Introduction and Guest Welcome -- Tobias Schlottke: Welcome to the Alphalist podcast. I am your host, Tobi. And today with me is a former colleague of mine who already was on the podcast once. And he is such a great guy that I just re, re invited him today. Um, it's Eric Bowman. Welcome. Erik, welcome Eric Bowman: Thank you, Toby. Great to be back. Well, it's a, it's an honor and a pleasure to return. So Eric Bowman: thanks for, Eric Bowman: having me back.
Tobias Schlottke: for, for me as well. And, um, just as a quick reminder. Eric Bowman's Career Journey -- Tobias Schlottke: So Erik and I met at Zalando where Erik was VP of engineering. Um, and beforehand he worked in gaming. So Maxis, right? Uh, you worked on the Sims. Is that correct? Eric Bowman: Yep. Tobias Schlottke: And, uh, after Zalando, you basically, uh, turned CTO at TomTom and now you're back to gaming, um, and you're working as CTO of king. Tobias Schlottke: com, right?
Eric Bowman: That is correct. Yes. Tobias Schlottke: Great. Return to Gaming Industry -- Tobias Schlottke: Um, so first of all, so why gaming again? Why the hell?
Eric Bowman: Yeah. Well, um, my, uh, my career has been a series of loopbacks, uh, essentially. I also worked in the past, uh, at TomTom and, uh, before I went to, I got into e commerce and ended up at Zalanda where we met and then I returned to TomTom and, uh, became the CTO of TomTom. And you know, I just like, um, There's certain problems, uh, that are just really interesting to me. And the combination of technology and fun is definitely one of them. And I mean, king is a really interesting business and a really interesting culture, and it's kind of a tech company and kind of a game company, and we're part of Microsoft now. All those things combined, uh, just made this really appealing to me.
Tobias Schlottke: Okay. So then fingers crossed that you don't return to Zalando as CTO of Zalando at a certain point. Let's see if that loopback always works for you. Um, but yeah, like maybe quick, quick start. Um, What, what problems are you solving right now? --
Eric Bowman: Well, you know, it's funny because, um, when I did the, uh, uh, so I left my previous role without my next role lined up for the first time after 30 years of essentially last day Friday, first day Monday, kind of, um, job progression. Considered my options and spoke to a number of different companies and, you know, what I found was that everyone I spoke to had more or less the same problem, which is, you know, how do, how actually do we organize people to consistently deliver value and enjoy The process, you know, I always come back to that. We're incredibly lucky to do the kind of work that we do. Um, you know, we're constantly solving problems and we're working in kind of an abstract and intellectual domain and it should be enjoyable. People should love doing it. Um, actually there's a lot of unhappiness in the tech industry in the early 2020s.
Eric Bowman: And, um, you know, how do we organize engineering and product? How do we set goals? Is it outcomes or outputs or, or what is it? And I continually find that problem incredibly interesting. Um,
Eric Bowman: There's a, you know, my last few roles, there's been a kind of a large C code base to reckon with. I also find that interesting, especially after years working kind of in Java and Scala, really getting back to the metal and how to make that work and how to, how to apply many of the things that, that we learned on the server side essentially over the past 20 years and how to apply that thinking to make the somewhat harder domain of more heavyweight kind of client side code go quickly.
Eric Bowman: And in, you know, I mean, ultimately like the Sims was a magical experience that left, you know, a little dent on the world. And, um, you know, King has a mature, huge product, hundreds of millions of players. And how do we continue to make that an engaging experience for all those people? That's just really interesting for me.
Tobias Schlottke: So how to stay innovative, how to deliver in a, in a way that actually makes sense, right? Um, how to potentially optimize time to value, right? Eric Bowman: Definitely. Tobias Schlottke: how to build, I don't know, an, an org that doesn't rely on micromanagement that leaves, um, like in a culture of, of, um, At Zalando, we would have said agility, right? Tobias Schlottke: Um, or, Tobias Schlottke: uh, maybe less, less centralized, right? Eric Bowman: Small A Agile.
Tobias Schlottke: right, right. And how to deal with, or how to stay focused, um, in, in, in the domain you want to be focused on, right? -- Tobias Schlottke: Um, maybe we start with, with, with output versus outcome, because this has been a topic which, uh, changed a lot in the last, I would say like four years, right, um, that, um, many orgs became less driven by.
Tobias Schlottke: Like just building for the sake of building, but building for the sake of producing meaningful outcome and output. So what's your perspective on balancing output versus outcome? Like, I mean, outcome is important. Um, but, but measurable outputs have a value too, right? So what, Tobias Schlottke: like, and does one always feed into the other or not?
