriented programming, and a lot of what we had around really modern programming levels constructs, those were the teams I have the fortune of working with, and really our goal was. And of course there's as, as you know, uh, there's just this DNA of innovation and excitement and innovation in the water. And really it was the model back then was all about changing the way that we work, uh, was looking at for how we could make it 10 times easier to write code. But this is back in 99. And we were looking at new ways of expressing, especially business concerns, especially ways of enabling people who are, who want to innovate for their business to express those concerns in code and make that 10 times easier than what that would take. >>So we create a new open source programming language, and we saw some benefits, but not quite quite what we expected. I then went and actually joined Charles Stephanie, that former to fucking Microsoft who was responsible for, he actually got Microsoft word as a spark and into Microsoft and into the hands of bill Gates on that company. I was behind the whole office suite and his vision. And then when I was trying to execute with, working for him was to make PowerPoint like a programming language, make everything completely visual. And I realized none of this was really working in that there was something else, fundamentally wrong programming languages, or new ways of building software. Like let's try and do with Charles around intentional programming. That was not enough. >>That was not enough. So, you know, the agile movement got started about 20 years ago, and we've seen the rise of dev ops and really this kind of embracing of, of, of sprints and, you know, getting away from MRDs and PRDs and these massive definitions of what we're going to build and long build cycles to this iterative process. And this has been going on for a little while. So what was still wrong? What was still missing? Why the BizOps coalition, why the biz ops manifesto? >>Yeah, so I basically think we nailed some of the things that the program language levels of teams can have effective languages deployed soften to the cloud easily now, right? And at the kind of process and collaboration and planning level agile two decades, decades ago was formed. We were adopting and all the, all the teams I was involved with and it's really become a self problem. So agile tools, agile teams, agile ways of planning, uh, are now very mature. And the whole challenge is when organizations try to scale that. And so what I realized is that the way that agile was scaling across teams and really scaling from the technology part of organization to the business was just completely flawed. The agile teams had one set of doing things, one set of metrics, one set of tools. And the way that the business was working was planning was investing in technology was just completely disconnected and using a whole different set of advisors. >>Interesting. Cause I think it's pretty clear from the software development teams in terms of what they're trying to deliver. Cause they've got a feature set, right. And they've got bugs and it's easy to, it's easy to see what they deliver, but it sounds like what you're really honing in on is this disconnect on the business side, in terms of, you know, is it the right investment? You know, are we getting the right business ROI on this investment? Was that the right feature? Should we be building another feature or should we building a completely different product set? So it sounds like it's really a core piece of this is to get the right measurement tools, the right measurement data sets so that you can make the right decisions in terms of what you're investing, you know, limited resources. You can't, no one has unlimited resources and ultimately have to decide what to do, which means you're also deciding what not to do. And it sounds like that's a really big piece of this, of this whole effort. >>Yeah. Jeff, that's exactly it, which is the way that the agile team measures their own way of working is very different from the way that you measure business outcomes. The business outcomes are in terms of how happy your customers are, but are you innovating fast enough to keep up with the pace of a rapidly changing economy, rapidly changing market. And those are, those are all around the customer. And so what I learned on this long journey of supporting many organizations transformations and having them try to apply those principles of agile and dev ops, that those are not enough, those measures technical practices, those measured sort of technical excellence of bringing code to the market. They don't actually measure business outcomes. And so I realized that it really was much more around having these entwined flow metrics that are customer centric and business centric and market centric where we need it to go. Right. >>So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about your book because you're also a bestselling author, a project, a product, and, and, and you, you brought up this concept in your book called the flow framework. And it's really interesting to me cause I know, you know, flow on one hand is kind of a workflow and a process flow and, and you know, that's how things get done and, and, and embrace the flow. On the other hand, you know, everyone now in, in a little higher level existential way is trying to get into the flow right into the workflow and, you know, not be interrupted and get into a state where you're kind of at your highest productivity, you know, kind of your highest comfort, which flow are you talking about in your book or is it a little bit about, >>Well, that's a great question. It's not what I get asked very often. Just to me, it's absolutely both. So that the thing that we want to get to, we've learned how to master individual flow. That is this beautiful book by me, how he teaches me how he does a beautiful Ted talk by him as well about how we can take control of our own flow. So my question with the book with project replies, how can we bring that to entire teams and really entire organizations? How can we have everyone contributing to a customer outcome? And this is really what if you go to the biz ops manifesto, it says, I focus on outcomes on using data to drive whether we're delivering those outcomes rather than a focus on proxy metrics, such as, how quickly did we implement this feature? No, it's really how much value did the customer go to the feature and how quickly did you learn and how quickly did you use that data to drive to that next outcome? >>Really that with companies like Netflix and Amazon have mastered, how do we get that to every large organization, every it organization and make everyone be a software innovator. So it's to bring that co that concept of flow to these entwined value streams. And the fascinating thing is we've actually seen the data. We've been able to study a lot of value streams. We see when flow increases, when organizations deliver value to a customer faster, developers actually become more happy. So things like the employee net promoter scores rise, and we've got empirical data for this. So the beautiful thing to me is that we've actually been able to combine these two things and see the results in the data that you increase flow to the customer. Your developers are more happy. >>I love it, right, because we're all more, we're all happier when we're in the flow and we're all more productive when we're in the flow. So I, that is a great melding of, of two concepts, but let's jump into the, into the manifesto itself a little bit. And, you know, I love that, you know, took this approach really of having kind of four key values and then he gets 12 key principles. And I just want to read a couple of these values because when you read them, it sounds pretty brain dead. Right? Of course. Right. Of course you should focus on business outcomes. Of course you should have trust and collaboration. Of course you should have database decision making processes and not just intuition or, you know, whoever's the loudest person in the room, uh, and to learn and respond and pivot. But what's the value of actually just putting them on a piece of paper, because again, this is not this, these are all good, positive things, right? When somebody reads these to you or tells you these are sticks it on the wall, of course. But unfortunately of course isn't always enough. >>No. And I think what's happened is some of these core principles originally from the agile manifesto two decades ago, uh, the whole dev ops movement of the last decade of flow feedback and continue learning has been key. But a lot of organizations, especially the ones that are undergoing digital transformations have actually gone a very different way, right? The way that they measure value in technology and innovation is through costs for many organizations. The way that they actually are looking at that they're moving to cloud is actually as a reduction in cost. Whereas the right way of looking at moving to cloud is how much more quickly can we get to the value to the customer? How quickly can we learn from that? And how quickly can we drive the next business outcome? So really the key thing is, is to move away from those old ways of doing things, a funny projects and cost centers, uh, to actually funding and investing in outcomes and measuring outcomes through these flow metrics, which in the end are your fast feedback and how quickly you're innovating for your customer. >>So these things do seem, you know, very obvious when you look at them. But the key thing is what you need to stop doing to focus on these. You need to actually have accurate realtime data of how much value your phone to the customer every week, every month, every quarter. And if you don't have that, your decisions are not driven on data. If you don't know what your boggling like is, and this is something that in decades of manufacturing, a car manufacturers, other manufacturers, master, they always know where the bottom back in their production processes. You ask a random CIO when a global 500 company where their bottleneck is, and you won't get a clear answer because there's not that level of understanding. So let's, you actually follow these principles. You need to know exactly where you fall. And I guess because that's, what's making your developers miserable and frustrated around having them context, which on thrash. So it, the approach here is important and we have to stop doing these other things, >>Right? There's so much there to unpack. I love it. You know, especially the cloud conversation, because so many people look at it wrong as, as, as a cost saving device, as opposed to an innovation driver and they get stuck, they get stuck in the literal and the, and you know, I think at the same thing, always about Moore's law, right? You know, there's a lot of interesting real tech around Moore's law and the increasing power of microprocessors, but the real power, I think in Moore's laws is the attitudinal change in terms of working in a world where you know that you've got all this power and what you build and design. I think it's funny to your, your comment on the flow and the bottleneck, right? Cause, cause we know manufacturing, as soon as you fix one bottleneck, you move to your next one, right? You always move to your next point of failure. So if you're not fixing those things, you know, you're not, you're not increasing that speed down the line, unless you can identify where that bottleneck is or no matter how many improvements you make to the rest of the process, it's still going to get hung up on that one spot. >>That's exactly it. And you also make it sound so simple, but again, if you don't have the data driven visibility of where that bottom line is, and these bottlenecks are adjusted to say defense just whack them. All right. So we need to understand is the bottleneck because our security reviews are taking too long and stopping us from getting value for the customer. If it's that automate that process. And then you move on to the next bottleneck, which might actually be that deploying yourself into the cloud. It's taking too long. But if you don't take that approach of going flow first, rather than again, that sort of cost reduction. First, you have to think of the approach of customer centricity and you only focused on optimizing costs. Your costs will increase and your flow will slow down. And this is just one of these fascinating things. >>Whereas if you focus on getting closer to the customer and reducing your cycles out on getting value, your flow time from six months to two weeks or two, one week or two event, as we see with the tech giants, you actually can both lower your costs and get much more value for us to get that learning loop going. So I think I've, I've seen all these cloud deployments and one of the things happened that delivered almost no value because there was such big bottlenecks upfront in the process and actually the hosting and the AP testing was not even possible with all of those inefficiencies. So that's why going float us rather than costs when we started our project versus silky. >>I love that. And, and, and, and it, it begs repeating to that right within the subscription economy, you know, you're on the hook to deliver value every single month because they're paying you every single month. So if you're not on top of how you're delivering value, you're going to get sideways because it's not like they pay a big down payment and a small maintenance fee every month. But once you're in a subscription relationship, you know, you have to constantly be delivering value and upgrading that value because you're constantly taking money from the customer. So it's such a different kind of relationship than kind of the classic, you know, big bang with a maintenance agreement on the back end really important. Yeah. >>And I think in terms of industry shifts that that's, it that's, what's catalyzed. This industry shift is in this SAS and subscription economy. If you're not delivering more and more value to your customers, someone else's, and they're winning the business, not you. So, one way we know is to delight our customers with great user experience as well. That really is based on how many features you delivered or how much, how much, how many quality improvements or scalar performance improvements we delivered. So the problem is, and this is what the business manifesto, as well as the flow frame of touch on is if you can't measure how much value you deliver to a customer, what are you measuring? You just backed again, measuring costs, and that's not a measure of value. So we have to shift quickly away from measuring costs to measuring value, to survive. And in the subscription economy, >>We could go for days and days and days. I want to shift gears a little bit into data and, and a data driven decision making a data driven organization cause right day has been talked about for a long time, the huge big data meme with, with Hadoop over, over several years and, and data warehouses and data lakes and data oceans and data swamps. And you can go on and on and on. It's not that easy to do, right? And at the same time, the proliferation of data is growing exponentially. We're just around the corner from, from IOT and five G. So now the accumulation of data at machine scale, again, is this gonna overwhelm? And one of the really interesting principles, uh, that I wanted to call out and get your take right, is today's organizations generate more data than humans can process. So informed decisions must be augmented by machine learning and artificial intelligence. I wonder if you can, again, you've got some great historical perspective, um, reflect on how hard it is to get the right data, to get the data in the right context, and then to deliver it to the decision makers and then trust the decision makers to actually make the data and move that down. You know, it's kind of this democratization process into more and more people and more and more frontline jobs making more and more of these little decisions every day. >>Yeah. I definitely think the front parts of what you said are where the promises of big data have completely fallen on their face into the swamps as, as you mentioned, because if you don't have the data in the right format, you've cannot connect, collected that the right way you want it, that way, the right way you can't use human or machine learning on it effectively. And there've been the number of data where, how has this in a typical enterprise organization and the sheer investment is tremendous, but the amount of intelligence being extracted from those is, is, is a very big problem. So the key thing that I've noticed is that if you can model your value streams, so you actually understand how you're innovating, how you're measuring the delivery of value and how long that takes, what is your time to value through these metrics like full time? >>You can actually use both the intelligence that you've got around the table and push that down as well, as far as getting to the organization, but you can actually start using that those models to understand and find patterns and detect bottlenecks that might be surprising, right? Well, you can detect interesting bottlenecks when you shift to work from home. We detected all sorts of interesting bottlenecks in our own organization that were not intuitive to me that have to do with, you know, more senior people being overloaded and creating bottlenecks where they didn't exist. Whereas we thought we were actually an organization that was very good at working from home because of our open source roots. So the data is highly complex. Software value streams are extremely complicated. And the only way to really get the proper analysts and data is to model it properly and then to leverage these machine learning and AI techniques that we have. But that front part of what you said is where organizations are just extremely immature in what I've seen, where they've got data from all their tools, but not modeled in the right way. Right, right. >>Right. Well, all right. So before I let you go, you know, let's say you get a business leader. He, he buys in, he reads the manifesto, he signs on the dotted line and he says, Mick, how do I get started? I want to be more aligned with the, with the development teams. I know I'm in a very competitive space. We need to be putting out new software features and engage with our customers. I want to be more data-driven how do I get started? Well, you know, what's the biggest inhibitor for most people to get started and get some early wins, which we know is always the key to success in any kind of a new initiative. >>Right? So I think you can reach out to us through the website, uh, for the manifesto. But the key thing is just, it's definitely set up it's to get started and to get the key wins. So take a product value stream. That's mission critical if it'd be on your mobile and web experiences or part of your cloud modernization platform where your analytics pipeline, but take that and actually apply these principles to it and measure the end to end flow of value. Make sure you have a value metric that everyone is on the same page on, but the people on the development teams that people in leadership all the way up to the CEO, and one of the, where I encourage you to start is actually that end to end flow time, right? That is the number one metric. That is how you measure it, whether you're getting the benefit of your cloud modernization, that is the one metric that when the people I respect tremendously put into his cloud for CEOs, the metric, the one, the one way to measure innovation. So basically take these principles, deploy them on one product value stream measure, Antonin flow time, uh, and then you'll actually be well on your path to transforming and to applying the concepts of agile and dev ops all the way to, to the, to the way >>You're offering model. >>Well, Mick really great tips, really fun to catch up. I look forward to a time when we can actually sit across the table and, and get into this. Cause I just, I just love the perspective and, you know, you're very fortunate to have that foundational, that foundational base coming from Xerox park and they get, you know, it's, it's a very magical place with a magical history. So to, to incorporate that into, continue to spread that well, uh, you know, good for you through the book and through your company. So thanks for sharing your insight with us today. >>Thanks so much for having me, Jeff. Absolutely. >>All right. And go to the biz ops manifesto.org, read it, check it out. If you want to sign it, sign it. They'd love to have you do it. Stay with us for continuing coverage of the unveiling of the business manifesto on the cube. I'm Jeff. Rick. Thanks for watching. See you next time >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage, a biz ops manifesto unveiled brought to you by biz ops coalition. >>Hey, welcome back. You're ready. Jeff Frick here with the cube for our ongoing coverage of the big unveil. It's the biz ops manifesto manifesto unveil. And we're going to start that again from the top three And a Festo >>Five, four, three, two. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the cube come to you from our Palo Alto studios today for a big, big reveal. We're excited to be here. It's the biz ops manifesto unveiling a thing's been in the works for a while and we're excited to have our next guest. One of the, really the powers behind this whole effort. And he's joining us from Boston it's surge, Lucio, the vice president, and general manager enterprise software division at Broadcom surge. Great to see you. >>Hi, good to see you, Jeff. Glad to be here. >>Absolutely. So you've been in this business for a very long time. You've seen a lot of changes in technology. What is the biz ops manifesto? What is this coalition all about? Why do we need this today and in 2020? >>Yeah. So, so I've been in this business for close to 25 years, right? So about 20 years ago, the agile manifesto was created. And the goal of the agile manifesto was really to address the uncertainty around software development and the inability to predict the efforts to build software. And, uh, if you, if you roll that kind of 20 years later, and if you look at the current state of the industry of the product, the project management Institute, estimates that we're wasting about a million dollars, every 20 seconds in digital transformation initiatives that do not deliver on business results. In fact, we were recently served a third of the, a, a number of executives in partnership with Harvard >>Business review and 77% of those executives think that one of the key challenges that they have is really the collaboration between business and it, and that that's been kind of a case for, uh, almost 20 years now. Um, so the, the, the key challenge that we're faced with is really that we need a new approach. And many of the players in the industry, including ourselves have been using different terms, right? Some are being, are talking about value stream management. Some are talking about software delivery management. If you look at the site, reliability engineering movement, in many ways, it embodies a lot of these kind of concepts and principles. So we believed that it became really imperative for us to crystallize around, could have one concept. And so in many ways, the, a, the BizOps concept and the BizOps manifesto are bringing together a number of ideas, which has been emerging in the last five years or so, and, and defining the key values and principles to finally help these organizations truly transform and become digital businesses. And so the hope is that by joining our forces and defining public key principles and values, we can help the industry, uh, not just, uh, by, you know, providing them with support, but also tools and consulting that is required for them to truly achieve the kind of transformation that everybody's taking. >>Right. Right. So COVID now we're six months into it, approximately seven months into it. Um, a lot of pain, a lot of bad stuff still happening. We've got a ways to go, but one of the things that on the positive side, right, and you've seen all the memes and social media is, is a driver of digital transformation and a driver of change. Cause we had this light switch moment in the middle of March, and there was no more planning. There was no more conversation. You've suddenly got remote workforces, everybody's working from home and you got to go, right. So the reliance on these tools increases dramatically, but I'm curious, you know, kind of short of, of the beginnings of this effort in short of kind of COVID, which, you know, came along unexpectedly. I mean, what were those inhibitors because we've been making software for a very long time, right? The software development community has, has adopted kind of rapid change and, and iterative, uh, delivery and, and sprints, what was holding back the connection with the business side to make sure that those investments were properly aligned with outcomes. >>Well, so, so you have to understand that it is, is kind of a its own silos. And traditionally it has been treated as a cost center within large organizations and not as a value center. And so as a result, kind of a, the traditional dynamic between it and the business is basically one of a kind of supplier up to kind of a business. Um, and you know, if you go back to, uh, I think you'll unmask a few years ago, um, basically at this concept of the machines to build the machines and you went as far as saying that, uh, the, the machines or the production line is actually the product. So, uh, meaning that the core of the innovation is really about, uh, building, could it be engine to deliver on the value? And so in many ways, you know, we, we have missed on this shift from, um, kind of it becoming this kind of value center within the enterprises and end. >>He talks about culture. Now, culture is a, is a sum total of behaviors. And the reality is that if you look at it, especially in the last decade, uh, we've agile with dev ops with, um, I bring infrastructures, uh, it's, it's way more volatile today than it was 10 years ago. And so the, when you start to look at the velocity of the data, the volume of data, the variety of data to analyze the system, um, it's, it's very challenging for it to actually even understand and optimize its own processes, let alone, um, to actually include business as sort of an integral part of kind of a delivery chain. And so it's both kind of a combination of, of culture, um, which is required, uh, as well as tools, right? To be able to start to bring together all these data together, and then given the volume of variety of philosophy of the data. Uh, we have to apply some core technologies, which have only really, truly emerged in the last five to 10 years around machine learning and analytics. And so it's really kind of a combination of those freaks, which are coming together today, truly out organizations kind of get to the next level. Right, >>Right. So let's talk about the manifesto. Let's talk about, uh, the coalition, uh, the BizOps coalition. I just liked that you put down these really simple, you know, kind of straightforward core values. You guys have four core values that you're highlighting, you know, business outcomes, over individual projects and outputs, trust, and collaboration, oversight, load teams, and organizations, data driven decisions, what you just talked about, uh, you know, over opinions and judgment and learned, respond and pivot. I mean, surgery sounds like pretty basic stuff, right? I mean, aren't, isn't everyone working to these values already. And I think he touched on it on culture, right? Trust and collaboration, data driven decisions. I mean, these are fundamental ways that people must run their business today, or the person that's across the street, that's doing it. It's going to knock them out right off their block. >>Yeah. So that's very true. But, uh, so I'll, I'll mention an hour survey. We did, uh, I think about six months ago and it was in partnership with, uh, with, uh, an industry analyst and we serve at a, again, a number of it executives to understand only we're tracking business outcomes. I'm going to get the software executives, it executives we're tracking business outcomes. And the, there were less than 15% of these executives were actually tracking the outcomes of the software delivery. And you see that every day. Right? So in my own teams, for instance, we've been adopting a lot of these core principles in the last year or so, and we've uncovered that 16% of our resources were basically aligned around initiatives, which are not strategic for us. Um, I take another example, for instance, one of our customers in the, uh, in the airline industry and Harvard, for instance, that a number of, uh, um, that they had software issues that led to people searching for flights and not returning any kind of availability. >>And yet, um, you know, the it teams, whether it's operation software environments were completely oblivious to that because they were completely blindsided to it. And so the connectivity between kind of the inwards metrics that RT is using, whether it's database time, cycle time, or whatever metric we use in it are typically completely divorced from the business metrics. And so at its core, it's really about starting to align the business metrics with the, the, the software delivery chain, right? This, uh, the system, which is really a core differentiator for these organizations. It's about connecting those two things and starting to, um, infuse some of the agile culture and principles. Um, that's emerged from the software side into the business side. Um, of course the lean movement and other movements have started to change some of these dynamics on the business side. And so I think this, this is the moment where we are starting to see kind of the imperative to transform. Now, you know, Covina obviously has been a key driver for that. The, um, the technology is right to start to be able to weave data together and really kind of, uh, also the cultural shifts, uh, Prue agile through dev ops through, uh, the SRE movement, uh frulein um, business transformation, all these things are coming together and that are really creating kind of the conditions for the BizOps manifestor to exist, >>Uh, Clayton Christianson, great, uh, Harvard professor innovator's dilemma might steal my all time. Favorite business books, you know, talks about how difficult it is for incumbents to react to, to disruptive change, right? Because they're always working on incremental change cause that's what their customers are asking for. And there's a good ROI when you talk about, you know, companies not measuring the right thing. I mean, clearly it has some portion of their budget that has to go to keeping the lights on, right. That that's always the case, but hopefully that's an ever decreasing percentage of their total activity. So, you know, what should people be measuring? I mean, what are kind of the new metrics, um, in, in biz ops that drive people to be looking at the right things, measuring the right things and subsequently making the right decisions, investment decisions on whether they should do, you know, move project a along or project B. >>So there, there are only two things, right? So, so I think what you're talking about is portfolio management, investment management, right. And, um, which, which is a key challenge, right? Um, in my own experience, right? Uh, driving strategy or a large scale kind of software organization for years, um, it's very difficult to even get kind of a base data as to who is doing what, uh, um, I mean, some of our largest customers we're engaged with right now are simply trying to get a very simple answer, which is how many people do I have and that specific initiative at any point in time and just tracking that information is extremely difficult. So, and, and again, back to a product project management Institute, um, they're, they've estimated that on average, it organizations have anywhere between 10 to 20% of their resources focused on initiatives, which are not strategically aligned. >>So that's one dimension on portfolio management. I think the key aspect though, that we are really keen on is really around kind of the alignment of a business metrics to the it metrics. Um, so I'll use kind of two simple examples, right? And my background is around quality. And so I've always believed that fitness for purpose is really kind of a key, um, uh, philosophy if you will. And so if you start to think about quality as fitness for purpose, you start to look at it from a customer point of view, right. And fitness for purpose for core banking application or mobile application are different, right? So the definition of a business value that you're trying to achieve is different. Um, and so the, and yet, if you look at our, it, operations are operating, they were using kind of a same type of, uh, kind of inward metrics, uh, like a database of time or a cycle time, or what is my point of velocity, right? >>And, uh, and so the challenge really is this inward facing metrics that it is using, which are divorced from ultimately the outcome. And so, you know, if I'm, if I'm trying to build a poor banking application, my core metric is likely going to be uptime, right? If I'm trying to build a mobile application or maybe your social mobile app, it's probably going to be engagement. And so what you want is for everybody across it, to look at these metric, and what's hard, the metrics within the software delivery chain, which ultimately contribute to that business metric and some cases cycle time may be completely irrelevant, right? Again, my core banking app, maybe I don't care about cycle time. And so it's really about aligning those metrics and be able to start to differentiate, um, the key challenges you mentioned, uh, around the, the, um, uh, around the disruption that we see is, or the investors is the dilemma now is really around the fact that many it organizations are essentially applying the same approaches of, for innovation, right, for basically scrap work, then they would apply to kind of over more traditional projects. And so, you know, there's been a lot of talk about two-speed it, and yes, it exists, but in reality are really organizations, um, truly differentiating, um, all of the operate, their, their projects and products based on the outcomes that they're trying to achieve. And this is really where BizOps is trying to affect. >>I love that, you know, again, it doesn't seem like brain surgery, but focus on the outcomes, right. And it's horses for courses, as you said, this project, you know, what you're measuring and how you define success, isn't necessarily the same as, as on this other project. So let's talk about some of the principles we've talked about the values, but, you know, I think it's interesting that, that, that the BizOps coalition, you know, just basically took the time to write these things down and they don't seem all that, uh, super insightful, but I guess you just gotta get them down and have them on paper and have them in front of your face. But I want to talk about, you know, one of the key ones, which you just talked about, which is changing requirements, right. And working in a dynamic situation, which is really what's driven, you know, this, the software to change in software development, because, you know, if you're in a game app and your competitor comes out with a new blue sword, you've got to come out with a new blue sword. >>So whether you had that on your Kanban wall or not. So it's, it's really this embracing of the speed of change and, and, and, and making that, you know, the rule, not the exception. I think that's a phenomenal one. And the other one you talked about is data, right? And that today's organizations generate more data than humans can process. So informed decisions must be generated by machine learning and AI, and, you know, in the, the big data thing with Hadoop, you know, started years ago, but we are seeing more and more that people are finally figuring it out, that it's not just big data, and it's not even generic machine learning or artificial intelligence, but it's applying those particular data sets and that particular types of algorithms to a specific problem, to your point, to try to actually reach an objective, whether that's, you know, increasing the, your average ticket or, you know, increasing your checkout rate with, with, with shopping carts that don't get left behind and these types of things. So it's a really different way to think about the world in the good old days, probably when you got started, when we had big, giant, you know, MRDs and PRDs and sat down and coded for two years and came out with a product release and hopefully not too many patches subsequently to that. >>It's interesting. Right. Um, again, back to one of these surveys that we did with, uh, with about 600, the ITA executives, and, uh, and, and we, we purposely designed those questions to be pretty open. Um, and, and one of them was really role requirements and, uh, and it was really a wrong kind of what do you, what is the best approach? What is your preferred approach towards requirements? And if I remember correctly over 80% of the it executives set that the best approach they'll prefer to approach is for requirements to be completely defined before software development starts. Let me pause there where 20 years after the agile manifesto, right? And for 80% of these idea executives to basically claim that the best approach is for requirements to be fully baked before salt, before software development starts, basically shows that we still have a very major issue. >>And again, our hypothesis in working with many organizations is that the key challenge is really the boundary between business and it, which is still very much contract based. If you look at the business side, they basically are expecting for it deliver on time on budget, right. But what is the incentive for it to actually delivering all the business outcomes, right? How often is it measured on the business outcomes and not on an SLA or on a budget type criteria. And so that, that's really the fundamental shift that we need to, we really need to drive up as an industry. Um, and you know, we, we talk about kind of this, this imperative for organizations to operate that's one, and back to the innovator's dilemma. The key difference between these larger organization is, is really kind of a, if you look at the amount of capital investment that they can put into pretty much anything, why are they losing compared to, um, you know, startups? What, why is it that, uh, more than 40% of, uh, personal loans today or issued not by your traditional brick and mortar banks, but by, um, startups? Well, the reason, yes, it's the traditional culture of doing incremental changes and not disrupting ourselves, which Christiansen covered at length, but it's also the inability to really fundamentally change kind of a dynamic picture. We can business it and, and, and partner right. To, to deliver on a specific business outcome. Right. >>I love that. That's a great, that's a great summary. And in fact, getting ready for this interview, I saw you mentioning another thing where, you know, the, the problem with the agile development is that you're actually now getting more silos because you have all these autonomous people working, you know, kind of independently. So it's even a harder challenge for, for the business leaders to, to, to, as you said, to know, what's actually going on, but, but certainly I w I want to close, um, and talk about the coalition. Um, so clearly these are all great concepts. These are concepts you want to apply to your business every day. Why the coalition, why, you know, take these concepts out to a broader audience, including your, your competition and, and the broader industry to say, Hey, we, as a group need to put a stamp of approval on these concepts, values, these principles. >>So, first I think we, we want, um, everybody to realize that we are all talking about the same things, the same concepts. I think we were all from our own different vantage point, realizing that, um, things after change, and again, back to, you know, whether it's value stream management or site reliability engineering, or biz ops, we're all kind of using slightly different languages. Um, and so I think one of the important aspects of BizOps is for us, all of us, whether we're talking about, you know, consulting agile transformation experts, uh, whether we're talking about vendors, right, provides kind of tools and technologies, or these large enterprises to transform for all of us to basically have kind of a reference that lets us speak around kind of, um, in a much more consistent way. The second aspect is for, to me is for, um, these concepts to start to be embraced, not just by us or trying, or, you know, vendors, um, system integrators, consulting firms, educators, thought leaders, but also for some of our old customers to start to become evangelists of their own in the industry. >>So we, our, our objective with the coalition needs to be pretty, pretty broad. Um, and our hope is by, by starting to basically educate, um, our, our joint customers or partners, that we can start to really foster these behaviors and start to really change, uh, some of dynamics. So we're very pleased at if you look at, uh, some of the companies which have joined the, the, the, the manifesto. Um, so we have vendors and suggest desktop or advance, or, um, uh, PagerDuty for instance, or even planned view, uh, one of my direct competitors, um, but also thought leaders like Tom Davenport or, uh, or cap Gemini or, um, um, smaller firms like, uh, business agility, institutes, or agility elf. Um, and so our, our goal really is to start to bring together, uh, thought leaders, people who have been LP, larger organizations do digital transformation vendors, were providing the technologies that many of these organizations use to deliver on these digital preservation and for all of us to start to provide the kind of, uh, education support and tools that the industry needs. Yeah, >>That's great surge. And, uh, you know, congratulations to you and the team. I know this has been going on for a while, putting all this together, getting people to sign onto the manifesto, putting the coalition together, and finally today getting to unveil it to the world in a little bit more of a public, uh, opportunity. So again, you know, really good values, really simple principles, something that, that, uh, shouldn't have to be written down, but it's nice cause it is, and now you can print it out and stick it on your wall. So thank you for, uh, for sharing this story. And again, congrats to you and the team. Thank you. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Alrighty, surge. If you want to learn more about the biz ops, Manifesta go to biz ops manifesto.org, read it, and you can sign it and you can stay here for more coverage. I'm the cube of the biz ops manifesto unveiled. Thanks for watching. See you next time >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of this ops manifesto unveiled and brought to you by >>This obstacle volition. Hey, welcome back, everybody Jeffrey here with the cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the biz ops manifesto unveiling. It's been in the works for awhile, but today's the day that it actually kind of come out to the, to the public. And we're excited to have a real industry luminary here to talk about what's going on, why this is important and share his perspective. And we're happy to have from Cape Cod, I believe is Tom Davenport. He's a distinguished author and professor at Babson college. We could go on, he's got a lot of great titles and, and really illuminary in the area of big data and analytics Thomas. Great to see you. >>Thanks Jeff. Happy to be here with you. >>Great. So let's just jump into it, you know, and getting ready for this. I came across your LinkedIn posts. I think you did earlier this summer in June and right off the bat, the first sentence just grabbed my attention. I'm always interested in new attempts to address longterm issues, uh, in how technology works within businesses, biz ops. What did you see in biz ops, uh, that, that kind of addresses one of these really big longterm problems? >>Well, yeah, but the longterm problem is that we've had a poor connection between business people and it people between business objectives and the, it solutions that address them. This has been going on, I think since the beginning of information technology and sadly it hasn't gone away. And so biz ops is a new attempt to deal with that issue with a, you know, a new framework, eventually a broad set of solutions that increase the likelihood that will actually solve a business problem with an it capability. >>Right. You know, it's interesting to compare it with like dev ops, which I think a lot of people are probably familiar with, which was, you know, built around, uh, agile software development and a theory that we want to embrace change that that changes. Okay. And we want to be able to iterate quickly and incorporate that. And that's been happening in the software world for, for 20 plus years. What's taken so long to get that to the business side, because as the pace of change has changed on the software side, you know, that's a strategic issue in terms of execution, the business side that they need now to change priorities. And, you know, there's no PRDs and MRDs and big, giant strategic plans that sit on the shelf for five years. That's just not the way business works anymore. It took a long time to get here. >>Yeah, it did. And, you know, there had been previous attempts to make a better connection between business and it, there was the so called strategic alignment framework that a couple of friends of mine from Boston university developed, I think more than 20 years ago, but you know, now we have better technology for creating that linkage. And the, you know, the idea of kind of ops oriented frameworks is pretty pervasive now. So I think it's time for another serious attempt at it. >>And do you think doing it this way, right. With the, with the BizOps coalition, you know, getting a collection of, of, of kind of likeminded individuals and companies together, and actually even having a manifesto, which we're making this declarative statement of, of principles and values, you think that's what it takes to kind of drive this kind of beyond the experiment and actually, you know, get it done and really start to see some results in, in, uh, in production in the field. >>I think certainly no one vendor organization can pull this off single handedly. It does require a number of organizations collaborating and working together. So I think our coalition is a good idea and a manifesto is just a good way to kind of lay out what you see as the key principles of the idea. And that makes it much easier for everybody to understand and act on. >>I, I think it's just, it's really interesting having, you know, having them written down on paper and having it just be so clearly articulated both in terms of the, of the values as well as, as the, uh, the principles and the values, you know, business outcomes matter trust and collaboration, data-driven decisions, which is the number three of four, and then learn, respond and pivot. It doesn't seem like those should have to be spelled out so clearly, but, but obviously it helps to have them there. You can stick them on the wall and kind of remember what your priorities are, but you're the data guy. You're the analytics guy, uh, and a big piece of this is data and analytics and moving to data driven decisions. And principle number seven says, you know, today's organizations generate more data than humans can process and informed decisions can be augmented by machine learning and artificial intelligence right up your alley. You know, you've talked a number of times on kind of the mini stages of analytics. Um, and how has that evolved over over time, you know, as you think of analytics and machine learning, driving decisions beyond supporting decisions, but actually starting to make decisions in machine time. What's that, what's that thing for you? What does that make you, you know, start to think, wow, this is this going to be pretty significant. >>Yeah. Well, you know, this has been a longterm interest of mine. Um, the last generation of AI, I was very interested in expert systems. And then, um, I think, uh, more than 10 years ago, I wrote an article about automated decision-making using what was available then, which was rule-based approaches. Um, but you know, this addresses an issue that we've always had with analytics and AI. Um, you know, we, we tended to refer to those things as providing decision support, but the problem is that if the decision maker didn't want their support, didn't want to use them in order to make a decision, they didn't provide any value. And so the nice thing about automating decisions, um, with now contemporary AI tools is that we can ensure that data and analytics get brought into the decision without any possible disconnection. Now, I think humans still have something to add here, and we often will need to examine how that decision is being made and maybe even have the ability to override it. But in general, I think at least for, you know, repetitive tactical decisions, um, involving a lot of data, we want most of those, I think to be at least, um, recommended if not totally made by an algorithm or an AI based system. And that I believe would add to, um, the quality and the precision and the accuracy of decisions and in most organizations, >>No, I think, I think you just answered my next question before I, before I asked it, you know, we had dr. Robert Gates on the former secretary of defense on a few years back, and we were talking about machines and machines making decisions. And he said at that time, you know, the only weapon systems, uh, that actually had an automated trigger on it were on the North Korea and South Korea border. Um, everything else, as you said, had to go through a sub person before the final decision was made. And my question is, you know, what are kind of the attributes of the decision that enable us to more easily automated? And then how do you see that kind of morphing over time, both as the data to support that as well as our comfort level, um, enables us to turn more and more actual decisions over to the machine? >>Well, yeah, as I suggested we need, um, data and the data that we have to kind of train our models has to be high quality and current, and we need to know the outcomes of that data. You know, um, most machine learning models, at least in business are supervised. And that means we need to have labeled outcomes in the, in the training data. But I, you know, um, the pandemic that we're living through is a good illustration of the fact that, that the data also have to be reflective of current reality. And, you know, one of the things that we're finding out quite frequently these days is that, um, the data that we have do not reflect, you know, what it's like to do business in a pandemic. Um, I wrote a little piece about this recently with Jeff cam at wake forest university, we call it data science quarantined, and we interviewed with somebody who said, you know, it's amazing what eight weeks of zeros will do to your demand forecast. We just don't really know what happens in a pandemic. Um, our models maybe have to be put on the shelf for a little while and until we can develop some new ones or we can get some other guidelines into making decisions. So I think that's one of the key things with automated decision making. We have to make sure that the data from the past and that's all we have of course, is a good guide to, you know, what's happening in the present and the future as far as we understand it. >>Yeah. I used to joke when we started this calendar year 2020, it was finally the year that we know everything with the benefit of hindsight, but I turned down 20, 20 a year. We found out we actually know nothing and everything and thought we knew, but I want to, I want to follow up on that because you know, it did suddenly change everything, right? We've got this light switch moment. Everybody's working from home now we're many, many months into it, and it's going to continue for a while. I saw your interview with Bernard Marr and you had a really interesting comment that now we have to deal with this change. We don't have a lot of data and you talked about hold fold or double down. And, and I can't think of a more, you know, kind of appropriate metaphor for driving the value of the biz ops when now your whole portfolio strategy, um, these to really be questioned and, and, you know, you have to be really, uh, well, uh, executing on what you are, holding, what you're folding and what you're doubling down with this completely new environment. >>Well, yeah, and I hope I did this in the interview. I would like to say that I came up with that term, but it actually came from a friend of mine. Who's a senior executive at Genpact. And, um, I, um, used it mostly to talk about AI and AI applications, but I think you could, you could use it much more broadly to talk about your entire sort of portfolio of digital projects. You need to think about, well, um, given some constraints on resources and a difficult economy for a while, which of our projects do we want to keep going on pretty much the way we were and which ones are not that necessary anymore? You see a lot of that in AI, because we had so many pilots, somebody told me, you know, we've got more pilots around here than O'Hare airport and, and AI. Um, and then, but the ones that involve doubled down, they're even more important to you. They are, you know, a lot of organizations have found this out, um, in the pandemic on digital projects, it's more and more important for customers to be able to interact with you, um, digitally. And so you certainly wouldn't want to cancel those projects or put them on hold. So you double down on them and get them done faster and better. Right, >>Right. Uh, another, another thing that came up in my research that, that you quoted, um, was, was from Jeff Bezos, talking about the great bulk of what we do is quietly, but meaningfully improving core operations. You know, I think that is so core to this concept of not AI and machine learning and kind of the general sense, which, which gets way too much buzz, but really applied right. Applied to a specific problem. And that's where you start to see the value. And, you know, the, the BizOps, uh, manifesto is, is, is calling it out in this particular process. But I'd love to get your perspective as you know, you speak generally about this topic all the time, but how people should really be thinking about where are the applications where I can apply this technology to get direct business value. >>Yeah, well, you know, even talking about automated decisions, um, uh, the kind of once in a lifetime decisions, uh, the ones that, um, ag Lafley, the former CEO of Procter and gamble used to call the big swing decisions. You only get a few of those. He said in your tenure as CEO, those