Tobias Schlottke: And how do you balance that, um, in your day to day and how do you actually make sure that, um, modern delivery orgs, um, are like first producing the meaningful output that then like feeds into, into proper outcome.
Eric Bowman: Yeah, that's, uh, really kind of top of mind these days, um, for a lot of folks, uh, I see a lot of people talking about this, uh, on LinkedIn, for example, and, um, you know, there has been, I think, a useful shift, uh, I think you used the words outcome over output and, uh, that is an, it's an important perspective, but I also consider it a harmful perspective because it's not over, it's and, and, um, we have to have outputs that drive outcomes and neither alone is sufficient.
Eric Bowman: If we only specify outcomes and don't. care sufficiently how we get there, we're unlikely to get there. You know, if there ain't no outputs, there ain't no outcomes. Um, and you know, the idea that, oh, the outputs don't really matter, um, I think first of all, minimizes a little bit what is Accountability over Output -- Eric Bowman: the most important role of engineering management, which is really accountability over output. Product Management vs. Engineering Management --
Eric Bowman: And, um, the way I look at it is that You know, the main job of product management, uh, at least the most universal job of product management is identifying what are the achievable or adjacent outcomes, um, that create the most valuable, most value. And engineering management then becomes, well, how do we What are the outputs that will, you know, most quickly achieve those outcomes and, and how can we do that efficiently and in a sustainable way? That's actually kind of a helpful breakdown, uh, in my view, in terms of like, what are engineering managers and Product manager is actually accountable in the real world. One is describing, you know, discovering and describing the outcomes. Uh, and, and the other is then being accountable for the outputs and that kind of forces the cooperation, but it holds both outputs and outcomes kind of at the same level.
Universal Value Stream -- Eric Bowman: There are parts of a value stream, like a universal value stream. Um, Actually, like just over a year ago, there was this incredible McKinsey piece that made a bunch of noise about how to measure productivity and many very smart people contributed to, I think, a global conversation about that. And, um, Kent Beck talked about this kind of value stream.
Eric Bowman: I think he calls it effort to output, to outcome, to impact. And I kind of like activity better than effort, but they're, I mean, very nearly the same thing. But I think it's a really useful model because it really, Is a value stream that all has to connect and each part has to be, um, kind of separately and independently managed in some ways.
Eric Bowman: Sometimes it is self management, but we, each part needs to get sufficient attention and energy. We need to be improving every part of that value stream all the time. Getting Started: Impact --
Tobias Schlottke: And, and where do you typically start? I mean, if you now started a new job, like how do you check if, um, if, if the right measures are in place, how do you check if the organization is actually, um, moving in the right direction? I think like, I mean, um, a meaningful indicator is often revenue, right? Uh, Tobias Schlottke: like money flows in that's kind of outcome, right? Tobias Schlottke: Um, Eric Bowman: Yes. Eric Bowman: Actually, I would call that impact.
Tobias Schlottke: Or impact. Yeah. How do you move from that like impact to a meaningful outcome? And how do you then move to output? Or do you start at output? Like check, uh, I don't know how many Git commits were, did we see in the last three months and how did that, like, I don't know, uh, compare to the two months before or something like that. Tobias Schlottke: Right. Um,
Tobias Schlottke: do you do that or would you do that? Or how do you, how do you actually. Look at, look at output first. Eric Bowman: Yeah. I think it's a bit situational, but I'm given kind of my background and my interest. Engineering and Product Management Dynamics. Marty Cagan vs. Amazon Single Threaded Leader --
Eric Bowman: Uh, I always kind of start to try to understand what's the relationship between engineering management and product management. That's almost always where the friction is. And, you know, they're kind of different, like you end up with different, you know, Well, on the one hand, so there's this kind of spectrum where you have sort of like the Marty Kagan approach, the Google approach, which is a counterparting of, uh, engineering management and product management.
Eric Bowman: At the other end of the spectrum, you have the kind of the idealized Amazon single threaded leader with kind of holistic leadership and commercial product and engineering accountability with one person. And, um, I've now worked kind of in both extremes of that. And, um, I wouldn't say. I necessarily have a preference, but, uh, there are trade offs, uh, between the two approaches, but ultimately I think the most important thing or to, or at least I think where I would recommend starting, although I do think it's highly situational, is to understand the output to outcome. How is that bridge made? And then, you know, the kind of activity to output, how do people work? You know, how, how is work planned? Do the build systems work? All that is sort of separable. Um, and that, that you can look at that relatively independently.
Impact, Outcomes and Feedback Loops -- Eric Bowman: And then at the other end of the spectrum, so I mean, I found it, Helpful to think about impact is kind of the sum of outcomes.
Eric Bowman: So if you think of outcomes as behavioral outcomes, we do a thing to make a user or a player or whatever more likely to take some behavioral action, which will, you know, probably contribute directly or indirectly to revenue. That's kind of very much the focus domain of a lot of Product management work. But though the sum of those behavior changes, um, from users, players, customers, whatever they are, that generates the impact. And, um, that again is also kind of a, it's a more separable, more into the product commercial domain. Are we, you know, do we understand what we need the people who use our products to do? But the friction point really is very often, like, are we, like, how do the engineers and the designers know what the problem we're trying to solve is? And then ultimately, how do we essentially create the kind of, uh, flow that's needed because we're never going to get it right the first time or probably even the second time. And so we have to be able to iterate quickly and the learnings from those outcomes need to make it back to drive activity. Um, so there really is, you know, I mean, in a way, everything comes back to some form of flywheel or feedback loop and, um, those feedback loops I think are, are ultimately the most interesting thing to be thinking about, but I would tend to start, as I said, where's the output, outcome. Gap, if you will.
Tobias Schlottke: So is there a closed feedback loop, right? Like does feedback Tobias Schlottke: actually flow back to developers? Do developers then pick it up, work on the, the, the things they are supposed to work on, or they, they find like the, the right problems to work on. And, and then does this flow back into the, the, the product? Um, and, um, From your perspective, you just compared the different, um, product management ideas.
Single Threaded Leaders (Amazon) vs. Marty Cagan's Approach -- Tobias Schlottke: Um, is there a silver bullet or is there like, is it a mix or is it organization specific? Like what is, what is your view on that?
Eric Bowman: I don't think there is a silver bullet. Um, I think it's good for technology and product leaders to understand that spectrum. I think the spectrum is pretty universal. Um, like I can't imagine that you would overcomplicate it with more than two roles in that, at least in that core, kind of what I call the universal value stream. Um, I think that, you know, it's very, you know, Challenging to get those single threaded leaders. Um, I think Amazon's approach is we have to build them ourselves. And that was a massive undertaking. And we have all of the kind of leadership principles and, and, you know, the system that they build is remarkable, whether it's going to scale into millions of employees, I guess we'll see, we might be seeing some cracks now. Um, but you know, it's like, uh, this will probably come up, you know, if it, if, if it's not really an adjacent possible.
Dual Roles and Peer Review --
Eric Bowman: For you, like if you can't get those people or whatever, then obviously having dual roles is a lot easier in certain ways. You can actually more easily find people who are, you know, experienced at either engineering management or product management. And there are benefits to the approach when it's working well. It is when EMs and PMs, for example, agree on something, it's much easier as a, as a, at the executive level to go with that decision. It has, it brings some kind of peer review, uh, to the process compared to when a single person comes and says,
Eric Bowman: this is what we should do. Tobias Schlottke: right? Some helpful Tobias Schlottke: friction in many cases. CTO Role Focus: How much Product/Tomorrow -- Tobias Schlottke: And I also question the, the single threaded leader approach. I mean, I know that it does exist and, but it's, it's like, I see it often in founders, right? Um, Tobias Schlottke: like when, I dunno, you see those, those YC backed startups where you only have engineering folks, uh, leading a company.
Tobias Schlottke: Um, uh, but I don't see it a lot in, in the real world. Um, especially because the, the, the, the, the jobs, let's say an engineering manager or CTO. And a product person, they, they, they have a different focus, right? Like the, the CTO typically focuses on keeping the lights on and keeping the system alive, um, and keeping.
Tobias Schlottke: a healthy, keeping the delivery stream flowing while, um, the, the, the product person, uh, cares about tomorrow and what, what do we do tomorrow? And this, this often conflicts, right? Um, I mean, very simplified. Eric Bowman: I would take issue. I'm not sure that should be the main, I mean, obviously it's an important focus, but I think CTOs need to be super forward looking. But I, I mean, there is a difference for sure. But, um, CTO Role: Economic Aspect --
Eric Bowman: I, you know, I think one of the things that's changed, uh, about how CTO role, CTO roles, uh, look in this decade compared to the last is you're much more focused on the economics of what we're doing. Are we creating value? Are, you know, what is the marginal increase in value creation per added employee, for example? Um, and what can we do to reduce carrying costs? What can we do to bring value sooner? How, you know, factoring in cost of delay, um, keeping the lights on is easier than it used to be.