are probably not going to be the ones that you're automating in part because, um, you don't have much data about them. You're only making them a few times and in part, because, um, they really require that big picture thinking and the ability to kind of anticipate the future, that the best human decision makers, um, have. Um, but, um, in general, I think where they, I, the projects that are working well are, you know, what I call the low hanging fruit ones, the, some people even report to it referred to it as boring AI. >>So, you know, sucking data out of a contract in order to compare it to a bill of lading for what arrived at your supply chain companies can save or make a lot of money with that kind of comparison. It's not the most exciting thing, but AI, as you suggested is really good at those narrow kinds of tasks. It's not so good at the, at the really big moonshots, like curing cancer or, you know, figuring out well what's the best stock or bond under all or even autonomous vehicles. Um, we, we made some great progress in that area, but everybody seems to agree that they're not going to be perfect for quite a while, and we really don't want to be driving around on, um, and then very much unless they're, you know, good and all kinds of weather and with all kinds of pedestrian traffic and you know, that sort of thing, right? >>That's funny you bring up contract management. I had a buddy years ago, they had a startup around contract management and I've like, and this was way before we had the compute power today and cloud proliferation. I said, you know, how can you possibly build software around contract management? It's language, it's legal, ease. It's very specific. And he's like, Jeff, we just need to know where's the contract. And when does it expire? And who's the signatory. And he built a business on those, you know, very simple little facts that weren't being covered because their contracts are in people's drawers and files and homes. And Lord only knows. So it's really interesting, as you said, these kind of low hanging fruit opportunities where you can extract a lot of business value without trying to, you know, boil the ocean. >>Yeah. I mean, if you're Amazon, um, uh, Jeff Bezos thinks it's important to have some kind of billion dollar project. And he even says it's important to have a billion dollar failure or two every year. But I think most organizations probably are better off being a little less aggressive and, you know, sticking to, um, what AI has been doing for a long time, which is, you know, making smarter decisions based on, based on data. >>Right? So Tom, I want to shift gears one more time before, before we let you go on, on kind of a new topic for you, not really new, but you know, not, not a, the vast majority of, of your publications and that's the new way to work, you know, as, as the pandemic hit in mid March, right. And we had this light switch moment, everybody had to work from home and it was, you know, kind of crisis and get everybody set up. Well, you know, now we're five months, six months, seven months. A number of companies have said that people are not going to be going back to work for a while. And so we're going to continue on this for a while. And then even when it's not what it is now, it's not going to be what it was before. So, you know, I wonder, and I know you, you, uh, you teased, you're working on a new book, you know, some of your thoughts on, you know, kind of this new way to work and, and, and the human factors in this new, this new kind of reality that we're kind of evolving into, I guess. >>Yeah. I missed was an interest of mine. I think, um, back in the nineties, I wrote an article called, um, a coauthored, an article called two cheers for the virtual office. And, you know, it was just starting to emerge. Then some people were very excited about it. Some people were skeptical and, uh, we said two cheers rather than three cheers because clearly there's some shortcomings. And, you know, I keep seeing these pop up. It's great that we can work from our homes. It's great that we can, most of what we need to do with a digital interface, but, um, you know, things like innovation and creativity, and certainly, um, uh, a good, um, happy social life kind of requires some face to face contact every now and then. And so I, you know, I think we'll go back to an environment where there is some of that. >>Um, we'll have, um, times when people convene in one place so they can get to know each other face to face and learn from each other that way. And most of the time, I think it's a huge waste of people's time to commute into the office every day and to jump on airplanes, to, to, um, give every little, um, uh, sales call or give every little presentation. Uh, we just have to really narrow down what are the circumstances where face to face contact really matters. And when can we get by with digital? You know, I think one of the things in my current work I'm finding is that even when you have AI based decision making, you really need a good platform in which that all takes place. So in addition to these virtual platforms, we need to develop platforms that kind of structure the workflow for us and tell us what we should be doing next, then make automated decisions when necessary. And I think that ultimately is a big part of biz ops as well. It's not just the intelligence of an AI system, but it's the flow of work that kind of keeps things moving smoothly throughout your organization. >>I think such, such a huge opportunity as you just said, cause I forget the stats on how often we're interrupted with notifications between email texts, Slack, a sauna, Salesforce, the list goes on and on. So, you know, to put an AI layer between the person and all these systems that are begging for attention, you've written a book on the attention economy, which is a whole nother topic, we'll say for another day, you know, it, it really begs, it really begs for some assistance because you know, you just can't get him picked, you know, every two minutes and really get quality work done. It's just not, it's just not realistic. And you know what? I don't think that's a feature that we're looking for. >>I agree. Totally >>Tom. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation. I got to dig into the library. It's very long. So I might start at the attention economy. I haven't read that one. And to me, I think that's the fascinating thing in which we're living. So thank you for your time and, uh, great to see you. >>My pleasure, Jeff. Great to be here. >>All right. He's Tom I'm Jeff. You are watching the continuing coverage of the biz ops manifesto and Vail. Thanks for watching the cube. We'll see you next time.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of biz ops Manifesto unveiled. Brought to you by biz ops Coalition. Hey, welcome back your body, Jeffrey here with the Cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the busy ops manifesto unveiling its been in the works for a while. But today is the day that it actually kind of come out to the to the public. And we're excited to have a real industry luminary here to talk about what's going on, Why this is important and share his perspective. And we're happy to have from Cape Cod, I believe, is Tom Davenport. He is a distinguished author on professor at Babson College. We could go on. He's got a lot of great titles and and really illuminate airy in the area of big data and analytics. Thomas, great to see you. >>Thanks, Jeff. Happy to be here with you. Great. >>So let's just jump into it, you know, and getting ready for this. I came across your LinkedIn post. I think you did earlier this summer in June and right off the bat, the first sentence just grabbed my attention. I'm always interested in new attempts to address long term issues, Uh, in how technology works within businesses. Biz ops. What did you see in biz ops? That that kind of addresses one of these really big long term problems? >>Well, yeah. The long term problem is that we've had a poor connection between business people and I t people between business objectives and the i t. Solutions that address them. This has been going on, I think, since the beginning of information technology, and sadly, it hasn't gone away. And so busy ops is new attempt to deal with that issue with a, you know, a new framework. Eventually a broad set of solutions that increase the likelihood that will actually solve a business problem with a nightie capability. >>Right. You know, it's interesting to compare it with, like, Dev ops, which I think a lot of people are probably familiar with, which was, you know, built around a agile software development and the theory that we want to embrace change that that changes okay on. We wanna be able to iterate quickly and incorporate that, and that's been happening in the software world for for 20 plus years. What's taking so long to get that to the business side because the pace of change is change on the software side. You know, that's a strategic issue in terms of execution on the business side that they need now to change priorities. And, you know, there's no P R D S and M R. D s and big giant strategic plans that sit on the shelf for five years. That's just not the way business works anymore. Took a long time to get here. >>Yeah, it did. And, you know, there have been previous attempts to make a better connection between business and i t. There was the so called strategic alignment framework that a couple of friends of mine from Boston University developed, I think more than 20 years ago. But, you know, now we have better technology for creating that linkage. And the, you know, the idea of kind of ops oriented frameworks is pretty pervasive now. So I think it's, um you know, time for another serious attempt at it, >>right? And do you think doing it this way right with the bizarre coalition, you know, getting a collection of of kind of like minded individuals and companies together and actually even having a manifesto which were making this declarative statement of principles and values. You think that's what it takes to kind of drive this, you know, kind of beyond the experiment and actually, you know, get it done and really start to see some results in, in in production in the field. >>I think certainly no one vendor organization can pull this off single handedly. It does require a number of organizations collaborating and working together. So I think a coalition is a good idea, and a manifesto is just a good way to kind of lay out. What you see is the key principles of the idea, and that makes it much easier for everybody. Toe I understand and act on. >>Yeah, I I think it's just it's really interesting having, you know, having them written down on paper and having it just be so clearly articulated both in terms of the of the values as well as as the the principles and and the values, you know. Business outcomes, matter, trust and collaboration, data driven decisions, which is the number three or four and then learn, responded pivot. It doesn't seem like those should have to be spelled out so clearly. But obviously it helps to have them there. You can stick them on the wall and kind of remember what your priorities are. But you're the data guy. You're the analytics guy. Yeah, And a big piece of this is data analytics and moving to data driven decisions. And principle number seven says, you know, today's organizations generate more data than humans can process. And informed decisions can be augmented by machine learning and artificial intelligence right up your alley. You know, you've talked a number of times on kind of the many stages of analytics. Onda. How has that's evolved over over time? You know, it is You think of analytics and machine learning driving decisions beyond supporting decisions, but actually starting to make decisions in machine time. What's that? What's that think for you? What does that make you? You know, start to think Wow, this is This is gonna be pretty significant. >>Yeah, well, you know, this has been a long term interest of mine. Um, the last generation of a I I was very interested in expert systems. And then e think more than 10 years ago, I wrote an article about automated decision making using, um, what was available then, which is rule based approaches. But, you know, this address is an issue that we've always had with analytics and ai. Um, you know, we tended Thio refer to those things as providing decision support. The problem is that if the decision maker didn't want their support, didn't want to use them in order to make a decision, they didn't provide any value. And so the nice thing about automating decisions with now contemporary ai tools is that we can ensure that data and analytics get brought into the decision without any possible disconnection. Now, I think humans still have something to add here, and we often will need to examine how that decision is being made and maybe even have the ability to override it. But in general, I think, at least for, you know, repetitive tactical decisions, um, involving a lot of data. We want most of those I think, to be at least, um, recommended, if not totally made by analgesic rhythm or an AI based system, and that, I believe would add to the quality and the precision and the accuracy of decisions. And in most organizations, >>you know, I think I think you just answered my next question before I Before I asked it. You know, we had Dr Robert Gates on the former secretary of Defense on a few years back, and we were talking about machines and machines making decisions, and he said at that time, you know, the only weapon systems that actually had an automated trigger on it, We're on the North Korean South Korea border. Um, everything else that you said had to go through some person before the final decision was made. And my question is, you know what are kind of the attributes of the decision that enable us that more easily automated? And then how do you see that kind of morphing over time both as the the data to support that as well as our comfort level, Um, enables us to turn mawr mawr actual decisions over to the machine? >>Well, yeah, I suggested we need data, and the data that we have to kind of train our models has to be high quality and current, and we need to know the outcomes of the that data. You know, most machine learning models, at least in business, are supervised, and that means we need tohave labeled outcomes in the in the training data. But you know, the pandemic that we're living through is a good illustration of the fact that the data also have to be reflective of current reality. And, you know, one of the things that were finding out quite frequently these days is that the data that we have a do not reflect you know what it's like to do business in a pandemic. I wrote a little piece about this recently with Jeff Cam at Wake Forest University. We call it Data Science Quarantined and it we interviewed somebody who said, You know, it's amazing what eight weeks of zeros will do to your demand forecast. We just don't really know what happens in a pandemic. Our models may be have to be put on the shelf for a little while and until we can develop some new ones or we can get some other guidelines into making decisions. So I think that's one of the key things with automated decision making. We have toe make sure that the data from the past and you know that's all we have, of course, is a good guide toe. You know what's happening in the present and in the future, as far as we understand it. >>Yeah, I used to joke when we started this calendar year 2020 was finally the year that we know everything with the benefit of hindsight. But it turned out 2020 the year we found out we actually know nothing and everything >>we thought we d >>o. But I wanna I wanna follow up on that because, you know, it did suddenly change everything, right? We got this light switch moment. Everybody's working from home now. We're many, many months into it, and it's going to continue for a while. I saw your interview with Bernard Marr and you had a really interesting comment that now we have to deal with this change. We don't have a lot of data and you talked about hold, fold or double down, and And I can't think of, um or, you know, kind of appropriate metaphor for driving the value of the biz ops. When now your whole portfolio strategy, um, needs to really be questioned. And, you know, you have to be really well executing on what you are holding. What you're folding and what you're doubling down with this completely new environment? >>Well, yeah, And I hope I did this in the interview. I would like to say that I came up with that term, but it actually came from a friend of mine was a senior executive at gen. Packed, and I used it mostly to talk about AI and AI applications, but I think you could You could use it much more broadly to talk about your entire sort of portfolio. Digital projects you need to think about. Well, um, given some constraints on resource is and a difficulty economy for a while. Which of our projects do we wanna keep going on Pretty much the way we were for and which ones, um, are not that necessary anymore. You see a lot of that in a I because we had so many pilots. Somebody told me, You know, we've got more pilots around here than O'Hare Airport in a I, um and then the the ones that involve double down there, even mawr Important to you, they are. You know, a lot of organizations have found this out in the pandemic on digital projects. It's more and more important for customers to be ableto interact with you digitally. And so you certainly wouldn't want toe cancel those projects or put them on hold. So you double down on them, get them done faster and better. >>Another. Another thing I came up in my research that that you quoted um, was was from Jeff. Bezos is talking about the great bulk of what we do is quietly but meaning fleeing, improving core operations. You know, I think that is so core to this concept of not AI and machine learning and kind of the general sense, which which gets way too much buzz but really applied, applied to a specific problem. And that's where you start to see the value. And, you know, the biz ops manifesto is calling it out in this particular process. But I just love to get your perspective. As you know, you speak generally about this topic all the time, but how people should really be thinking about where the applications where I can apply this technology to get direct business value. >>Yeah, well, you know, even talking about automated decisions, um, the kind of once in a lifetime decisions, uh, the ones that a G laugh. Li, the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, used to call the big swing decisions. You only get a few of those, he said. In your tenure as CEO, those air probably not going to be the ones that you're automating in part because you don't have much data about them. Your you know, only making them a few times and in part because they really require that big picture thinking and the ability to kind of anticipate the future that the best human decision makers have. Um, but in general, I think where they I The projects that are working well are you know what I call the low hanging fruit ones? The some people even report to refer to it as boring A. I so you know, sucking data out of a contract in order to compare it Thio bill of lading for what arrived at your supply chain. Companies can save or make a lot of money with that kind of comparison. It's not the most exciting thing, but a I, as you suggest, is really good at those narrow kinds of tasks. Um, it's not so good at the at the really big Moonshots like curing cancer or, you know, figuring out well, what's the best stock or bond under all circumstances or even autonomous vehicles. We made some great progress in that area, but everybody seems to agree that they're not gonna be perfect for quite a while. And we really don't wanna be driving around on, um in that very much, unless they're, you know, good and all kinds of weather and with all kinds of pedestrian traffic. And you know that sort of thing, right? >>That's funny. Bring up contract management. I had a buddy years ago. They had a startup around contract management, and I'm like and this was way before we had the compute power today and cloud proliferation. I said, You know how How could you possibly built off around contract management? It's language. It's legalese. It's very specific. He's like Jeff. We just need to know where's the contract and when does it expire? And who's the signatory? And he built a business on those you know, very simple little facts that weren't being covered because their contracts from people's drawers and files and homes and Lord only knows so it's really interesting as you said. These kind of low hanging fruit opportunities where you could extract a lot of business value without trying to, you know, boil the ocean. >>Yeah, I mean, if you're Amazon, Jeff Bezos thinks it's important toe have some kind of billion dollar projects, and he even says it's important to have a billion dollar failure or two every year. But I think most organizations probably are better off being a little less aggressive and, you know, sticking to what a I has been doing for a long time, which is, you know, making smarter decisions based on based on data. >>Right? So, Tom, I want to shift gears one more time before before you let Ugo on on kind of a new topic for you, not really new, but you know, not not the vast majority of your publications. And that's the new way toe work, you know, as as the pandemic hit in mid March, right? And we had this light switch moment. Everybody had to work from home, and it was, you know, kind of crisis and get everybody set up. Well, you know, now we're five months, six months, seven months. A number of companies have said that people are not gonna be going back to work for a while, and so we're going to continue on this for a while, and then even when it's not what it is now, it's not gonna be what it was before. So, you know, I wonder and I know you, you tease. You're working on a a new book, you know, some of your thoughts on, you know, kind of this new way, uh, toe work and and and the human factors in this new, this new kind of reality that we're kind of evolving into, I guess, >>Yeah, this was an interest of mine. I think. Back in the nineties, I wrote an article called a co authored an article called Two Cheers for the Virtual Office. And, you know, it was just starting to emerge than some people were very excited about it. Some people were skeptical, and we said to cheers rather than three cheers because clearly there's some shortcomings and, you know, I keep seeing these pop up. It's it's great that we can work from our homes. It's great that we can accomplish most of what we need to do with a digital interface, but you know, things like innovation and creativity and certainly, um a A good, um, happy social life kind of requires some face to face contact every now and then. And so you know, I think we'll go back to an environment where there is some of that. Um, will have, um, time when people convene in one place so they can get to know each other face to face and learn from each other that way. And most of the time, I think it's a huge waste of people's time to commute into the office every day and toe jump on airplanes. Thio, Thio, give every little sales call or give every little presentation we just have to really narrow down. What are the circumstances, where face to face contact really matters and when can we get by with digital? You know, I think one of the things in my current work on finding is that even when you have AI based decision making, you really need a good platform in which that all takes place. So in addition to these virtual platforms, we need to develop platforms that kind of structure the workflow for us and tell us what we should be doing next and make automated decisions when necessary. And I think that ultimately is a big part of biz ops as well. It's not just the intelligence of an AI system, but it's the flow of work that kind of keeps things moving smoothly throughout your organization. Yeah, >>I think such such a huge opportunity as you just said, because I forget the stats on how often were interrupted with notifications between email text, slack asana, salesforce The list goes on and on. So, you know, t put an AI layer between the person and all these systems that are begging for attention. And you've written a you know, a book on the attention economy, which is a whole nother topic will say for another day. You know, it really begs. It really begs for some assistance because, you know, you just can't get him picked, you know, every two minutes and really get quality work done. It's just not it's just not realistic. And you know what? I don't think that's the future that we're looking for. >>Great. Totally. Alright, >>Tom. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation. I got to dig into the library. It's very long song. I might started the attention economy. I haven't read that one in to me. I think that's the fascinating thing in which we're living. So thank you for your time. And, uh, great to see you. >>My pleasure, Jeff. Great to be here. >>All right, take care. Alright. East, Tom. I'm Jeff. You are watching the continuing coverage of the biz ops manifesto. Unveil. Thanks for watching the Cube. We'll see you next time.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of biz ops Manifesto unveiled. Brought to you by biz ops Coalition. Hey, welcome back your body, Jeffrey here with the Cube. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the busy ops manifesto unveiling its been in the works for a while. But today is the day that it actually kind of come out to the to the public. And we're excited to have a real industry luminary here to talk about what's going on, Why this is important and share his perspective. And we're happy to have from Cape Cod, I believe, is Tom Davenport. He is a distinguished author on professor at Babson College. We could go on. He's got a lot of great titles and and really illuminate airy in the area of big data and analytics. Thomas, great to see you. >>Thanks, Jeff. Happy to be here with you. Great. >>So let's just jump into it, you know, and getting ready for this. I came across your LinkedIn post. I think you did earlier this summer in June and right off the bat, the first sentence just grabbed my attention. I'm always interested in new attempts to address long term issues, Uh, in how technology works within businesses. Biz ops. What did you see in biz ops? That that kind of addresses one of these really big long term problems? >>Well, yeah. The long term problem is that we've had a poor connection between business people and I t people between business objectives and the i t. Solutions that address them. This has been going on, I think, since the beginning of information technology, and sadly, it hasn't gone away. And so busy ops is new attempt to deal with that issue with a, you know, a new framework. Eventually a broad set of solutions that increase the likelihood that will actually solve a business problem with a nightie capability. >>Right. You know, it's interesting to compare it with, like, Dev ops, which I think a lot of people are probably familiar with, which was, you know, built around a agile software development and the theory that we want to embrace change that that changes okay on. We wanna be able to iterate quickly and incorporate that, and that's been happening in the software world for for 20 plus years. What's taking so long to get that to the business side because the pace of change is change on the software side. You know, that's a strategic issue in terms of execution on the business side that they need now to change priorities. And, you know, there's no P R D S and M R. D s and big giant strategic plans that sit on the shelf for five years. That's just not the way business works anymore. Took a long time to get here. >>Yeah, it did. And, you know, there have been previous attempts to make a better connection between business and i t. There was the so called strategic alignment framework that a couple of friends of mine from Boston University developed, I think more than 20 years ago. But, you know, now we have better technology for creating that linkage. And the, you know, the idea of kind of ops oriented frameworks is pretty pervasive now. So I think it's, um you know, time for another serious attempt at it, right? >>And do you think doing it this way right with the bizarre coalition, you know, getting a collection of of kind of like minded individuals and companies together and actually even having a manifesto which were making this declarative statement of principles and values. You think that's what it takes to kind of drive this, you know, kind of beyond the experiment and actually, you know, get it done and really start to see some results in, in in production in the field. >>Well, you know, the manifesto approach worked for Karl Marx and communism. So maybe it'll work. Here is Well, now, I think certainly no one vendor organization can pull this off single handedly. It does require a number of organizations collaborating and working together. So I think a coalition is a good idea, and a manifesto is just a good way to kind of lay out. What you see is the key principles of the idea, and that makes it much easier for everybody. Toe I understand and act on. >>Yeah, I I think it's just it's really interesting having you know, having them written down on paper and having it just be so clearly articulated both in terms of the of the values as well as as the the principles and and the values, you know, business outcomes, matter, trust and collaboration, data driven decisions, which is the number three or four and then learn responded Pivot, It doesn't seem like those should have to be spelled out so clearly, but obviously it helps to have them there. You can stick them on the wall and kind of remember what your priorities are. But you're the data guy. You're the analytics guy. Uh, and a big piece of this is data analytics and moving to data driven decisions. And principle number seven says, you know, today's organizations generate more data than humans can process. And informed decisions can be augmented by machine learning and artificial intelligence right up your alley. You know, you've talked a number of times on kind of the many stages of analytics Onda how that's evolved over over time. You know, it is you think of analytics and machine learning driving decisions beyond supporting decisions, but actually starting to make decisions in machine time. What's that? What's that think for you? What does that make you? You know, start to think Wow, this is this is gonna be pretty significant. >>Yeah, well, you know, this has been a long term interest of mine. Um, the last generation of a I I was very interested in expert systems. And then e think more than 10 years ago I wrote an article about automated decision making using, um, what was available then, which is rule based approaches. But, you know, this address is an issue that we've always had with analytics and ai. Um, you know, we tended Thio refer to those things as providing decision support. The problem is that if the decision maker didn't want their support, didn't want to use them in order to make a decision, they didn't provide any value. And so the nice thing about automating decisions with now contemporary ai tools is that we can ensure that data and analytics get brought into the decision without any possible disconnection. Now, I think humans still have something to add here, and we often will need to examine how that decision is being made and maybe even have the ability to override it. But in general, I think, at least for, you know, repetitive tactical decisions, um, involving a lot of data. We want most of those I think, to be at least, um, recommended, if not totally made by analgesic rhythm or an AI based system, and that I believe would add to the quality and the precision and the accuracy of decisions in in most organizations. >>You know, I think I think you just answered my next question before I before I asked it. You know, we had Dr Robert Gates on the former secretary of Defense on a few years back, and we were talking about machines and machines making decisions, and he said at that time, you know, the only weapon systems that actually had an automated trigger on it, We're on the North Korea and South Korea border. Everything else, as you said, had to go through some person before the final decision was made. And my question is, you know what are kind of the attributes of the decision that enable us to more easily automated? And then how do you see that kind of morphing over time both as the data to support that as well as our comfort level, Um, enables us to turn Maura Maura actual decisions over to the machine? >>Well, yeah, I suggested we need data and the data that we have to kind of train our models has to be high quality and current, and we need to know the outcomes of that data. You know, most machine learning models, at least in business, are supervised, and that means we need tohave labeled outcomes in the in the training data. But, you know, the pandemic that we're living through is a good illustration of the fact that the the data also have to be reflective of current reality. And, you know, one of the things that we're finding out quite frequently these days is that the data that we have do not reflect. You know what it's like to do business in it. Pandemic it. I wrote a little piece about this recently with Jeff Cam at Wake Forest University. We call it Data Science quarantined, and we interviewed somebody who said, You know, it's amazing what eight weeks of zeros will do to your demand forecast. We just don't really know what happens in a pandemic. Our models may be have to be put on the shelf for a little while and until we can develop some new ones or we can get some other guidelines into making decisions. So I think that's one of the key things with automated decision making. We have toe, make sure that the data from the past and you know, that's all we have, of course, is a good guide toe. You know what's happening in the present and and the future as far as we understand it. >>Yeah, I used to joke when we started this calendar year 2020 is finally the year that we know everything with the benefit of hindsight. But it turned out 2020 the year we found out we actually know nothing and everything way. But I wanna I wanna follow up on that because, you know, it did suddenly change everything, right? We got this light switch moment. Everybody's working from home now. We're many, many months into it, and it's going to continue for a while. I saw your interview with Bernard Marr and you had a really interesting comment that now we have to deal with this change. We don't have a lot of data and you talked about hold, fold or double down and and I can't think of, um or, you know, kind of appropriate metaphor for driving the value of the biz ops. When now your whole portfolio strategy, um, needs to really be questioned. And, you know, You have to be really well, executing on what you are holding, what you're folding and what you're doubling down with this completely new environment. >>Well, yeah, And I hope I did this in the interview. I would like to say that I came up with that term, but it actually came from a friend of mine who's a senior executive at gen. Packed. And I used it mostly to talk about AI and AI applications, but I think you could You could use it much more broadly to talk about your entire sort of portfolio of digital projects you need to think about. Well, um, given some constraints on resource is and a difficulty economy for a while. Which of our projects do we wanna keep going on Pretty much the way we were And which ones, um, are not that necessary anymore. You see a lot of that in a I because we had so many pilots, somebody for me, you know, we've got more pilots around here, then O'Hare airport in a I, um and then the the ones that involve double down there, even mawr Important to you, they are, you know, a lot of organizations have found this out in the pandemic on digital projects, it's more and more important for customers to be ableto interact with you, um, digitally. And so you certainly wouldn't want toe cancel those projects or put them on hold. So you double down on them, get them done faster and better. >>Another. Another thing that came up in my research that that you quoted, um, was was from Jeff. Bezos is talking about the great bulk of what we do is quietly but meaning fleeing, improving core operations. You know, I think that is so core to this concept of not AI and machine learning and kind of the general sense, which which gets way too much buzz but really applied, applied to a specific problem. And that's where you start to see the value and, you know, the biz ops. Uh, manifesto is calling it out in this particular process, but I just love to get your perspective. As you know, you speak generally about this topic all the time, but how people should really be thinking about where the applications where I can apply this technology to get direct business value. >>Yeah, well, you know, even talking about automated decisions? Uh, the kind of once in a lifetime decisions, uh, the ones that a g laugh Li, the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, used to call the big swing decisions. You only get a few of those, he said. In your tenure as CEO, those air probably not going to be the ones that you're automating in part because you don't have much data about them. You're only making them a few times, and in part because they really require that big picture thinking and the ability to kind of anticipate the future that the best human decision makers have. Um, but in general, I think where they I the projects that are working well are you know what I call the low hanging fruit ones? The some people even report to refer to it as boring A I so you know, sucking data out of a contract in order to compare it Thio bill of lading for what arrived at your supply chain. Companies can save or make a lot of money with that kind of comparison. It's not the most exciting thing, but a I, as you suggest, is really good at those narrow kinds of tasks. Um, it's not so good at the at the really big Moonshots like curing cancer or, you know, figuring out well, what's the best stock or bond under all circumstances or even autonomous vehicles. We made some great progress in that area, but everybody seems to agree that they're not going to be perfect for quite a while. And we really don't wanna be driving around on, um in that very much, unless they're, you know, good and all kinds of weather and with all kinds of pedestrian traffic. And you know that sort of thing, right? >>That's funny. Bring up contract management. I had a buddy years ago. They had a startup around contract management, and I'm like, and this was way before we had the compute power today and and cloud proliferation. I said, You know how How could you possibly built off around contract management? It's language. It's legalese. It's very specific. He's like Jeff. We just need to know where's the contract and when does it expire? And who's a signatory? And he built a business on those you know, very simple little facts that weren't being covered because their contracts from People's drawers and files and homes, and Lord only knows So it's really interesting, as you said, these kind of low hanging fruit opportunities where you could extract a lot of business value without trying to, you know, boil the ocean. >>Yeah, I mean, if you're Amazon, Jeff Bezos thinks it's important toe have some kind of billion dollar projects, and he even says it's important to have a billion dollar failure or two every year. But I think most organizations probably are better off being a little less aggressive and, you know, sticking to what a I has been doing for a long time, which is, you know, making smarter decisions based on based on data. >>Right? So, Tom, I want to shift gears one more time before before you let Ugo on on kind of a new topic for you, not really new, but you know, not not the vast majority of your publications. And that's the new way toe work, you know, as as the pandemic hit in mid March, right? And we had this light switch moment. Everybody had to work from home, and it was, you know, kind of crisis and get everybody set up well you know, Now we're five months, six months, seven months. A number of companies have said that people are not gonna be going back to work for a while. And so we're going to continue on this for a while, and then even when it's not what it is now, it's not gonna be what it was before. So, you know, I wonder and I know you, you tease. You're working on a a new book, you know, some of your thoughts on, you know, kind of this new way. Uh, toe work and and and the human factors in this new, this new kind of reality that we're kind of evolving into, I guess. >>Yeah, This was an interest of mine. I think back in the nineties, I wrote an article called Ah Co authored an article called Two Cheers for the Virtual Office. And, you know, it was just starting to emerge. Then some people were very excited about it. Some people were skeptical and we said to cheers rather than three cheers because clearly there's some shortcomings and, you know, I keep seeing these pop up. It's great that we can work from our homes. It's great that we can accomplish most of what we need to do with a digital interface. But you know, things like innovation and creativity and certainly a a good, um, happy social life kind of requires some face to face contact every now and then. And so you know, I think we'll go back to an environment where there is some of that. We'll have, um, time when people convene in one place so they can get to know each other face to face and learn from each other that way. And most of the time, I think it's a huge waste of people's time to commute into the office every day and toe jump on airplanes. Thio, Thio give every little mhm, uh, sales call or give every little presentation. We just have to really narrow down. What are the circumstances, where face to face contact really matters and when can we get by with digital? You know, I think one of the things in my current work I'm finding is that even when you have a I based decision making, you really need a good platform in which that all takes place. So in addition to these virtual platforms, We need to develop platforms that kind of structure the workflow for us and tell us what we should be doing next and make automated decisions when necessary. And I think that ultimately is a big part of biz ops as well. It's not just the intelligence oven, a isis some, but it's the flow of work that kind of keeps things moving smoothly throughout your organization. Yeah, >>I think such such a huge opportunity as you just said, because I forget the stats on how often were interrupted with notifications between email text, slack asana, salesforce The list goes on on and on. So, you know, t put an AI layer between the person and all these systems that are begging for attention. And you've written a you know, a book on the attention economy, which is a whole nother topic will say for another day. You know, it really begs. It really begs for some assistance because, you know, you just can't get him picked, you know, every two minutes and really get quality work done. It's just not it's just not realistic. And you know what? I don't think that's the future that we're looking for. >>Great totally alright, >>Tom. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really enjoyed the conversation. I gotta dig into the library. It's very long song. I might started the attention economy. I haven't read that one in to me. I think that's the fascinating thing in which we're living. So thank you for your time. And, uh, great to see you. >>My pleasure, Jeff. Great to be here. >>All right, take care. Alright. He's Tom. I'm Jeff. You are watching the continuing coverage of the biz ops manifesto. Unveil. Thanks for watching. The Cube will see you next time.

>> Announcer: From around the globe. It's theCUBE. With digital coverage of BizOps Manifesto Unveiled. Brought to you by BizOps Coalition. >> Hey, welcome back everybody ,Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the BizOps Manifesto Unveiled. Something has been in the works for a little while. Today's the formal unveiling and we're excited to have three of the core founding members of the manifesto, authors of the manifesto, if you will. And joining us again, we've had them all on individually, now we're going to have a great power panel. First up, we're going to have Mik Kersten returning. He's the founder and CEO of Tasktop. Mik, good to see you again. Where are you dialing in from? >> Great to see you again, Jeff. I'm dialing from Vancouver, Canada. >> Vancouver, Canada. One of my favorite cities in the whole wide world. Also we've got Tom Davenport, coming in from across the country. He's a distinguished professor and author from Babson College. Tom, great to see you. And I think you said you're at a fun exotic place on the East Coast. >> From Massachusetts, Cape Cod. >> Nice, great to see you again. And also joining Serge Lucio. He is the VP and General Manager Enterprise Software Division at Broadcom. Serge, great to see you again, where are you coming in from? >> From Boston right next to Cape Cod. >> Terrific. So welcome back, everybody again. Congratulations on this day. I know it's been a lot of work to get here for this unveil. But let's just jump into it. BizOps Manifesto, what was the initial reason to do this? And how did you decide to do it in a kind of a coalition, way bringing together a group of people versus just making it an internal company initiative that you know, you can do better stuff within your own company? Serge, why don't we start with you? >> Yeah, so I think we were at a really critical juncture, right. Many large enterprises are basically struggling with their digital transformation. In fact, many recognized that the business (indistinct) collaboration has been one of the major impediments to drive that kind of transformation. And if we look at the industry today, many people are, whether we're talking about vendors or system decorators, consulting firms, are talking about the same kind of concepts, but using very different language. And so we believe that bringing all these different players together as part of the coalition and formalizing, basically the core principles and values in a BizOps Manifesto, we can really start to kind of have a much bigger movement where we can all talk about kind of the same concepts and we can really start to provide, could have a much better support for large organizations to transform. So whether it is technology or services or training, I think that's really the value of bringing all of these players together. >> Great. And Mik to you. Why did you get involved in this effort? >> So I've been close and follow the agile movement since it started two decades ago with that manifesto. And I think we got a lot of improvement at the team level and I think as Serge has noted, we really need to improve at the business level. Every company is trying to become a software innovator, trying to make sure that they can pivot that quickly and then changing market economy and what everyone's dealing with in terms of needing to deliver value to customers sooner. However, agile practices have really focused that these metrics, these measures and understanding processes that help teams be productive. Those things now need to be elevated to the business as a whole. And that just hasn't happened. Organizations are actually failing because they're measuring activities and how they're becoming more agile, how teams are functioning not how much quickly they're delivering value to the customer. So we need to now move past that. And that's exactly what the BizOps Manifesto provides. >> Right, great And Tom to you, you've been covering tech for a very very long time. You've been looking at really hard challenges and a lot of work around analytics and data and data evolution. So there's a definitely a data angle here. I wonder if you could kind of share your perspective of what you got excited to sign onto this manifesto. >> Sure. Well, I have, you know, for the past 15 or 20 years, I've been focusing on Data Analytics and AI, but before that I was a process management guy and a knowledge management guy. And in general, I think, you know we've just kind of optimize that to narrow a level whether you're talking about agile or DevOps or MLops, any of these kind of ops oriented movements. We're making individual project performance and productivity better but we're not changing the business effectively enough. And that's the thing that appealed to me about the BizOps idea that we're finally creating a closer connection between what we do with technology and how it changes the business and provides value to it. >> That's great. Serge back to you, right. I mean, people have been talking about digital transformation for a long time and it's been you know, kind of trucking along and then COVID hit and it was instant light switch. Everyone's working from home, you've got a lot more reliance on your digital tools, digital communication, both within your customer base and your partner base but also then your employees. One of you can share how that really pushed this all along, right. Because now suddenly the acceleration of digital transformation is higher. Even more importantly, you got much more critical decisions to make into what you do next. So kind of your portfolio management of projects has been elevated significantly when maybe revenues are down and you really have to prioritize and get it right. >> Yeah. Maybe I'll just start by quoting Satina Nello, basically recently said that there's been two years of digital transformation just last two months. And in any many ways that's true. But yet when we look at large enterprises, they're still struggling with a kind of a changes in culture. That they really need to drive to be able to disrupt themselves. And not surprisingly you know, when we look at certain parts of the industry you know, we see some things which are very disturbing, right? About 40% of the personal loans today, are being originated by fintechs of a like of Sophie or LendingClub, right? Not to traditional brick and mortar for a bank. And so the, well, there is kind of a much more of an appetite and it's a more of a survival type of driver these days. The reality is that in order for these large enterprises to truly transform and engage on this digital transformation they need to start to really align the business in IT. You know, in many ways and make cover that agile really emerge from the core desire to truly improve software predictability which we've really missed is all that we start to aligning the software predictability to business predictability and to be able to have continual sleep continuous improvement and measurement of business outcomes. So by aligning that of these discuss inward metrics that's, IT is typically being using to business outcomes. We think we can start to really help different stakeholders within the organization to collaborate. So I think there is more than ever. There's an imperative to acts now and resolves I think is kind of the right approach to drive that kind of transformation. >> Great. I want to follow up on the culture comment with you, Tom because you've talked before about kind of process flow and process flow throughout a whore and an organization. And, you know, we talk about people process and tech all the time. And I think the tech is the easy part compared to actually changing the people the way they think. And then the actual processes that they put in place. It's a much more difficult issue than just the tech issue to get this digital transformation in your organization. >> Yeah. You know, I've always found that the soft stuff about, you know, the culture of a behavior the values is the hard stuff to change and more and more we realized that to be successful with any kind of digital transformation you have to change people's behaviors and attitudes. We haven't made as much progress in that area as we might have. I mean, I've done some surveys suggesting that most organizations still don't have data driven cultures. And in many cases there is a lower percentage of companies that say they have that then did a few years ago. So we're kind of moving in the wrong direction, which means I think that we have to start explicitly addressing that cultural, behavioral dimension and not just assuming that it will happen if we build system. You know, if we build it, they won't necessarily come. >> Right. So I want to go to you Nick. 'Cause you know, we're talking about workflows and flow and, and you've written about flow both in terms of, you know, moving things along a process and trying to find bottlenecks, identify bottlenecks which is now even more important again when these decisions are much more critical 'cause you have a lot less wiggle room in tough times, but you also talked about flow from the culture side and the people side. So, I wanted if you can just share your thoughts on, you know, using flow as a way to think about things, to get the answers better. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I'll refer back to what Tom has said. If you're optimized, you need to optimize your system. You need to optimize how you innovate and how you deliver value to the business and the customer. Now, what we've noticed in the data, since that we've learned from customers, value streams, enterprise organizations value streams, is that when it's taking six months at the end to deliver that value with the flow is that slow. You've got a bunch of unhappy developers unhappy customers when you're innovating house. So high performing organizations we can measure their end flow time and dates. All of a sudden that feedback loop the satisfaction your developer's measurably goes up. So not only do you have people context, switching glass you're delivering so much more value to customers at a lower cost because you've optimized for flow rather than optimizing for these other approximate tricks that we use which is how efficient is my agile team. How quickly can we deploy software? Those are important, but they do not provide the value of agility of fast learning of adaptability to the business. And that's exactly what the BizOps Manifesto pushes your organization to do. You need to put in place this new operating model that's based on flow on the delivery of business value and on bringing value to market much more quickly than you were before. >> Right. I love that. And I'm going back to you, Tom, on that to follow up 'cause I think, I don't think people think enough about how they prioritize what they're optimizing for 'cause you know if you're optimizing for A versus B, you know you can have a very different product that you kick out and let you know. My favorite example is with Clayton Christensen and innovator's dilemma talking about the three inch hard drive. If you optimize it for power, you know, is one thing if you optimize it for vibration is another thing and sure enough, you know, they missed it on the poem because it was the game console which drove that whole business. So when you when you're talking to customers and we think we hear it with cloud all the time people optimizing for a cost efficiency instead of thinking about it as an innovation tool. How do you help them kind of rethink and really, you know, force them to look at the prioritization and make sure they're prioritizing on the right thing is make just said what are you optimizing for? >> Oh yeah, you have one of the most important aspects of any decision or attempt to resolve a problem in an organization is the framing process. And you know, it's a difficult aspect to the decision to frame it correctly in the first place. There, it's not a technology issue. In many cases, it's largely a human issue, but if you frame that decision or that problem incorrectly to narrowly say, or you frame it as an either or situation where you could actually have some of both, it's very difficult for the process to work out correctly. So in many cases that I think we need to think more at the beginning about how we bring this issue or this decision in the best way possible before we charge off and build a system to support it. You know, it's worth that extra time to think carefully about how the decision has been structured. >> Right. Serge, I want to go back to you and talk about the human factors, because as we've just discussed, you could put it in great technology, but if the culture doesn't adopt it and people don't feel good about it, you know, it's not going to be successful and that's going to reflect poorly on the technology, even if it had nothing to do with it. And you know, when you look at the core values of the Bezos Manifesto, you know, a big one is trust and collaboration, you know, learn, respond and pivot. One of you can share your thoughts on trying to get that cultural shift so that you can have success with the people or excuse me, with the technology in the process and helping customers, you know, take this more trustworthy and kind of proactive position. >> So I think, at the ground level, it truly starts with the realization that we're all different. We come from different backgrounds. Often times we tend to blame the data. It's not uncommon my experiments that we spend the first you know 30 minutes of any kind of one hour conversation to debate the validity of the data. And so one of the first kind of probably manifestations that we've had or revelations as we start to engage with our customers is like just exposing high-fidelity data sets to different stakeholders from their different lens. We start to enable these different stakeholders to not debate the data. That's really collaborate to find a solution. So in many ways, when we think about kind of the types of changes that we're trying to truly effect around data driven decision making it's all about bringing the data in context, the context that is relevant and understandable for different stakeholders, whether we're talking about an operator or a developer or a business analyst. So that's, the first thing. The second layer I think, is really to provide context to what people are doing in their specific cycle. And so I think one of the best examples I have is if you start to be able to align business KPI whether you are counting you know, sales per hour, or the engagements of your users on your mobile applications, whatever it is. You can start to connect that KPI to business KPI to the KPIs that developers might be looking at, whether it is the number of defects or a velocity or whatever, you know metrics that they are used to actually track. You start to be able to actually contextualize in what we are the effecting, basically a metric that is really relevant in which we see is that this is a much more systematic way to approach the transformation than say, you know, some organizations kind of creating some of these new products or services or initiatives to drive engagements, right? So if you look at zoom for instance, zoom giving away it's service to education, is all about, I mean, there's obviously a marketing aspect in therapists. It's fundamentally about trying to drive also the engagement of their own teams. And because now they're doing something for good and the organizations are trying to do that. But you only can do this kind of things in a limited way. And so you really want to start to rethink how you connect to everybody's kind of a business objective through data and now you start to get people to stare at the same data from their own lens and collaborate on all the data. >> Right, great That's a good. Tom I want to go back to you. You've been studying IT for a long time, writing lots of books and getting into it. Why now, you know, what why now (laughs) are we finally aligning business objectives with IT objectives? You know, why didn't this happen before? And you know, what are the factors that are making now the time for this move with the BizOps? >> Well, much of a past, IT was sort of a back office related activity. And, you know, it was important for producing your pay check and capturing the customer orders but the business wasn't built around it. Now, every organization needs to be a software business data business a digital business, the auntie has been raised considerably. And if you aren't making that connection between your business objectives and the technology that supports it you run a pretty big risk of, you know going out of business or losing out to competitors totally. So, and even if you're you know, an industry that hasn't historically been terribly technology oriented customer expectations flow from, you know, the digital native companies that they work with to basically every industry. So you're compared against the best in the world. So we don't really have the luxury anymore of screwing up our IT projects or building things that don't really work for the business. It's mission critical that we do that well almost every time. >> Right. And I just want to follow up by that, Tom In terms of the, you've talked extensively about kind of these evolutions of data and analytics from artisanal stage to the big data stage, the data economy stage the AI driven stage and what I find diff interesting that all those stages, you always put a start date. You never put an end date. So, you know, is the big data I'm just going to use that generically moment in time, finally here, where we're you know, off mahogany row with the data scientists but actually can start to see the promise of delivering the right insight to the right person at the right time to make that decision. >> Well, I think it is true that in general, these previous stages never seemed to go away. The artisanal stuff is still being done but we would like for less and lesser of it to be artisanal, we can't really afford for everything to be artisanal anymore. It's too labor and time consuming to do things that way. So we shift more and more of it to be done through automation and to be done with a higher level of productivity. And, you know at some point maybe we reached the stage where we don't do anything artisanally anymore. I'm not sure we're there yet but you know, we are making progress. >> Right And Mick, back to you in terms of looking at agile 'cause you're such a student of agile, when you look at the opportunity with BizOps and taking the lessons from agile, you know what's been the inhibitor to stop this in the past. And what are you so excited about? You know, taking this approach will enable. >> Yeah. I think both Serge and Tom hit on this is that in agile what's happened is that we've been you know measuring tiny subsets of the value stream right. We need to elevate the data's there. Developers are working on these tools that delivering features that the foundations for great culture are there. I spent two decades as a developer. And when I was really happy is when I was able to deliver value to customers, the quicker I was able to do that the fewer impediments are in my way the quicker was deployed and running in the cloud the happier I was, and that's exactly what's happening. If we can just get the right data elevated to the business, not just to the agile teams but really these values of ours are to make sure that you've got these data driven decisions with meaningful data that's oriented around delivering value to customers. Not only these legacies that Tom touched on, which has cost center metrics from an IT, for IT being a cost center and something that provided email and then back office systems. So we need to rapidly shift to those new meaningful metrics that are customized business centric and make sure that every developer the organization is focused on those as well as the business itself, that we're measuring value and we're helping that value flow without interruptions. >> I love that Mik 'cause if you don't measure it, you can't improve on it but you got to be measuring the right thing. So gentlemen, thank you again for your time. Congratulations on the unveil of the BizOps Manifesto and bringing together this coalition of industry experts to get behind this. And you know there's probably never been a more important time than now to make sure that your prioritization is in the right spot and you're not wasting resources where you're not going to get the ROI. So congratulations again. And thank you for sharing your thoughts with us here on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you from Vancouver. >> Alright, so we had Serge, Tom and Mik. I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. It's a BizOps Manifesto Unveiled. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (soft music)

>>covering the space and cybersecurity symposium 2020 hosted by Cal poly. Hold on. Welcome to this special presentation with Cal poly hosting the space and cybersecurity symposium, 2020 virtual, um, John for your host with the cube and Silicon angle here in our Palo Alto studios with our remote guests, we couldn't be there in person, but we're going to be here remotely. Got a great session and a panel for one hour topic preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow, but a great lineup. Bill Britain, Lieutenant Colonel from the us air force, retired vice president for information technology and CIO and the director of the California cyber security Institute for Cal poly bill. Thanks for joining us, dr. Amy Fisher, who's the Dean of the college of engineering at Cal poly and trunk fam professor and researcher at the U S air force Academy. Folks, thanks for joining me today. >>Our pleasure got a great, great panel. This is one of my favorite topics preparing students for the next generation, the jobs for today and tomorrow. We've got an hour. I'd love you guys to start with an opening statement, to kick things off a bill. We'll start with you. Well, I'm really pleased to be, to start on this. Um, as the director for the cybersecurity Institute and the CIO at Cal poly, it's really a fun, exciting job because as a Polytechnic technology, as such a forefront in what we're doing, and we've had a, a wonderful opportunity being 40 miles from Vandenberg air force base to really look at the nexus of space and cyber security. And if you add into that, uh, both commercial government and civil space and cybersecurity, this is an expanding wide open time for cyber and space. In that role that we have with the cyber security Institute, we partner with elements of the state and the university. >>And we try to really add value above our academic level, which is some of the highest in the nation and to really merge down and go a little lower and start younger. So we actually are running the week prior to this showing a cybersecurity competition for high schools or middle schools in the state of California, that competition this year is based on a scenario around hacking of a commercial satellite and the forensics of the payload that was hacked and the networks associated with it. This is going to be done using products like Wireshark autopsy and other tools that will give those high school students. What we hope is a huge desire to follow up and go into cyber and cyber space and space and follow that career path. And either come to Cal poly or some other institution that's going to let them really expand their horizons in cybersecurity and space for the future >>Of our nation. >>Bill, thanks for that intro, by the way, it's gonna give you props for an amazing team and job you guys are doing at Cal poly, that Dex hub and the efforts you guys are having with your challenge. Congratulations on that great work. Thank you >>Star team. It's absolutely amazing. You find that much talent in one location. And I think Amy is going to tell you she's got the same amount of talent in her staff. So it's, it's a great place to be. >>Amy flasher. You guys have a great organization down there, amazing curriculum, grazing people, great community, your opening statement. >>Hello everybody. It's really great to be a part of this panel on behalf of the Cal poly college of engineering here at Cal poly, we really take preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow completely seriously. And we claim that our students really graduate. So they're ready day one for their first real job, but that means that in getting them to that point, we have to help them get valuable and meaningful job experience before they graduate, but through our curriculum and through multiple internship or summer research opportunities. So we focus our curriculum on what we call a learn by doing philosophy. And this means that we have a combination of practical experience and learn by doing both in and out of the classroom. And we find that to be really critical for preparing students for the workforce here at Cal poly, we have more than 6,000 engineering students. >>We're one of the largest undergraduate engineering schools in the country. Um, and us news ranks us the eighth best undergraduate engineering program in the, in the country and the top ranked state school. We're really, really proud that we offer this impactful hands on engineering education that really exceeds that of virtually all private universities while reaching a wider audience of students. We offer 14 degree programs and really we're talking today about cyber and space. And I think most of those degree programs can really make an impact in the space and cybersecurity economy. And this includes not only things like Aero and cyber directly, but also electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, materials, engineering, even manufacturing, civil and biomedical engineering. As there's a lot of infrastructure needs that go into supporting launch capabilities. Our aerospace program graduates hundreds of aerospace engineers, and most of them are working right here in California. >>I'm with many of our corporate partners, including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon space, X, Virgin, galactic JPL, and so many other places where we have Cal poly engineer's impacting the space economy. Our cybersecurity focus is found mainly in our computer science and software engineering programs. And it's really a rapidly growing interest among our students. Computer science is our most popular major and industry interest and partnerships are integrated into our curriculum. And we do that oftentimes through support from industry. So we have partnerships with Northrop Grumman for professorship and a cyber lab and from PG and E for critical infrastructure, cybersecurity lab, and professorship. And we think that industry partnerships like these are really critical to preparing students for the future as the field's evolving so quickly and making sure we adapt our facilities and our curriculum to stay in line with what we're seeing in industry is incredibly important. >>In our aerospace program, we have an educational partnership with the air force research labs. That's allowing us to install new high performance computing capabilities and a space environments lab. That's going to enhance our satellite design capabilities. And if we talk about satellite design, Cal poly is the founding home of the cube sat program, which pioneered small satellite capabilities. And we remain the worldwide leader in maintaining the cube set standard. And our student program has launched more cube sets than any other program. So here again, we have this learn by doing experience every year for dozens of aerospace, electrical, computer science, mechanical engineering students, and other student activities that we think are just as important include ethical hacking through our white hat club, Cal poly space systems, which does really, really big rocket launches and our support program for women in both of these fields like wish, which is women in software and hardware. >>Now, you know, really trying to bring in a wide variety of people into these fields is incredibly important and outreach and support to those demographics. Traditionally underrepresented in these fields is going to be really critical to future success. So by drawing on the lived experiences by people with different types of backgrounds, while we develop the type of culture and environment where all of us can get to the best solution. So in terms of bringing people into the field, we see that research shows, we need to reach kids when they're in late elementary and middle schools to really overcome that cultural bias that works against diversity in our fields. And you heard bill talking about the cyber cybersec, the California cybersecurity institutes a year late cyber challenge. There's a lot of other people who are working to bring in a wider variety of, uh, of people into the field, like girl Scouts, which has introduced dozens of new badges over the past few years, including a whole cybersecurity series of badges and a concert with Palo Alto networks. So we have our work cut out for us, but we know what we need to do. And if we're really committed to prep properly preparing the workforce for today and tomorrow, I think our future is going to be bright. I'm looking forward to our discussion today. >>Yeah, you got a flashy for great, great comment, opening statement and congratulations. You got the right formula down there, the right mindset, and you got a lot of talent and community as well. Thank thank you for that opening statement. Next step from Colorado Springs, trunk fam, who's a professor and researcher. The us air force Academy is doing a lot of research around the areas that are most important for the intersection of space and technology trunk. >>Good afternoon, first electric and Cal poli for the opportunity. And today I want to go briefly about cyber security in S application. Whenever we talk about cyber security, the impression is got yes, a new phew that is really highly complex involving a lot of technical area. But in reality, in my personal opinion, it is in be complex because involve many disciplines. The first thing we think about is computer engineering and computer networking, but it's also involving communication sociology, law practice. And this practice of cyber security goes in on the info computer expert, but it's also info everybody else who has a computing device that is connected to the internet. And this participation is obviously every body in today's environment. When we think about the internet, we know that is a good source of information, but come with the convenience of information that we can access. >>We are constantly faced in being from the internet. Some of them, we might be aware of some of them we might not be aware of. For example, when we search on the internet, a lot of time, our browser will be saved and gotten this site is not trusted. So we will be more careful. What about the sites that we trusted? We know getting those salad chicken sites, but they're not a hundred percent good at proof. What happened? It was all side, uh, attack by hacker. And then they will be a silent source that we might not be aware of. So in the reality, we need to be more practicing the, um, cyber security from our SIBO point of view and not from a technical point of view. When we talk about space application, we should know that all the hardware, a computer based tool by computer system and therefore the hardware and the software must go through some certification process so that they can be record that air with the flight. >>What the, when we know that in the certification process is focusing on the functionality of the hardware and software, but one aspect that is explicitly and implicitly required is the security of those components. And we know that those components have to be connected with the ground control station and be communication is through the air, through the layby or signal. So anybody who has access to those communication regular signal will be able to control the space system that we put up there. And we certainly do not want our system to be hijacked by a third party. >>I'm not going to aspect of cybersecurity is we try to design the space system in a very strong manner. So it's almost impossible to hack in, but what about some August week system that might be connected to so strong system? For example, the spare system will be connected to the ground control station and on the ground control station, we have the human controller in those people have cell phone. They are allowed to use cell phones for communication, but at the same time, they are connected to the internet, to the cell phone and their cell phone might be connected to the computer that control the flight software and hardware. So what I want to say is that we try to build strong system and we protected them, but there will be some weaker system that we could not intended, but exists to be connected to our strong system. And those are the points that hacker will be trying to attack. If we know how to control the access to those points, we will be having a much better system for the space system. And when we see the cybersecurity that is requiring the participation everywhere, it's important to Merck that there is a source of opportunity for students to engage the workforce. To concede the obviously student in engineering can focus their knowledge and expertise to provide technological solution, to protect the system that we view. But we also >>Have students in business who can focus to write a business plan to reach the market. We also have student in law who can focus policy governing the cyber security. And we also have student in education who can focus the expert. She should be saying how to teach cyber security practice and students can focus the effort to implement security measures and it implies job opportunity. >>Thank you trunk for those great comments, great technology opportunities, but interesting as well as the theme that we're seeing across the entire symposium and in the virtual hallways that we're hearing conversations and you pointed out some of them, dr. Fleischer did as well. And bill, you mentioned it. It's not one thing. It's not just technology, it's different skills. And, um, Amy, you mentioned that computer science is the hottest degree, but you have the hottest aerospace program in the world. I mean, so all of this is kind of balancing it's interdisciplinary. It's a structural change before we get into some of the, um, how they prepare the students. Can you guys talk about some of the structural changes that are modern now in preparing, um, in these opportunities because societal impact is a law potentially impact it's, it's how we educate there's no cross-discipline skillsets. It's not just get the degree, see out in the field bill, you want to start. >>Well, what's really fun about this job is, is that in the air force, uh, I worked in the space and missile business and what we saw was a heavy reliance on checklist format, security procedures, analog systems, and what we're seeing now in our world, both in the government and the commercial side, uh, is a move to a digital environment. And the digital environment is a very quick and adaptive environment. And it's going to require a digital understanding. Matter of fact, um, the, uh, under secretary of the air force for acquisition, uh, rev recently referenced the need to understand the digital environment and how that's affecting acquisition. So as, as both Amy, um, and trunk said, even business students are now in the >>Cybersecurity business. And, and so, again, what we're seeing is, is the change. Now, another phenomenon that we're seeing in the space world is there's just so much data. Uh, one of the ways that we addressed that in the past was to look at high performance computing. It was a lot stricter control over how that worked, but now what we're seeing these adaptation of cloud cloud technologies in space support, space, data, command, and control. Uh, and so what we see is a modern space engineer who asked to understand digital, has to understand cloud and has to understand the context of all those with a cyber environment. That's really changing the forefront of what is a space engineer, what is a digital engineer and what does a future engineer, both commercial or government? So I think the opportunity for all of these things is really good, particularly for a Polytechnic air force Academy and others that are focusing on a more, uh, widened experiential level of cloud and engineering and other capabilities. >>And I'll tell you the part that as the CIO, I have to remind everybody, all this stuff works for the it stuff. So you've got to understand how your it infrastructures are tied and working together. Um, as we noted earlier, one of the things is, is that these are all relays from point the point, and that architecture is part of your cybersecurity architecture. So again, every component has now become a cyber aware cyber knowledgeable, and in what we'd like to call as a cyber cognizant citizen, where they have to understand the context, patients chip software, that the Fleischer talk about your perspective, because you mentioned some of the things that computer science. Remember when I'm in the eighties, when I got my computer science degree, they call the software engineers, and then you became software developers. And then, so again, engineering is the theme. If you're engineering a system, there's now software involved, um, and there's also business engineering business models. So talk about some of your comments was, you mentioned, computer science is hot. You got the aerospace, you've got these multidisciplines you got definitely diversity as well. It brings more perspectives in as well. Your thoughts on these structural interdisciplinary things. >>I think this is, this is really key to making sure that students are prepared to work in the workforce is looking at the, the blurring between fields no longer are you just a computer scientist, no longer are you just an aerospace engineer? You really have to have an expertise where you can work with people across disciplines. All of these, all of these fields are just working with each other in ways we haven't seen before. And bill brought up data, you know, data science is something that's cross cutting across all of our fields. So we want engineers that have the disciplinary expertise so that they can go deep into these fields, but we want them to be able to communicate with each and to be able to communicate across disciplines and to be able to work in teams that are across disciplines. You can no longer just work with other computer scientists or just work with other aerospace engineers. >>There's no part of engineering that is siloed anymore. So that's how we're changing. You have to be able to work