Eric Bowman: That's of course, super important, you know, uh, existential if you don't do it. But if you are, if that's your main focus as a CTO, uh,
Tobias Schlottke: You have a boring job. You have a boring job, most likely. I mean, it obviously also depends on the business, right? Um, and some companies it's more complex to keep the lights on and other businesses Tobias Schlottke: less complex, and you actually have more time to, to, to, to care about tomorrow, but, but CTO and Risks: No Stable anymore --
Tobias Schlottke: I see that, that pattern often that, um, you have a natural tendency and you, you, you swing more towards like having stability as a CTO and being, let's say a bit. Tobias Schlottke: Defensive when it comes to new things, um, while as a, as a product person, you often have, have the job to, to, Tobias Schlottke: to, to to deal with new things. Right. But it's, I agree that it's like maybe a bit simplified.
Eric Bowman: Yeah. I mean, for whatever it's worth, I, I'm, I'm not conservative. I'm looking for how can we move faster? How can we take, how can we, you know, moderate risk? How can we make smart risk decisions? How can we manage risk? But, um, you know, it's, uh, it's a tough world out there. There's no, there's no stable anymore. Team Organization and Autonomy --
Tobias Schlottke: That's right. Um, And in this modern world, did your view on how, um, effective, not, let's not call them engineering teams. Let's, let's, let's call them product teams, Tobias Schlottke: um, or diverse teams, right? Smaller teams -- Tobias Schlottke: Um, I think there has been a trend.
-- Tobias Schlottke: Um, to, to diversify really, um, on, on team level and, and to really have teams that consist of like say, uh, engineering people and product people at the same time, and a bit of a like trend towards like smaller teams, Tobias Schlottke: do you agree that this is a good trend or does this solve issues you, that, that were harder to solve before?
Eric Bowman: So I think. I would say at this point, objectively, I wouldn't call it a universally good trend. Um, mostly, you know, as we're into the zero interest, or as we leave the zero interest rate period behind us, um, many tech leaders, myself included, you know, it's kind of unaware of the impact of the macroeconomic client, climate, Um, grew too many teams and too, too many small teams and really focused on, um, we're just going to grow, you know, we're like, we're going to build these different components of a bigger product and all of them, we're just going to continue to evolve.
Eric Bowman: I think, you know, the economic or thermodynamic reality is that that is not sustainable for the vast majority of businesses. Um, um, I do kind of look at it with some interest, although direct, no direct experience at the kind of like bigger team approaches where we have like 50 people working together and they don't break up into smaller teams, uh, so much, but it's more dynamic.
Eric Bowman: I, I don't know if that works, but I recognize what it's responding to, I think. And, um, We have tended to over complicate and over compartmentalize, um, how we build systems against a sort of theoretical view of, of, you know, product decomposition and it's, there's a coherence with, uh, cloud infrastructure, for example, and it really You know, taps into the kind of need for autonomy. My conclusion after more than a decade, uh, is that that works to a degree, but it also is a form of organizational debt that has to be paid back at some point. Many companies are currently paying that back. And so I actually, you know, I've, I've, I've committed sins in this area. And I mean, so I, you know, I gave a masterclass on autonomous teams and my own thinking is constantly evolving around this. And King is quite famous, I think, in some circles for the degree of autonomy and it's part of the culture and part of the values really of the company. And so keeping that going is top of mind for me.