across those, those disciplines. And as you, as Tron pointed out, you know, ethics has to come into this. So you can no longer try to fully separate what we would traditionally have called the, the liberal arts and say, well, that's over there in general education. No ethics is an important part of what we're doing and how we integrate that into our curriculum. So it was communication. So is working on public policy and seeing where all of these different aspects tied together to make the impact that we want to have in the world. So it, you no longer can work solo in these fields. >>Great point. And bill also mentioned the cloud. One thing about the cloud that showed us as horizontal scalability has created a lot of value and certainly data is now horizontal Trung. You mentioned some of the things about cryptography for the kids out there. I mean, you can look at the pathway for career. You can do a lot of tech and, but you don't have to go deep. Sometimes you can go, you can go as deep as you want, but there's so much more there. Um, what technology do you see, how it's going to help students in your opinion? >>Well, I'm a professor in computer science, so I'd like to talk out a little bit about computer programming. Now we, uh, working in complex project. So most of the time we design a system from scratch. We view it from different components and the components that we have either we get it from or some time we get it from the internet in the open source environment, it's fun to get the source code and then work to our own application. So now when we are looking at a Logie, when we talk about encryption, for example, we can easily get the source code from the internet. And the question is, is safe to use those source code. And my, my, my question is maybe not. So I always encourage my students to learn how to write source score distribution, where that I learned a long time ago before I allow them to use the open source environment. And one of the things that they have to be careful, especially with encryption is be quote that might be hidden in the, in the source, get the download here, some of the source. >>So open source, it's a wonderful place to be, but it's also that we have to be aware of >>Great point before we get into some of the common one quick thing for each of you like to get your comments on, you know, the there's been a big movement on growth mindset, which has been a great, I'm a big believer in having a growth mindset and learning and all that good stuff. But now that when you talk about some of these things that we're mentioning about systems, there's, there's an, there's a new trend around a systems mindset, because if everything's now a system distributed systems, now you have space in cyber security, you have to understand the consequences of changes. And you mentioned some of that Trung in changes in the source code. Could you guys share your quick opinions on the, the idea of systems thinking, is that a mindset that people should be looking at? Because it used to be just one thing, Oh, you're a systems guy or galley. There you go. You're done. Now. It seems to be in social media and data. Everything seems to be systems. What's your take dr. Fleischer, we'll start with you. >>Uh, I'd say it's a, it's another way of looking at, um, not being just so deep in your discipline. You have to understand what the impact of the decisions that you're making have on a much broader, uh, system. And so I think it's important for all of our students to get some exposure to that systems level thinking and looking at the greater impact of the decision that they're making. Now, the issue is where do you set the systems boundary, right? And you can set the systems boundary very close in and concentrate on an aspect of a design, or you can continually move that system boundary out and see, where do you hit the intersections of engineering and science along with ethics and public policy and the greater society. And I think that's where some of the interesting work is going to be. And I think at least exposing students and letting them know that they're going to have to make some of these considerations as they move throughout their career is going to be vital as we move into the future. Bill. What's your thoughts? >>Um, I absolutely agree with Amy and I think there's a context here that reverse engineering, um, and forensics analysis and forensics engineering are becoming more critical than ever, uh, the ability to look at what you have designed in a system and then tear it apart and look at it for gaps and holes and problem sets, or when you're given some software that's already been pre developed, checking it to make sure it is, is really going to do what it says it's going to do. That forensics ability becomes more and more a skillset that also you need the verbal skills to explain what it is you're doing and what you found. So the communication side, the systems analysis, >>The forensics analysis side, >>These are all things that are part of that system >>Approach that I think you could spend hours on. And we still haven't really done great job on it. So it's a, it's. One of my fortes is the really the whole analysis side of forensics and it reverse engineering >>Try and real quick systems thinking. >>Well, I'd like to share with you my experience. When I worked in the space patient program at NASA, we had two different approaches. One is a down approach where we design it from the system general point of view, where we put components to complex system. But at the same time, we have the bottom up approach where we have Ken Chile who spent time and effort the individual component. And they have to be expert in those Chinese component. That might be general component the gallery. And in the space station program, we bring together the welcome up engineer, who designed everything in detail in the system manager who manage the system design from the top down. And we meet in the middle and took the idea with compromise a lot of differences. Then we can leave a display station that we are operating to be okay, >>Great insight. And that's the whole teamwork collaboration that, that was mentioning. Thanks so much for that insight. I wanted to get that out there because I know myself as a, as a parent, I'm always trying to think about what's best for my kids in their friends, as they grow up into the workforce. I know educators and leaders in industry would love to know some of the best practices around some of the structural changes. So thanks for that insight, but this topics about students and helping them prepare. Uh, so we heard, you know, be, be multiple discipline, broaden your horizons, think like systems top down, bottom up, work together as a team and follow the data. So I got to ask you guys, there's a huge amount of job openings in cybersecurity. It's well documented and certainly at the intersection of space and cyber, it's only gonna get bigger, right? You're going to see more and more demand for new types of jobs. How do we get high school and college students interested in security as a career at the flagship? We'll start with you in this one. >>I would say really one of the best ways to get students interested in the career is to show them the impact that it's going to have. There's definitely always going to be students who are going to want to do the technology for the technology sake, but that will limit you to a narrow set of students. And by showing that the greater impact that these types of careers are going to have on the types of problems that you're going to be able to solve and the impact you're going to be able to have on the world, around you, that's the word that we really need to get out. And a wide variety of students really respond to these messages. So I think it's really kind of reaching out at the, uh, the elementary, the middle school level, and really kind of getting this idea that you can make a big difference, a big positive difference in the field with some of these careers is going to be really critical. >>Real question, follow up. What do you think is the best entry point? You mentioned middle squad in here, elementary school. This comes, there's a lot of discussions around pipelining and we're going to get into women in tech and under-represented matters later, but you know, is it too early or what's the, what's your feeling on this? >>My feeling is the earlier we can normalize it the better the, uh, if you can normalize an interest in, in computers and technology and building an elementary school, that's absolutely critical. But the dropoff point that we're seeing is between what I would call like late elementary and early middle school. Um, and just kind of as an anecdote, I, for years ran an outreach program for girl Scouts in grades four and five and grade six, seven, and eight. And we had a hundred slots in each program. And every year the program would sell out for girls in grades four and five, and every year we'd have spots remaining in grades six, seven, and eight. And that's literally where the drop-off is occurring between that late elementary and that middle school range. So that's the area that we need to target to make sure we keep those young women involved and interested as we move forward. >>Bill, how are we going to get these kids interested in security? You mentioned a few programs you got. Yeah. I mean, who wants to, who wouldn't want to be a white hat hacker? I mean, yeah, that sounds exciting. Yeah. Great questions. Let's start with some basic principles though. Is let me ask you a question, John, a name for me, one white hat, good person hacker. The name who works in the space industry and is an exemplar for students to look up to, um, you, um, Oh man. I'm hearing really. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't imagine because the answer we normally get is the cricket sound. So we don't have individuals we've identified in those areas for them to look up to. I was going to be snarky and say, most white hackers won't even use their real name, but, um, there's a, there's an aura around their anonymity here. >>So, so again, the real question is, is how do we get them engaged and keep them engaged? And that's what Amy was pointing out too. Exactly the engagement and sticking with it. So one of the things that we're trying to do through our competition on the state level and other elements is providing connections. We call them ambassadors. These are people in the business who can contact the students that are in the game or in that, uh, challenge environment and let them interact and let them talk about what they do and what they're doing in life would give them a challenging game format. Um, a lot of computer based training, um, capture the flag stuff is great, but if you can make it hands on, if you can make it a learn by doing experiment, if you can make it am personally involved and see the benefit as a result of doing that challenge and then talk to the people who do that on a daily basis, that's how you get them involved. >>The second part is as part of what we're doing is, is we're involving partnership companies in the development of the teams. So this year's competition that we're running has 82 teams from across the state of California, uh, of those 82 teams at six students team, middle school, high school, and many of those have company partners. And these are practitioners in cybersecurity who are working with those students to participate. It's it's that adult connectivity, it's that visualization. Um, so at the competition this year, um, we have the founder of Def con red flag is a participant to talk to the students. We have Vince surf as who is of course, very well known for something called the internet to participate. It's really getting the students to understand who's in this. Who can I look up to and how do I stay engaged with them? >>There's definitely a celebrity aspect of it. I will agree. I mean, the influencer aspect here with knowledge is key. Can you talk about, um, these ambassadors and, and, and how far along are you on that program? First of all, the challenge stuff is anything gamification wise. We've seen that with hackathons is just really works well. Grades, bonding, people who create together kinda get sticky and get very high community aspect to it. Talking about this ambassador thing. What does that industry is that academic >>Absolutely partners that we've identified? Um, some of which, and I won't hit all of them. So I'm sure I'll short changes, but, uh, Palo Alto, Cisco, um, Splunk, um, many of the companies in California and what we've done is identified, uh, schools, uh, to participate in the challenge that may not have a strong STEM program or have any cyber program. And the idea of the company is they look for their employees who are in those school districts to partner with the schools to help provide outreach. It could be as simple as a couple hours a week, or it's a team support captain or it's providing computers and other devices to use. Uh, and so again, it's really about a constant connectivity and, uh, trying to help where some schools may not have the staff or support units in an area to really provide them what they need for connectivity. What that does gives us an opportunity to not just focus on it once a year, but throughout the year. So for the competition, all the teams that are participating have been receiving, um, training and educational opportunities in the game of education side, since they signed up to participate. So there's a website, there's learning materials, there's materials provided by certain vendor companies like Wireshark and others. So it's a continuum of opportunity for the, >>You know, I've seen just the re randomly, just going to random thought, you know, robotics clubs are moving den closer into that middle school area, in fact Fleischer. And certainly in high schools, it's almost like a varsity sport. E-sports is another one. My son just combined made the JV at the college Dean, you know, it's big and it's up and serious. Right. And, um, it's fun. This is the aspect of fun. It's hands on. This is part of the culture down there you learn by doing, is there like a group? Is it like, um, is it like a club? I mean, how do you guys organize these bottoms up organically interest topics? >>So, so here in the college of engineering, uh, when we talk about learning by doing, we have learned by doing both in the classroom and out of the classroom. And if we look at the, these types of, out of the classroom activities, we have over 80 clubs working on all different aspects of many of these are bottom up. The students have decided what they want to work on and have organized themselves around that. And then they get the leadership opportunities. The more experienced students train in the less experienced students. And it continues to build from year after year after year with them even doing aspects of strategic planning from year to year for some of these competitions. So, yeah, it's an absolutely great experience. And we don't define for them how their learned by doing experiences should be, we want them to define it. And I think the really cool thing about that is they have the ownership and they have the interest and they can come up with new clubs year after year to see which direction they want to take it. And, you know, we will help support those clubs as old clubs fade out and new clubs come in >>Trunk real quick. Before we go on the next, uh, talk track, what, what do you recommend for, um, middle school, high school or even elementary? Um, a little bit of coding Minecraft. I mean, what, how do you get them hooked on the fun and the dopamine of, uh, technology and cybersecurity? What's your, what's your take on that? >>On, on this aspect, I like to share with you my experience as a junior high and high school student in Texas, the university of Texas in Austin organized a competition for every high school in Texas. If we phew from poetry to mathematics, to science, computer engineering, but it's not about with university of Texas. The university of Texas is on the serving SSN for the final competition that we divide the competition to be strict and then regional, and then spit at each level, we have local university and colleges volunteering to host it competition and make it fun. >>Also students with private enterprises to raise funding for scholarship. So students who see the competition they get exposed to so they can see different option. They also get a scholarship when they attend university in college. So I've seen the combination in competition aspect would be a good thing to be >>Got the engagement, the aspiration scholarship, you know, and you mentioned a volunteer. I think one of the things I'll observe is you guys are kind of hitting this as community. I mean, the story of Steve jobs and was, was building the Mac, they call it bill Hewlett up in Palo Alto. It was in the phone book and they scoured some parts from them. That's community. This is kind of what you're getting at. So this is kind of the formula we're seeing. So the next question I really want to get into is the women in technology, STEM, underrepresented minorities, how do we get them on cybersecurity career path? Is there a best practices there, bill, we'll start with you? >>Well, I think it's really interesting. First thing I want to add is if I could have just a clarification, what's really cool that the competition that we have and we're running, it's run by student from Cal poly. Uh, so, you know, Amy referenced the clubs and other activities. So many of the, uh, organizers and developers of the competition that we're running are the students, but not just from engineering. So we actually have theater and liberal arts majors and technology for liberal arts majors who are part of the competition. And we use their areas of expertise, set design, and other things, uh, visualization of virtualization. Those are all part of how we then teach and educate cyber in our game effication and other areas. So they're all involved in their learning as well. So we have our students teaching other students. So we're really excited about that. And I think that's part of what leads to a mentoring aspect of what we're providing, where our students are mentoring the other students. And I think it's also something that's really important in the game. Um, the first year we held the game, we had several all girl teams and it was really interesting because a, they, they didn't really know if they could compete. I mean, this is their, their reference point. We don't know if they did better than anybody. I mean, they, they knocked the ball out >>Of the park. The second part then is building that confidence level that they can going back and telling their cohorts that, Hey, it's not this thing you can't do. It's something real that you can compete and win. And so again, it's building that comradery, that spirit, that knowledge that they can succeed. And I think that goes a long way and an Amy's programs and the reach out and the reach out that Cal poly does to schools to develop. Uh, I think that's what it really is going to take. It. It is going to take that village approach to really increase diversity and inclusivity for the community. >>That's the flusher. I'd love to get your thoughts. You mentioned, um, your, your outreach program and the dropoff, some of those data, uh, you're deeply involved in this. You're passionate about it. What's your thoughts on this career path opportunity for STEM? >>Yeah, I think STEM is an incredible career path opportunity for so many people. There's so many interesting problems that we can solve, particularly in cyber and in space systems. And I think we have to meet the kids where they are and kind of show them, you know, what the exciting part is about it, right. But, you know, bill was, was alluding to this. And when he was talking about, you know, trying to name somebody that you can can point to. And I think having those visible people where you can see yourself in that is, is absolutely critical and those mentors and that mentorship program. So we use a lot of our students going out into California, middle schools and elementary schools. And you want to see somebody that's like you, somebody that came from your background and was able to do this. So a lot of times we have students from our national society of black engineers or a society of Hispanic professional engineers or our society of women engineers. >>We have over a thousand members, a thousand student members in our society of women engineers who were doing these outreach programs. But like I also said, it's hitting them at the lower levels too. And girl Scouts is actually distinguishing themselves as one of the leading STEM advocates in the country. And like I said, they developed all these cybersecurity badges, starting in kindergarten. There's a cybersecurity badge for kindergarten and first graders. And it goes all the way up through late high school, the same thing with space systems. And they did the space systems in partnership with NASA. They did the cybersecurity and partnership with Palo Alto networks. And what you do is you want to build these, these skills that the girls are developing. And like bill said, work in and girl led teams where they can do it. And if they're doing it from kindergarten on, it just becomes normal. And they never think, well, this is not for me. And they see the older girls who are doing it and they see a very clear path leading them into these careers. >>Yeah. It's interesting. You used the word normalization earlier. That's exactly what it is. It's life, you get life skills and a new kind of badge. Why wouldn't learn how to be a white, white hat hacker, or have fun or learn new skills just in, in the, in the grind of your fun day. Super exciting. Okay. Trung your thoughts on this. I mean, you have a diverse diversity. It brings perspective to the table in cybersecurity because you have to think like the other, the adversary, you got to be the white headed hippie, a white hat, unless you know how black hat thinks. So there's a lot of needs here for more, more, more points of view. How are we going to get people trained on this from under represented minorities and women? What's your thoughts? >>Well, as a member of, I took a professional society of directed pool in the electronic engineer. You have the, uh, we participate in the engineering week. We'll be ploy our members to local junior high school and high school to talk about our project, to promote the discovery of engineering. But at the same time, we also participate in the science fair that we scaled up flex. As the squad organizing our engineer will be mentoring students, number one, to help them with the part check, but number two, to help us identify talents so that we can recruit them further into the field of STEM. One of the participation that week was the competition of the, what they call future CV. We're still going, we'll be doing a CT on a computer simulation. And in recent year we promote ops smart CV where CT will be connected the individual houses to be added in through the internet. >>And we want to bring awareness of cybersecurity into competition. So we deploy engineer to supervise the people, the students who participate in the competition, we bring awareness, not in the technical be challenged level, but in what we've called the compound level. So speargun will be able to know what is, why to provide cyber security for the smart city that they are building. And at the same time, we were able to identify talent, especially talent in the minority and in the room. And so that we can recruit them more actively. And we also raise money for scholarship. We believe that scholarship is the best way to get students to continue education in Epic college level. So with scholarship, it's very easy to recruit them, to give you and then push them to go further into the cyber security Eylea. >>Yeah. I mean, you know, I see a lot of the parents like, Oh, my kid's going to go join the soccer team, >>Private lessons, and maybe look at a scholarship >>Someday. Well, they only do have scholarships anyway. I mean, this is if they spent that time doing other things, it's just, again, this is a new lifestyle, like the girl Scouts. And this is where I want to get into this whole silo breaking down because Amy, you brought this up and bill, you were talking about as well, you've got multiple stakeholders here with this event. You got, you know, public, you got private and you've got educators. It's the intersection of all of them. It's again, that those, if those silos break down the confluence of those three stakeholders have to work together. So let's, let's talk about that. Educators. You guys are educating young minds, you're interfacing with private institutions and now the public. What about educators? What can they do to make cyber better? Cause there's no real manual. I mean, it's not like this court is a body of work of how to educate cybersecurity is maybe it's more recent, it's cutting edge, best practices, but still it's an, it's an evolving playbook. What's your thoughts for educators, bill? We'll start with you. >>Well, I don't really, I'm going to turn it off. >>I would say, I would say as, as educators, it's really important for us to stay on top of how the field is evolving, right? So what we want to do is we want to promote these tight connections between educators and our faculty and, um, applied research in industry and with industry partnerships. And I think that's how we're going to make sure that we're educating students in the best way. And you're talking about that inner, that confluence of the three different areas. And I think you have to keep those communication lines open to make sure that the information on where the field is going and what we need to concentrate on is flowing down into our educational process. And that, that works in both ways that, you know, we can talk as educators and we can be telling industry what we're working on and what are types of skills our students have and working with them to get the opportunities for our students to work in industry and develop those skills along the way as well. >>And I think it's just all part of this is really looking at, at what's going to be happening and how do we get people talking to each other and the same thing with looking at public policy and bringing that into our education and into these real hands on experiences. And that's how you really cement this type of knowledge with students, not by not by talking to them and not by showing them, but letting them do it. It's this learn by doing and building the resiliency that it takes when you learn by doing. And sometimes you learn by failing, but you just up and you keep going. >>And these are important skills that you develop along the way >>You mentioned, um, um, sharing too. That's the key collaborating and sharing knowledge. It's an open, open world and everyone's collaborating feel private public partnerships. I mean, there's a real private companies. You mentioned Palo Alto networks and others. There's a real intersection there there's, they're motivated. They could, the scholarship opportunities, trunk points to that. What is the public private educator view there? How do companies get involved? What's the benefit for them? >>Well, that's what a lot of the universities are doing is to bring in as part of either their cyber centers or institutes, people who are really focused on developing and furthering those public private partnerships. That's really what my role is in all these things is to take us to a different level in those areas, uh, not to take away from the academic side, but to add additional opportunities for both sides. Remember in a public private partnership, all entities have to have some gain in the process. Now, what I think is really interesting is the timing on particularly this subject space and cyber security. This has been an absolute banner year for space. The Stanhope of space force, the launch of commercial partnership, leaving commercial platforms, delivering astronauts to the space station, recovering them and bringing back the ability of a commercial satellite platform to be launched a commercial platforms that not only launch, but return back to where they're launched from. >>These are things that are stirring the hearts of the American citizens, the kids, again, they're getting interested, they're seeing this and getting enthused. So we have to seize upon that and we have to find a way to connect that public private partnerships is the answer for that. It's not one segment that can handle it all. It's all of them combined together. If you look at space, space is going to be about commercial. It's going to be about civil moving from one side of the earth, to the other via space. And it's about government. And what's really cool for us. All those things are in our backyard. Yeah. That's where that public private comes together. The government's involved, the private sector is involved. The educators are involved and we're all looking at the same things and trying to figure out like this forum, what works best to go to the future. >>You know, if people are bored and they want to look for an exciting challenge, he couldn't have laid it out any clearer. It's the most exciting discipline. It hits everything. I mean, we just talk about space. GPS is everything we do is well tested. Do with satellites. >>I have to tell you a story on that, right? We have a very unique GPS story right in our backyard. So our sheriff is the son of the father of GPS for the air force. So you can't get better than that when it comes to being connected to all those platforms. So we, we really want to say, you know, this is so exciting for all of us because >>It gives everybody a job for a long time. >>You know, the kids that don't think tick toxic, exciting, wait til they see what's going on here with you guys, this program, trunk final word on this from the public side, you're at the air force. You're doing research. Are you guys opening it up? Are you integrating into the private and educational sectors? How do you see that formula playing out? And what's the best practice for students and preparing them? >>I think it's the same in athlete university CP in the engineering program will require our students to be final project before graduation. And in this kind of project, we send them out to work in the private industry. The private company got sponsor. Then they get the benefit of having an intern working for them and they get the benefit of reviewing the students as the prospective employee in the future. So it's good for the student to gain practical experience working in this program. Some, some kind of, we call that a core program, some kind, we call that a capstone program and the company will accept the students on a trial PRCS, giving them some assignment and then pay them a little bit of money. So it's good for the student to earn some extra money, to have some experience that they can put on their resume when they apply for the final of the job. >>So the collaboration between university and private sector is really important. We, when I joined a faculty, normally they already exist that connection. It came from. Normally it came from the Dean of engineering who would whine and dine with companies. We work relationship and sign up women, but it's approach to do a good performance so that we can be credibility to continue the relationship with those company and the students that we selected to send to those company. We have to make sure that they will represent the university. Well, they will go a good job and they will make a good impression. >>Thank you very much for great insight, trunk, bill, Amy, amazing topic. I'd like to end this session with each of you to make a statement on the importance of cybersecurity to space. We'll go Trung bill and Amy Truong, the importance of cybersecurity space statement. >>We know that it's affecting components that we are using and we are connecting to. And normally we use them for personal purpose. But when we connect to the important system that the government public company put into space, so it's really important to practice cyber security and a lot of time, it's very easy to know concept. We have to be careful, but in reality, we tend to forget to partnership the way we forget how to ride safely. And with driving a car, we have a program called defensive driving that requires every two or three years to get. We can get discount. >>We are providing the cyber security practice, not to tell people about the technology, but to remind them not practicing cybersecurity. And it's a requirement for every one of us, bill, the importance of cyber security to space. It's not just about young people. It's about all of us as we grow and we change as I referenced it, you know, we're changing from an analog world to a digital world. Those of us who have been in the business and have hair that looks like mine. We need to be just as cognizant about cybersecurity practice as the young people, we need to understand how it affects our lives and particularly in space, because we're going to be talking about people, moving people to space, moving payloads, data, transfer all of those things. And so there's a whole workforce that needs to be retrained or upskilled in cyber that's out there. So the opportunity is ever expensive for all of us, Amy, the importance of cybersecurity space, >>Uh, and the, the emphasis of cybersecurity is space. Just simply, can't be over emphasized. There are so many aspects that are going to have to be considered as systems get ever more complex. And as we pointed out, we're putting people's lives at stake here. This is incredibly, incredibly complicated and incredibly impactful, and actually really exciting the opportunities that are here for students and the workforce of the future to really make an enormous impact on the world around us. And I hope we're able to get that message out to students, to children >>Today. But these are my really interesting fields that you need to consider. >>Thank you very much. I'm John foray with the cube and the importance of cybersecurity and space is the future of the world's all going to happen in and around space with technology, people and society. Thank you to Cal poly. And thank you for watching the Cypress of computer security and space symposium 2020.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering >>space and cybersecurity. Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly >>Over On Welcome to this Special virtual conference. The Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 put on by Cal Poly with support from the Cube. I'm John for your host and master of ceremonies. Got a great topic today in this session. Really? The intersection of space and cybersecurity. This topic and this conversation is the cybersecurity workforce development through public and private partnerships. And we've got a great lineup. We have Jeff Armstrong's the president of California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly Jeffrey. Thanks for jumping on and Bang. Go ahead. The second director of C four s R Division. And he's joining us from the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for the acquisition Sustainment Department of Defense, D O D. And, of course, Steve Jake's executive director, founder, National Security Space Association and managing partner at Bello's. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me for this session. We got an hour conversation. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you. >>So we got a virtual event here. We've got an hour, have a great conversation and love for you guys do? In opening statement on how you see the development through public and private partnerships around cybersecurity in space, Jeff will start with you. >>Well, thanks very much, John. It's great to be on with all of you. Uh, on behalf Cal Poly Welcome, everyone. Educating the workforce of tomorrow is our mission to Cal Poly. Whether that means traditional undergraduates, master students are increasingly mid career professionals looking toe up, skill or re skill. Our signature pedagogy is learn by doing, which means that our graduates arrive at employers ready Day one with practical skills and experience. We have long thought of ourselves is lucky to be on California's beautiful central Coast. But in recent years, as we have developed closer relationships with Vandenberg Air Force Base, hopefully the future permanent headquarters of the United States Space Command with Vandenberg and other regional partners, we have discovered that our location is even more advantages than we thought. We're just 50 miles away from Vandenberg, a little closer than u C. Santa Barbara, and the base represents the southern border of what we have come to think of as the central coast region. Cal Poly and Vandenberg Air force base have partner to support regional economic development to encourage the development of a commercial spaceport toe advocate for the space Command headquarters coming to Vandenberg and other ventures. These partnerships have been possible because because both parties stand to benefit Vandenberg by securing new streams of revenue, workforce and local supply chain and Cal Poly by helping to grow local jobs for graduates, internship opportunities for students, and research and entrepreneurship opportunities for faculty and staff. Crucially, what's good for Vandenberg Air Force Base and for Cal Poly is also good for the Central Coast and the US, creating new head of household jobs, infrastructure and opportunity. Our goal is that these new jobs bring more diversity and sustainability for the region. This regional economic development has taken on a life of its own, spawning a new nonprofit called Reach, which coordinates development efforts from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the South to camp to Camp Roberts in the North. Another factor that is facilitated our relationship with Vandenberg Air Force Base is that we have some of the same friends. For example, Northrop Grumman has has long been an important defense contractor, an important partner to Cal poly funding scholarships and facilities that have allowed us to stay current with technology in it to attract highly qualified students for whom Cal Poly's costs would otherwise be prohibitive. For almost 20 years north of grimness funded scholarships for Cal Poly students this year, their funding 64 scholarships, some directly in our College of Engineering and most through our Cal Poly Scholars program, Cal Poly Scholars, a support both incoming freshman is transfer students. These air especially important because it allows us to provide additional support and opportunities to a group of students who are mostly first generation, low income and underrepresented and who otherwise might not choose to attend Cal Poly. They also allow us to recruit from partner high schools with large populations of underrepresented minority students, including the Fortune High School in Elk Grove, which we developed a deep and lasting connection. We know that the best work is done by balanced teams that include multiple and diverse perspectives. These scholarships help us achieve that goal, and I'm sure you know Northrop Grumman was recently awarded a very large contract to modernized the U. S. I. C B M Armory with some of the work being done at Vandenberg Air Force Base, thus supporting the local economy and protecting protecting our efforts in space requires partnerships in the digital realm. How Polly is partnered with many private companies, such as AWS. Our partnerships with Amazon Web services has enabled us to train our students with next generation cloud engineering skills, in part through our jointly created digital transformation hub. Another partnership example is among Cal Poly's California Cybersecurity Institute, College of Engineering and the California National Guard. This partnership is focused on preparing a cyber ready workforce by providing faculty and students with a hands on research and learning environment, side by side with military, law enforcement professionals and cyber experts. We also have a long standing partnership with PG and E, most recently focused on workforce development and redevelopment. Many of our graduates do indeed go on to careers in aerospace and defense industry as a rough approximation. More than 4500 Cal Poly graduates list aerospace and defense as their employment sector on linked in, and it's not just our engineers and computer sciences. When I was speaking to our fellow Panelists not too long ago, >>are >>speaking to bang, we learned that Rachel sins, one of our liberal arts arts majors, is working in his office. So shout out to you, Rachel. And then finally, of course, some of our graduates sword extraordinary heights such as Commander Victor Glover, who will be heading to the International space station later this year as I close. All of which is to say that we're deeply committed the workforce, development and redevelopment that we understand the value of public private partnerships and that were eager to find new ways in which to benefit everyone from this further cooperation. So we're committed to the region, the state in the nation and our past efforts in space, cybersecurity and links to our partners at as I indicated, aerospace industry and governmental partners provides a unique position for us to move forward in the interface of space and cybersecurity. Thank you so much, John. >>President, I'm sure thank you very much for the comments and congratulations to Cal Poly for being on the forefront of innovation and really taking a unique progressive. You and wanna tip your hat to you guys over there. Thank you very much for those comments. Appreciate it. Bahng. Department of Defense. Exciting you gotta defend the nation spaces Global. Your opening statement. >>Yes, sir. Thanks, John. Appreciate that day. Thank you, everybody. I'm honored to be this panel along with President Armstrong, Cal Poly in my long longtime friend and colleague Steve Jakes of the National Security Space Association, to discuss a very important topic of cybersecurity workforce development, as President Armstrong alluded to, I'll tell you both of these organizations, Cal Poly and the N S. A have done and continue to do an exceptional job at finding talent, recruiting them in training current and future leaders and technical professionals that we vitally need for our nation's growing space programs. A swell Asare collective National security Earlier today, during Session three high, along with my colleague Chris Hansen discussed space, cyber Security and how the space domain is changing the landscape of future conflicts. I discussed the rapid emergence of commercial space with the proliferations of hundreds, if not thousands, of satellites providing a variety of services, including communications allowing for global Internet connectivity. S one example within the O. D. We continue to look at how we can leverage this opportunity. I'll tell you one of the enabling technologies eyes the use of small satellites, which are inherently cheaper and perhaps more flexible than the traditional bigger systems that we have historically used unemployed for the U. D. Certainly not lost on Me is the fact that Cal Poly Pioneer Cube SATs 2020 some years ago, and they set the standard for the use of these systems today. So they saw the valiant benefit gained way ahead of everybody else, it seems, and Cal Poly's focus on training and education is commendable. I especially impressed by the efforts of another of Steve's I colleague, current CEO Mr Bill Britain, with his high energy push to attract the next generation of innovators. Uh, earlier this year, I had planned on participating in this year's Cyber Innovation Challenge. In June works Cal Poly host California Mill and high school students and challenge them with situations to test their cyber knowledge. I tell you, I wish I had that kind of opportunity when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the pandemic change the plan. Why I truly look forward. Thio feature events such as these Thio participating. Now I want to recognize my good friend Steve Jakes, whom I've known for perhaps too long of a time here over two decades or so, who was in acknowledge space expert and personally, I truly applaud him for having the foresight of years back to form the National Security Space Association to help the entire space enterprise navigate through not only technology but Polly policy issues and challenges and paved the way for operational izing space. Space is our newest horrifying domain. That's not a secret anymore. Uh, and while it is a unique area, it shares a lot of common traits with the other domains such as land, air and sea, obviously all of strategically important to the defense of the United States. In conflict they will need to be. They will all be contested and therefore they all need to be defended. One domain alone will not win future conflicts in a joint operation. We must succeed. All to defending space is critical as critical is defending our other operational domains. Funny space is no longer the sanctuary available only to the government. Increasingly, as I discussed in the previous session, commercial space is taking the lead a lot of different areas, including R and D, A so called new space, so cyber security threat is even more demanding and even more challenging. Three US considers and federal access to and freedom to operate in space vital to advancing security, economic prosperity, prosperity and scientific knowledge of the country. That's making cyberspace an inseparable component. America's financial, social government and political life. We stood up US Space force ah, year ago or so as the newest military service is like the other services. Its mission is to organize, train and equip space forces in order to protect us and allied interest in space and to provide space capabilities to the joint force. Imagine combining that US space force with the U. S. Cyber Command to unify the direction of space and cyberspace operation strengthened U D capabilities and integrate and bolster d o d cyber experience. Now, of course, to enable all of this requires had trained and professional cadre of cyber security experts, combining a good mix of policy as well as high technical skill set much like we're seeing in stem, we need to attract more people to this growing field. Now the D. O. D. Is recognized the importance of the cybersecurity workforce, and we have implemented policies to encourage his growth Back in 2013 the deputy secretary of defense signed the D. O d cyberspace workforce strategy to create a comprehensive, well equipped cyber security team to respond to national security concerns. Now this strategy also created a program that encourages collaboration between the D. O. D and private sector employees. We call this the Cyber Information Technology Exchange program or site up. It's an exchange programs, which is very interesting, in which a private sector employees can naturally work for the D. O. D. In a cyber security position that spans across multiple mission critical areas are important to the d. O. D. A key responsibility of cybersecurity community is military leaders on the related threats and cyber security actions we need to have to defeat these threats. We talk about rapid that position, agile business processes and practices to speed up innovation. Likewise, cybersecurity must keep up with this challenge to cyber security. Needs to be right there with the challenges and changes, and this requires exceptional personnel. We need to attract talent investing the people now to grow a robust cybersecurity, workforce, streets, future. I look forward to the panel discussion, John. Thank you. >>Thank you so much bomb for those comments and you know, new challenges and new opportunities and new possibilities and free freedom Operating space. Critical. Thank you for those comments. Looking forward. Toa chatting further. Steve Jakes, executive director of N. S. S. A Europe opening statement. >>Thank you, John. And echoing bangs thanks to Cal Poly for pulling these this important event together and frankly, for allowing the National Security Space Association be a part of it. Likewise, we on behalf the association delighted and honored Thio be on this panel with President Armstrong along with my friend and colleague Bonneau Glue Mahad Something for you all to know about Bomb. He spent the 1st 20 years of his career in the Air Force doing space programs. He then went into industry for several years and then came back into government to serve. Very few people do that. So bang on behalf of the space community, we thank you for your long life long devotion to service to our nation. We really appreciate that and I also echo a bang shot out to that guy Bill Britain, who has been a long time co conspirator of ours for a long time and you're doing great work there in the cyber program at Cal Poly Bill, keep it up. But professor arms trying to keep a close eye on him. Uh, I would like to offer a little extra context to the great comments made by by President Armstrong and bahng. Uh, in our view, the timing of this conference really could not be any better. Um, we all recently reflected again on that tragic 9 11 surprise attack on our homeland. And it's an appropriate time, we think, to take pause while the percentage of you in the audience here weren't even born or babies then For the most of us, it still feels like yesterday. And moreover, a tragedy like 9 11 has taught us a lot to include to be more vigilant, always keep our collective eyes and ears open to include those quote eyes and ears from space, making sure nothing like this ever happens again. So this conference is a key aspect. Protecting our nation requires we work in a cybersecurity environment at all times. But, you know, the fascinating thing about space systems is we can't see him. No, sir, We see Space launches man there's nothing more invigorating than that. But after launch, they become invisible. So what are they really doing up there? What are they doing to enable our quality of life in the United States and in the world? Well, to illustrate, I'd like to paraphrase elements of an article in Forbes magazine by Bonds and my good friend Chuck Beans. Chuck. It's a space guy, actually had Bonds job a fuse in the Pentagon. He is now chairman and chief strategy officer at York Space Systems, and in his spare time he's chairman of the small satellites. Chuck speaks in words that everyone can understand. So I'd like to give you some of his words out of his article. Uh, they're afraid somewhat. So these are Chuck's words. Let's talk about average Joe and playing Jane. Before heading to the airport for a business trip to New York City, Joe checks the weather forecast informed by Noah's weather satellites to see what pack for the trip. He then calls an uber that space app. Everybody uses it matches riders with drivers via GPS to take into the airport, So Joe has lunch of the airport. Unbeknownst to him, his organic lunch is made with the help of precision farming made possible through optimized irrigation and fertilization, with remote spectral sensing coming from space and GPS on the plane, the pilot navigates around weather, aided by GPS and nose weather satellites. And Joe makes his meeting on time to join his New York colleagues in a video call with a key customer in Singapore made possible by telecommunication satellites. Around to his next meeting, Joe receives notice changing the location of the meeting to another to the other side of town. So he calmly tells Syria to adjust the destination, and his satellite guided Google maps redirects him to the new location. That evening, Joe watches the news broadcast via satellite. The report details a meeting among world leaders discussing the developing crisis in Syria. As it turns out, various forms of quote remotely sensed. Information collected from satellites indicate that yet another band, chemical weapon, may have been used on its own people. Before going to bed, Joe decides to call his parents and congratulate them for their wedding anniversary as they cruise across the Atlantic, made possible again by communications satellites and Joe's parents can enjoy the call without even wondering how it happened the next morning. Back home, Joe's wife, Jane, is involved in a car accident. Her vehicle skids off the road. She's knocked unconscious, but because of her satellite equipped on star system, the crash is detected immediately and first responders show up on the scene. In time, Joe receives the news books. An early trip home sends flowers to his wife as he orders another uber to the airport. Over that 24 hours, Joe and Jane used space system applications for nearly every part of their day. Imagine the consequences if at any point they were somehow denied these services, whether they be by natural causes or a foreign hostility. And each of these satellite applications used in this case were initially developed for military purposes and continue to be, but also have remarkable application on our way of life. Just many people just don't know that. So, ladies and gentlemen, now you know, thanks to chuck beans, well, the United States has a proud heritage being the world's leading space faring nation, dating back to the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Today we have mature and robust systems operating from space, providing overhead reconnaissance to quote, wash and listen, provide missile warning, communications, positioning, navigation and timing from our GPS system. Much of what you heard in Lieutenant General J. T. Thompson earlier speech. These systems are not only integral to our national security, but also our also to our quality of life is Chuck told us. We simply no longer could live without these systems as a nation and for that matter, as a world. But over the years, adversary like adversaries like China, Russia and other countries have come to realize the value of space systems and are aggressively playing ketchup while also pursuing capabilities that will challenge our systems. As many of you know, in 2000 and seven, China demonstrated it's a set system by actually shooting down is one of its own satellites and has been aggressively developing counter space systems to disrupt hours. So in a heavily congested space environment, our systems are now being contested like never before and will continue to bay well as Bond mentioned, the United States has responded to these changing threats. In addition to adding ways to protect our system, the administration and in Congress recently created the United States Space Force and the operational you United States Space Command, the latter of which you heard President Armstrong and other Californians hope is going to be located. Vandenberg Air Force Base Combined with our intelligence community today, we have focused military and civilian leadership now in space. And that's a very, very good thing. Commence, really. On the industry side, we did create the National Security Space Association devoted solely to supporting the national security Space Enterprise. We're based here in the D C area, but we have arms and legs across the country, and we are loaded with extraordinary talent. In scores of Forman, former government executives, So S s a is joined at the hip with our government customers to serve and to support. We're busy with a multitude of activities underway ranging from a number of thought provoking policy. Papers are recurring space time Webcast supporting Congress's Space Power Caucus and other main serious efforts. Check us out at NSS. A space dot org's One of our strategic priorities in central to today's events is to actively promote and nurture the workforce development. Just like cow calling. We will work with our U. S. Government customers, industry leaders and academia to attract and recruit students to join the space world, whether in government or industry and two assistant mentoring and training as their careers. Progress on that point, we're delighted. Be delighted to be working with Cal Poly as we hopefully will undertake a new pilot program with him very soon. So students stay tuned something I can tell you Space is really cool. While our nation's satellite systems are technical and complex, our nation's government and industry work force is highly diverse, with a combination of engineers, physicists, method and mathematicians, but also with a large non technical expertise as well. Think about how government gets things thes systems designed, manufactured, launching into orbit and operating. They do this via contracts with our aerospace industry, requiring talents across the board from cost estimating cost analysis, budgeting, procurement, legal and many other support. Tasker Integral to the mission. Many thousands of people work in the space workforce tens of billions of dollars every year. This is really cool stuff, no matter what your education background, a great career to be part of. When summary as bang had mentioned Aziz, well, there is a great deal of exciting challenges ahead we will see a new renaissance in space in the years ahead, and in some cases it's already begun. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sir Richard Richard Branson are in the game, stimulating new ideas in business models, other private investors and start up companies. Space companies are now coming in from all angles. The exponential advancement of technology and microelectronics now allows the potential for a plethora of small SAT systems to possibly replace older satellites the size of a Greyhound bus. It's getting better by the day and central to this conference, cybersecurity is paramount to our nation's critical infrastructure in space. So once again, thanks very much, and I look forward to the further conversation. >>Steve, thank you very much. Space is cool. It's relevant. But it's important, as you pointed out, and you're awesome story about how it impacts our life every day. So I really appreciate that great story. I'm glad you took the time Thio share that you forgot the part about the drone coming over in the crime scene and, you know, mapping it out for you. But that would add that to the story later. Great stuff. My first question is let's get into the conversations because I think this is super important. President Armstrong like you to talk about some of the points that was teased out by Bang and Steve. One in particular is the comment around how military research was important in developing all these capabilities, which is impacting all of our lives. Through that story. It was the military research that has enabled a generation and generation of value for consumers. This is kind of this workforce conversation. There are opportunities now with with research and grants, and this is, ah, funding of innovation that it's highly accelerate. It's happening very quickly. Can you comment on how research and the partnerships to get that funding into the universities is critical? >>Yeah, I really appreciate that And appreciate the comments of my colleagues on it really boils down to me to partnerships, public private partnerships. You mentioned Northrop Grumman, but we have partnerships with Lockie Martin, Boeing, Raytheon Space six JPL, also member of organization called Business Higher Education Forum, which brings together university presidents and CEOs of companies. There's been focused on cybersecurity and data science, and I hope that we can spill into cybersecurity in space but those partnerships in the past have really brought a lot forward at Cal Poly Aziz mentioned we've been involved with Cube set. Uh, we've have some secure work and we want to plan to do more of that in the future. Uh, those partnerships are essential not only for getting the r and d done, but also the students, the faculty, whether masters or undergraduate, can be involved with that work. Uh, they get that real life experience, whether it's on campus or virtually now during Covic or at the location with the partner, whether it may be governmental or our industry. Uh, and then they're even better equipped, uh, to hit the ground running. And of course, we'd love to see even more of our students graduate with clearance so that they could do some of that a secure work as well. So these partnerships are absolutely critical, and it's also in the context of trying to bring the best and the brightest and all demographics of California and the US into this field, uh, to really be successful. So these partnerships are essential, and our goal is to grow them just like I know other colleagues and C. S u and the U C are planning to dio, >>you know, just as my age I've seen I grew up in the eighties, in college and during that systems generation and that the generation before me, they really kind of pioneered the space that spawned the computer revolution. I mean, you look at these key inflection points in our lives. They were really funded through these kinds of real deep research. Bond talk about that because, you know, we're living in an age of cloud. And Bezos was mentioned. Elon Musk. Sir Richard Branson. You got new ideas coming in from the outside. You have an accelerated clock now on terms of the innovation cycles, and so you got to react differently. You guys have programs to go outside >>of >>the Defense Department. How important is this? Because the workforce that air in schools and our folks re skilling are out there and you've been on both sides of the table. So share your thoughts. >>No, thanks, John. Thanks for the opportunity responded. And that's what you hit on the notes back in the eighties, R and D in space especially, was dominated by my government funding. Uh, contracts and so on. But things have changed. As Steve pointed out, A lot of these commercial entities funded by billionaires are coming out of the woodwork funding R and D. So they're taking the lead. So what we can do within the deal, the in government is truly take advantage of the work they've done on. Uh, since they're they're, you know, paving the way to new new approaches and new way of doing things. And I think we can We could certainly learn from that. And leverage off of that saves us money from an R and D standpoint while benefiting from from the product that they deliver, you know, within the O D Talking about workforce development Way have prioritized we have policies now to attract and retain talent. We need I I had the folks do some research and and looks like from a cybersecurity workforce standpoint. A recent study done, I think, last year in 2019 found that the cybersecurity workforce gap in the U. S. Is nearing half a million people, even though it is a growing industry. So the pipeline needs to be strengthened off getting people through, you know, starting young and through college, like assess a professor Armstrong indicated, because we're gonna need them to be in place. Uh, you know, in a period of about maybe a decade or so, Uh, on top of that, of course, is the continuing issue we have with the gap with with stamps students, we can't afford not to have expertise in place to support all the things we're doing within the with the not only deal with the but the commercial side as well. Thank you. >>How's the gap? Get? Get filled. I mean, this is the this is again. You got cybersecurity. I mean, with space. It's a whole another kind of surface area, if you will, in early surface area. But it is. It is an I o t. Device if you think about it. But it does have the same challenges. That's kind of current and and progressive with cybersecurity. Where's the gap Get filled, Steve Or President Armstrong? I mean, how do you solve the problem and address this gap in the workforce? What is some solutions and what approaches do we need to put in place? >>Steve, go ahead. I'll follow up. >>Okay. Thanks. I'll let you correct. May, uh, it's a really good question, and it's the way I would. The way I would approach it is to focus on it holistically and to acknowledge it up front. And it comes with our teaching, etcetera across the board and from from an industry perspective, I mean, we see it. We've gotta have secure systems with everything we do and promoting this and getting students at early ages and mentoring them and throwing internships at them. Eyes is so paramount to the whole the whole cycle, and and that's kind of and it really takes focused attention. And we continue to use the word focus from an NSS, a perspective. We know the challenges that are out there. There are such talented people in the workforce on the government side, but not nearly enough of them. And likewise on industry side. We could use Maura's well, but when you get down to it, you know we can connect dots. You know that the the aspect That's a Professor Armstrong talked about earlier toe where you continue to work partnerships as much as you possibly can. We hope to be a part of that. That network at that ecosystem the will of taking common objectives and working together to kind of make these things happen and to bring the power not just of one or two companies, but our our entire membership to help out >>President >>Trump. Yeah, I would. I would also add it again. It's back to partnerships that I talked about earlier. One of our partners is high schools and schools fortune Margaret Fortune, who worked in a couple of, uh, administrations in California across party lines and education. Their fifth graders all visit Cal Poly and visit our learned by doing lab and you, you've got to get students interested in stem at a early age. We also need the partnerships, the scholarships, the financial aid so the students can graduate with minimal to no debt to really hit the ground running. And that's exacerbated and really stress. Now, with this covert induced recession, California supports higher education at a higher rate than most states in the nation. But that is that has dropped this year or reasons. We all understand, uh, due to Kobe, and so our partnerships, our creativity on making sure that we help those that need the most help financially uh, that's really key, because the gaps air huge eyes. My colleagues indicated, you know, half of half a million jobs and you need to look at the the students that are in the pipeline. We've got to enhance that. Uh, it's the in the placement rates are amazing. Once the students get to a place like Cal Poly or some of our other amazing CSU and UC campuses, uh, placement rates are like 94%. >>Many of our >>engineers, they have jobs lined up a year before they graduate. So it's just gonna take key partnerships working together. Uh, and that continued partnership with government, local, of course, our state of CSU on partners like we have here today, both Stephen Bang So partnerships the thing >>e could add, you know, the collaboration with universities one that we, uh, put a lot of emphasis, and it may not be well known fact, but as an example of national security agencies, uh, National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber, the Fast works with over 270 colleges and universities across the United States to educate its 45 future cyber first responders as an example, so that Zatz vibrant and healthy and something that we ought Teoh Teik, banjo >>off. Well, I got the brain trust here on this topic. I want to get your thoughts on this one point. I'd like to define what is a public private partnership because the theme that's coming out of the symposium is the script has been flipped. It's a modern error. Things air accelerated get you got security. So you get all these things kind of happen is a modern approach and you're seeing a digital transformation play out all over the world in business. Andi in the public sector. So >>what is what >>is a modern public private partnership? What does it look like today? Because people are learning differently, Covert has pointed out, which was that we're seeing right now. How people the progressions of knowledge and learning truth. It's all changing. How do you guys view the modern version of public private partnership and some some examples and improve points? Can you can you guys share that? We'll start with the Professor Armstrong. >>Yeah. A zai indicated earlier. We've had on guy could give other examples, but Northup Grumman, uh, they helped us with cyber lab. Many years ago. That is maintained, uh, directly the software, the connection outside its its own unit so that students can learn the hack, they can learn to penetrate defenses, and I know that that has already had some considerations of space. But that's a benefit to both parties. So a good public private partnership has benefits to both entities. Uh, in the common factor for universities with a lot of these partnerships is the is the talent, the talent that is, that is needed, what we've been working on for years of the, you know, that undergraduate or master's or PhD programs. But now it's also spilling into Skilling and re Skilling. As you know, Jobs. Uh, you know, folks were in jobs today that didn't exist two years, three years, five years ago. But it also spills into other aspects that can expand even mawr. We're very fortunate. We have land, there's opportunities. We have one tech part project. We're expanding our tech park. I think we'll see opportunities for that, and it'll it'll be adjusted thio, due to the virtual world that we're all learning more and more about it, which we were in before Cove it. But I also think that that person to person is going to be important. Um, I wanna make sure that I'm driving across the bridge. Or or that that satellites being launched by the engineer that's had at least some in person training, uh, to do that and that experience, especially as a first time freshman coming on a campus, getting that experience expanding and as adult. And we're gonna need those public private partnerships in order to continue to fund those at a level that is at the excellence we need for these stem and engineering fields. >>It's interesting People in technology can work together in these partnerships in a new way. Bank Steve Reaction Thio the modern version of what a public, successful private partnership looks like. >>If I could jump in John, I think, you know, historically, Dodi's has have had, ah, high bar thio, uh, to overcome, if you will, in terms of getting rapid pulling in your company. This is the fault, if you will and not rely heavily in are the usual suspects of vendors and like and I think the deal is done a good job over the last couple of years off trying to reduce the burden on working with us. You know, the Air Force. I think they're pioneering this idea around pitch days where companies come in, do a two hour pitch and immediately notified of a wooden award without having to wait a long time. Thio get feedback on on the quality of the product and so on. So I think we're trying to do our best. Thio strengthen that partnership with companies outside the main group of people that we typically use. >>Steve, any reaction? Comment to add? >>Yeah, I would add a couple of these air. Very excellent thoughts. Uh, it zits about taking a little gamble by coming out of your comfort zone. You know, the world that Bond and Bond lives in and I used to live in in the past has been quite structured. It's really about we know what the threat is. We need to go fix it, will design it says we go make it happen, we'll fly it. Um, life is so much more complicated than that. And so it's it's really to me. I mean, you take you take an example of the pitch days of bond talks about I think I think taking a gamble by attempting to just do a lot of pilot programs, uh, work the trust factor between government folks and the industry folks in academia. Because we are all in this together in a lot of ways, for example. I mean, we just sent the paper to the White House of their requests about, you know, what would we do from a workforce development perspective? And we hope Thio embellish on this over time once the the initiative matures. But we have a piece of it, for example, is the thing we call clear for success getting back Thio Uh, President Armstrong's comments at the collegiate level. You know, high, high, high quality folks are in high demand. So why don't we put together a program they grabbed kids in their their underclass years identifies folks that are interested in doing something like this. Get them scholarships. Um, um, I have a job waiting for them that their contract ID for before they graduate, and when they graduate, they walk with S C I clearance. We believe that could be done so, and that's an example of ways in which the public private partnerships can happen to where you now have a talented kid ready to go on Day one. We think those kind of things can happen. It just gets back down to being focused on specific initiatives, give them giving them a chance and run as many pilot programs as you can like these days. >>That's a great point, E. President. >>I just want to jump in and echo both the bank and Steve's comments. But Steve, that you know your point of, you know, our graduates. We consider them ready Day one. Well, they need to be ready Day one and ready to go secure. We totally support that and and love to follow up offline with you on that. That's that's exciting, uh, and needed very much needed mawr of it. Some of it's happening, but way certainly have been thinking a lot about that and making some plans, >>and that's a great example of good Segway. My next question. This kind of reimagining sees work flows, eyes kind of breaking down the old the old way and bringing in kind of a new way accelerated all kind of new things. There are creative ways to address this workforce issue, and this is the next topic. How can we employ new creative solutions? Because, let's face it, you know, it's not the days of get your engineering degree and and go interview for a job and then get slotted in and get the intern. You know the programs you get you particularly through the system. This is this is multiple disciplines. Cybersecurity points at that. You could be smart and math and have, ah, degree in anthropology and even the best cyber talents on the planet. So this is a new new world. What are some creative approaches that >>you know, we're >>in the workforce >>is quite good, John. One of the things I think that za challenge to us is you know, we got somehow we got me working for with the government, sexy, right? The part of the challenge we have is attracting the right right level of skill sets and personnel. But, you know, we're competing oftentimes with the commercial side, the gaming industry as examples of a big deal. And those are the same talents. We need to support a lot of programs we have in the U. D. So somehow we have to do a better job to Steve's point off, making the work within the U. D within the government something that they would be interested early on. So I tracked him early. I kind of talked about Cal Poly's, uh, challenge program that they were gonna have in June inviting high school kid. We're excited about the whole idea of space and cyber security, and so on those air something. So I think we have to do it. Continue to do what were the course the next several years. >>Awesome. Any other creative approaches that you guys see working or might be on idea, or just a kind of stoked the ideation out their internship. So obviously internships are known, but like there's gotta be new ways. >>I think you can take what Steve was talking about earlier getting students in high school, uh, and aligning them sometimes. Uh, that intern first internship, not just between the freshman sophomore year, but before they inter cal poly per se. And they're they're involved s So I think that's, uh, absolutely key. Getting them involved many other ways. Um, we have an example of of up Skilling a redeveloped work redevelopment here in the Central Coast. PG and e Diablo nuclear plant as going to decommission in around 2020 24. And so we have a ongoing partnership toe work on reposition those employees for for the future. So that's, you know, engineering and beyond. Uh, but think about that just in the manner that you were talking about. So the up skilling and re Skilling uh, on I think that's where you know, we were talking about that Purdue University. Other California universities have been dealing with online programs before cove it and now with co vid uh, so many more faculty or were pushed into that area. There's going to be much more going and talk about workforce development and up Skilling and Re Skilling The amount of training and education of our faculty across the country, uh, in in virtual, uh, and delivery has been huge. So there's always a silver linings in the cloud. >>I want to get your guys thoughts on one final question as we in the in the segment. And we've seen on the commercial side with cloud computing on these highly accelerated environments where you know, SAS business model subscription. That's on the business side. But >>one of The >>things that's clear in this trend is technology, and people work together and technology augments the people components. So I'd love to get your thoughts as we look at the world now we're living in co vid um, Cal Poly. You guys have remote learning Right now. It's a infancy. It's a whole new disruption, if you will, but also an opportunity to enable new ways to collaborate, Right? So if you look at people and technology, can you guys share your view and vision on how communities can be developed? How these digital technologies and people can work together faster to get to the truth or make a discovery higher to build the workforce? These air opportunities? How do you guys view this new digital transformation? >>Well, I think there's there's a huge opportunities and just what we're doing with this symposium. We're filming this on one day, and it's going to stream live, and then the three of us, the four of us, can participate and chat with participants while it's going on. That's amazing. And I appreciate you, John, you bringing that to this this symposium, I think there's more and more that we can do from a Cal poly perspective with our pedagogy. So you know, linked to learn by doing in person will always be important to us. But we see virtual. We see partnerships like this can expand and enhance our ability and minimize the in person time, decrease the time to degree enhanced graduation rate, eliminate opportunity gaps or students that don't have the same advantages. S so I think the technological aspect of this is tremendous. Then on the up Skilling and Re Skilling, where employees air all over, they can be reached virtually then maybe they come to a location or really advanced technology allows them to get hands on virtually, or they come to that location and get it in a hybrid format. Eso I'm I'm very excited about the future and what we can do, and it's gonna be different with every university with every partnership. It's one. Size does not fit all. >>It's so many possibilities. Bond. I could almost imagine a social network that has a verified, you know, secure clearance. I can jump in, have a little cloak of secrecy and collaborate with the d o. D. Possibly in the future. But >>these are the >>kind of kind of crazy ideas that are needed. Are your thoughts on this whole digital transformation cross policy? >>I think technology is gonna be revolutionary here, John. You know, we're focusing lately on what we call digital engineering to quicken the pace off, delivering capability to warfighter. As an example, I think a I machine language all that's gonna have a major play and how we operate in the future. We're embracing five G technologies writing ability Thio zero latency or I o t More automation off the supply chain. That sort of thing, I think, uh, the future ahead of us is is very encouraging. Thing is gonna do a lot for for national defense on certainly the security of the country. >>Steve, your final thoughts. Space systems are systems, and they're connected to other systems that are connected to people. Your thoughts on this digital transformation opportunity >>Such a great question in such a fun, great challenge ahead of us. Um echoing are my colleague's sentiments. I would add to it. You know, a lot of this has I think we should do some focusing on campaigning so that people can feel comfortable to include the Congress to do things a little bit differently. Um, you know, we're not attuned to doing things fast. Uh, but the dramatic You know, the way technology is just going like crazy right now. I think it ties back Thio hoping Thio, convince some of our senior leaders on what I call both sides of the Potomac River that it's worth taking these gamble. We do need to take some of these things very way. And I'm very confident, confident and excited and comfortable. They're just gonna be a great time ahead and all for the better. >>You know, e talk about D. C. Because I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a political person, but I always say less lawyers, more techies in Congress and Senate. So I was getting job when I say that. Sorry. Presidential. Go ahead. >>Yeah, I know. Just one other point. Uh, and and Steve's alluded to this in bonded as well. I mean, we've got to be less risk averse in these partnerships. That doesn't mean reckless, but we have to be less risk averse. And I would also I have a zoo. You talk about technology. I have to reflect on something that happened in, uh, you both talked a bit about Bill Britton and his impact on Cal Poly and what we're doing. But we were faced a few years ago of replacing a traditional data a data warehouse, data storage data center, and we partner with a W S. And thank goodness we had that in progress on it enhanced our bandwidth on our campus before Cove. It hit on with this partnership with the digital transformation hub. So there is a great example where, uh, we we had that going. That's not something we could have started. Oh, covitz hit. Let's flip that switch. And so we have to be proactive on. We also have thio not be risk averse and do some things differently. Eyes that that is really salvage the experience for for students. Right now, as things are flowing, well, we only have about 12% of our courses in person. Uh, those essential courses, uh, and just grateful for those partnerships that have talked about today. >>Yeah, and it's a shining example of how being agile, continuous operations, these air themes that expand into space and the next workforce needs to be built. Gentlemen, thank you. very much for sharing your insights. I know. Bang, You're gonna go into the defense side of space and your other sessions. Thank you, gentlemen, for your time for great session. Appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. >>I'm John Furry with the Cube here in Palo Alto, California Covering and hosting with Cal Poly The Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020. Thanks for watching.