Eric Bowman: But I think, um, you know, go back to Flywheels for a second. Causal Chains and Feedback Loops --
Eric Bowman: One of the hardest things for tech people, in my experience, or at least maybe it was just me, but I, you know, I don't hear people talking about this so much, is this idea that in any kind of commercial enterprise or any kind of enterprise, like non profits as well, you know, you're trying to do a thing that causes a thing. And so in the kind of universal value stream, it's like we do the activity that causes the output, that causes the outcome, that causes the outcome. Impact, which is a pretty long causal chain, actually. And, um, it is kind of beyond most people's intellectual ability to really be able to understand how even that long of a causal chain really works, which is probably why it's actually really hard to make a good product. When you think about a flywheel, we're actually creating a causal chain that closes in on itself, which is almost unimaginably difficult again. Um, But somehow, you know, what kind of emerges for me is one of the most important concepts for how to organize at scale is really to do the work to understand more about the causal chain that is relevant to individual teams and how what they are doing is genuinely contributing to the higher order goals. And then, you know, sort of back to the feedback loop concept, creating the conditions where there's an expectation and kind of the environment to really learn, do we actually understand enough, you know, I mean, it's a complex system and there are external factors, you know, causality is, is a pretty high standard, but still we do things and it, you know, at least correlates strongly with what we hope will happen some of the time. And so I'm, I'm. What's kind of emerging for me is that the most powerful driver, however you organize, is that people have, people working in teams can, are working toward goals that are, that may be like, kind of commitment goals, but it's clear how they contribute to something bigger than just what the team is doing. And that there is this dynamic that it's like, we're trying to learn kind of quarter by quarter or month by month or whatever, sprint by sprint, whatever the right cadence is. We're trying to learn more about how, what the things we do actually, what the causes that they create. And that's very often in the form of behavioral outcomes for many, many products, especially online products, but not exclusively, but ultimately it has to contribute to creating a business that can either, you know, do more. With the same, or the same for less, or maybe more for less, but all those things have to come together and when I see a team that cannot, that is not making that connection, it's almost always an underperforming team, or like untapped potential team,
Eric Bowman: and The Power of Goals and Learning --
Eric Bowman: the correlation between seeing a team that is super engaged, moving fast, and having real impact, They have, in my experience, always, like, clear goals that they're working toward, this learning culture, and they under, like, they understand that they're trying to improve, whether it's just in a product management sense or a combined product engineering, the mental model for how the system works and how what they do can actually improve it for users, and so, um, I was, you know, I was a little bit slow, honestly, on the goal train, um, but, and, and mostly because I wasn't able to see past the immediate sort of period, like the, the power of goals is not the immediate period.
Eric Bowman: It's the cycle, the repeating and the learning. That happens when like, if we knew, if we knew then what we know now, what would we have done differently? Goals, OKR< COmmmitment --
Tobias Schlottke: And, and if you talk about the goal train, um, do you, do you follow still, um, like things like OKRs or do you, do you, do you just simplify these days? Because like, I tend to find it like those systems too complex to basically keep up the discipline to, to, to really. Um, really, really follow them. Um, do, do, do you think like people also spend too much time on like, following systems because they think that big organizations invented those systems and that's why they have to work and as, as soon as it has a name, um, or, uh, follow some, some, some idea by Google it, it, it actually
Tobias Schlottke: must work. Uh, like how do you see that? Eric Bowman: So that definitely happens, unfortunately, way too much, you know, and that's also one of the big problems with Scrum. It, I mean, it becomes a, uh, you know, what Richard Feynman called a cargo cult, where if we just go through the. Motions, you know, the planes will start landing on the runway. Um, I mean, okay, ours are problematic, just like everything is problematic. Commitment and Action in OKRs --
Eric Bowman: But if you, if people genuinely commit. Uh, and they're meaningful and they get reviewed. They actually work pretty well, you know? Um, it's the commitment part and, and ultimately, you know, I, I, uh, Discpline comes through action and motivation --
Eric Bowman: I saw something recently that really kind of stuck with me. The simplicity of it was appealing because I'm not the most disciplined person in certain parts of my life. Um, pretty disciplined in others, but I, you know, I don't think anyone would, would objectively hold me up as like some kind of like torchbearer Discipline necessarily. And so it's like, does discipline come from motivation or does motivation come from discipline? It's actually, I think it's, uh, I can't remember exactly how it was put, but it was basically action creates motivation and the motivate, and then once the motivation is happening, then discipline is sort of like an output of that, that at least for me, like discipline on its own, even though intellectually it is appealing and where I apply it, it's useful, it's just hard to, to maintain. So the, you know, when you look at organizations that talk about the bias for action, when they actually live those, that's where a lot of motivation and discipline come through, especially over time. And so, you know, the, the kind of, the connection between commitment and action, and it's like, we are committing to OKRs or whatever, um, and, and when that is kind of at scale, whatever it is, it's way better. You know, without it.
Issue of unordered OKRs -- Eric Bowman: And so, yeah, you know, and so what, but also one of the problems with OKRs is, uh, that they are unordered. And, um, I, I don't know if you were still, uh, at Zalando, but we, we did this thing, a global portal. Uh, global initiatives or global programs where we had a ordered list of like the top N, where N was kind of less than 10, um, programs that, uh, required multiple teams to participate and pretty effective.
Eric Bowman: Like it was, I mean, nothing is perfect, but compared to what was there before. We were able to move bigger things, and I took that into my kind of, uh, standard toolkit and, uh, implemented something similar, uh, in my next role, and I'm kind of looking at it now. But I really tried to understand, like, what is it makes that work exactly? Understanding Stack Ranking in Large Organizations --
Eric Bowman: I mean, there are, like, the, the way it was explained to me originally, you know, was that with these complex programs, you have a bunch of teams and, and very often, you know, seven of ten teams do the work, and then we drop the ball. The last few teams, we lose focus or discipline or motivation or whatever it is. And then you've, you know, you've got all this sunk cost and that's a problem. --
Eric Bowman: And it's kind of like, Actually kind of common, um, in large organizations that these things happen. So that's an obvious benefit, but I was really trying to understand more fundamentally, what is the effect of having that kind of stack ranked, um, prioritization and also, you know, it's like, well, actually ordering it is super hard. Um, and executives don't really, at least the ones I know and me don't necessarily want to do the ordering because. You know, if you're wrong, maybe the system can self organize into a better ordering.
The Role of High Contention Teams -- Eric Bowman: And then I have the following insight, which is that, um, very often there's, there's a few teams that have to contribute to multiple things.
Eric Bowman: Like, you know, if there's some kind of user data platform or, or, you know, like there's just always a couple teams that just everything depends on. And those teams become high contention points if you're trying to do multiple things at once. And it's a very, you know, hairy problem to figure out how to actually organize work to be efficient. But what that stack ranking does is it basically forces all of those teams To do work on these initiatives in the same order. And so it's a natural kind of whip limiter for those bottleneck teams. And that improves the flow for those teams. And then assuming the teams that depend on them are also following the stack ranking and saying, like, if you can work on this one, You know, do so before you work on that one.
Kanban-esque Flow Improvement -- Eric Bowman: The overall system effect of this thing is it actually increases flow in a way that is very kind of Kanban esque, but without having to manage individual WIP in, in an individual team. It like is an emergent WIP reducing system Eric Bowman: behavior. Tobias Schlottke: Whip reducing system behavior. --
Tobias Schlottke: I, what, what, what I sometimes also find effective is basically the idea of having one goal, right? Um, Tobias Schlottke: like, especially for those teams, like for quarter, Tobias Schlottke: you Eric Bowman: Oh, for Tobias Schlottke: have one very simple goal because like what, what I found always like happening with. -- Tobias Schlottke: Also, Goal Systems and OKRs, they are often decoupled from the actual delivery, right?
Tobias Schlottke: Or from the actual day to day of the organization. Tobias Schlottke: And then You basically meet back at the end of the quarter and then, I don't know, people try to, Tobias Schlottke: I don't know, close them down in a minute, uh, which obviously doesn't work. Right. Um, uh, but, but I think that's also like signs of like an unhealthy introduction of, of goals or OKRs. Tobias Schlottke: Right. Um,
Eric Bowman: Yeah. There's maybe the missing commitment. I think the other thing is that a certain scale, like you're always working on the next quarter or whatever time intervals goals, it's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. If you save it until the last two weeks of the quarter, you know, you're not going to do Tobias Schlottke: you're
Tobias Schlottke: not going to do anything. Right. Like, I mean, you may be, uh, I don't know if, if your goal is to close down bank accounts, you irrationally close down bank accounts, at the end of the quarter or something like that. Right. Which causes lots of harm. So, and that, um, just mentioning that because that, that, that happened back at Zalando, um, to me actually, like, can we close down your bank account, uh, like one day before the quarter ends, but, but, um, Um, I think, um, uh, back to this singular goal, this actually often solves, um, this, this traffic problem that you just mentioned in, in very.
Tobias Schlottke: Uh, like under fire teams, um, to really like still achieve something, which is forward looking while still working, um, on all the maintenance and helping others and whatever, um, uh, where, where it's lots of context switching. Right. Because if you just have one goal, you can always derive back to that, right? Tobias Schlottke: You can always move back to that and deliver.
Eric Bowman: That is also a natural WIP limiter, but um, it's not always possible to only have one goal. But, but I would say the smallest number of goals you can get away with, absolutely. But I would also say, and actually I wrote some code to simulate this because I was so, I, you know, I was like, oh, this is actually, there's something to this. It, to a large extent, it doesn't even matter. What the stack ranking is, as long as everyone agrees with it, you will get benefits if the system is at all kind of like normal.
Platform Engineering and Its Value (post- DORA ) -- Tobias Schlottke: Absolutely. So, um, I still want to, want to shift gears a little. Um, a few days ago, I don't know if you saw that, um, but, um, uh, there was the release of the new DORA report.
-- Tobias Schlottke: Um, and, um, as far as I see it, like, um, people start questioning Uh, platform engineering, uh, well, I mean, first DevOps broke and now I see like platform engineering being, being questioned and, and, um, the, the real value of, of platforms is, um, is at risk, let's say, um, Tobias Schlottke: how do you see that?
Tobias Schlottke: I mean, you, you also, um, I'm, I'm just like, we didn't talk about it before, but, um, you were working at many orgs where. I don't know, at a certain point, people started introducing platforms and building platforms and there were many people involved, like maybe building something which like no one really needed.
Tobias Schlottke: Um, uh, that's, that's how I also see it in some cases. And I'm actually right now thinking about it. Like what, what is, what is the like tiniest. level of, of like introducing platform. Um, and, and, and I see it as a very hard challenge. Like, how, how do you see that? Like, um, what what are you doing at, at King? Tobias Schlottke: What did you do before? What is your view on it?
Eric Bowman: Well, what do you, so I, unfortunately, I did catch some of the Dora, uh, fallout, but it was more about, um, AI assisted coding considered harmful. Um, which is also pretty interesting. I, I can see that, but I also have some questions, but what, like, platform is an overloaded word, so I'm not sure which kind of platform are you talking about?
Tobias Schlottke: Well, I mean, in many orgs, you have platform teams that then introduce things that are supposed to make people more productive, Tobias Schlottke: um, meaning measuring experience. Effectiveness, um, productivity, uh, starting to introduce tools like backstage, um, Tobias Schlottke: starting to really build something that like is supposed to make people deploy faster, like stuff like that. Does Platform slow things down? --
Tobias Schlottke: Right. Like we, we did, we had many, many of those things at Zalando and I don't know what you have in your org or how you see it. Um, and I, I think, I think that often. It actually leads to people being slower in their day to day, um, because they Tobias Schlottke: are not doing it the way they are used to, or not the way it has been shaped by big vendors, um,
Tobias Schlottke: that you're potentially using, but you, I don't know, you have your certain way to deploy in your org. Tobias Schlottke: Um, Eric Bowman: Yeah. So, I mean, King is a special case. I might not get too into that because I'm not sure that's, uh, super helpful, but I think, um, Compentating Measures --
Eric Bowman: yeah, things, uh, so one way to look at it is that you always want to be on the lookout for what I would call compensating measures. So, for example, if like the HR team is doing a bunch of the work that managers should be doing. Because maybe the managers don't know how to manage, um, which is pretty common, uh, in, in, uh, tech. Um, it feels kind of good to people, you know, it's like, well, these people can't do it. It's hard to change. It has to be done. We'll step in, we'll do this. It gives kind of could give meaning say to some of the, some HR work or different kind of meaning, but it's actually weakening the system over time because actually those managers need to do that work. And, um, I do think that we have over platformed a bit, and, um, we tend to underestimate the long term cost and difficulty of changing these things, so, like, trying to think hard about what will be needed, um, is almost certainly wrong, like, you know, uh, you want to stick to the adjacent possible, as we discussed, as much as you can, and, um, similar to how language shapes how we see the world, what our platforms can do also shapes how we see the world, and they end up doing things for us that maybe we should be doing, and ultimately kind of making us weaker. Um, so, you know, I, I mean, I would say it's a risk, but I don't think there is, it's hard for me to say platforms universally good, platforms universally bad. Um, what I like about the direction that CTO work is going and what I mentioned earlier, which is like, we're actually starting to really look at the economics of what we're doing.
Eric Bowman: And at the end of the day, those economics are about what is, you know, what is the carrying costs of the work that we're doing? What is the cost of delay and how do we balance that against risk? And then how does that connect to, um, to revenue? And, um, I mean, what I am, you know, what I am doing now actively with teams is really saying, Hey, we got to map out these value streams.
Eric Bowman: We got to understand what value is flowing through them, which are the most important ones. We need to actually work to reduce the, the time to value. And let us actually calculate, because at least, you know, in my current role, we know very much, over time, we know what the value of almost every single thing, uh, that we do is. And try to map that back to like, okay, this is, you know, we, we reduced the cost of delay this much, we brought in revenue this much sooner. And then how we do that, you know, it's like, it's no longer good enough that it's like, oh, this is a, this great company, Platform. It's gotta be a platform that we can evolve and that is essentially either contributing, I mean, at the end of the day.
Tech Investments: ROI - Future REvenue or Future DEveliery2 -- Eric Bowman: So another way to look at it is these are tech investments and there's only two reasons to make tech investments. One of them is the promise of future revenue. And one of them is to accelerate future delivery. So, which is it? And if it isn't one of those, we're not doing it, basically. Tobias Schlottke: I think Eric Bowman: One might argue cutting costs is helpful too, but yeah, we try to focus on value creation.
Tobias Schlottke: Yeah. Well, either like. Um, uh, basically, uh, lower the bottom line or, uh, like raise the top line, right? That's it. Eric Bowman: Yeah, Tobias Schlottke: That's how life is, Tobias Schlottke: uh, in a nutshell. Uh, but it's, Tobias Schlottke: but it's often ,but it's also, also often easier said than done. -- Tobias Schlottke: Um, you, you now mentioned the theory of the Jason possible for, for, for a few times. Tobias Schlottke: Um,
Tobias Schlottke: and I think it, it, it, it suggests, as far as I understood it, it, it suggests that. Innovation in a company is, um, essentially shaped by the tools and resources at hand. Uh, how, Tobias Schlottke: how do you see this in action?
Eric Bowman: Yeah, so, uh, we talked about it in the, in the warm up a bit, and it's something that, um, is on my mind from time to time. And, I would encourage you, dear listener, to go Google or chat GPT about the theory of adjacent possible because it is a really interesting way to look at the world. And the basic idea is that, um, you know, uh, I mean, there are different ways that people describe it.
Eric Bowman: One way to think about it is, but the basic idea is like, look, we're, there's a set of possible next steps that we can take. And beyond that is very, very hard to see. And I mean, sometimes in a simpler world, of course, we can make long term plans and head toward that long term plan and all is great, but as things get more and more connected and technology does more and more, and the world is bigger, you know, in part because of that connection, um, Each step that we're, that we take, there's so much new to learn that we want to at least make sure that we are learning, uh, at each step and that we are being small A agile to make sure to apply those learnings. And it, so it's this, this kind of, I mean, ultimately it is a simple mathematical model around innovation. It comes from this guy, Stuart Kaufman, uh, who's very interesting theoretical biologist. Um, and
Innovation and Bucket of Balls --
Eric Bowman: one way to look at it is, uh, one way people describe it is like, suppose innovation. Which is a word I hate by the way, but we'll get back to that in a second. As a process of like pulling balls out of a bucket and you know, each ball you pull out is a kind of a discovery or an invention. And so the one that I remember is like, you pull out the dance ball. It's like, Oh, we've invented dancing. And then the question is, well, what do you do with the ball? You don't put it back in because it's already been discovered.
Eric Bowman: But what happens is like, you know, a billion more balls get Pour it into the bucket. And so each step that you take can quite dramatically kind of cause you to kind of reconsider your Bayesian priors every step of the way. It's a really interesting kind of way to look at the world and it has relevance for, you know, it helps explain why a lot of the best thinking, in my view, about what makes projects succeed, how evolutionary software architecture works and how. You know, good news over planning is not always appropriate. Um, but it also underscores how important tools are. And, and so one of the, one of the successful ways that this has been applied is to look at a couple different scenarios. One is the Cambrian population explosion and another is kind of the 20th century kind of, you know, from the industrial age into the post industrial age, how GDP just skyrocketed. And in both cases, you know, there's this, uh, In the Cambrian explosion, there were certain proteins which came into existence, which could be combined in super interesting ways, and this genetic diversity exploded. And, you know, like, if you look at how many tools humans had, say, 2, 000 years ago, it was something like 10, 000. And if you look at how many tools people had, sort of, at the end of World War II, it was tens of millions. And so this, like, the availability of tools somehow just unlocks, uh, this opportunity to innovate in very surprising and effective ways.
Eric Bowman: And so, Tobias Schlottke: I, I think most of the listeners are now thinking about AI and, uh, when, I dunno, GPT Eric Bowman: yeah, exactly. Tobias Schlottke: Yeah, Eric Bowman: Yeah. --
Eric Bowman: So, you know, I mean, we, like the, basically with chat, with chat GPT coming out in next November, 2022, it's like the, the adjacent possibility. Space exploded, you know, in a way that it maybe never has before. I mean, it's just, it's, and it's sort of disorienting and confusing for people and, and everybody's scrambling to figure out what's our AI strategy.
Eric Bowman: And then, um, you know, on the tools question is like, is, are these chat tools, are they tools or are they tools for creating tools? I'm leaning more toward it's more tools for creating tools and the tools haven't really emerged yet. And that actually could take a decade or two for it really. For the right tools that actually lead to some kind of, you know, science fiction compatible version of the world, uh, to really start to take off.
Eric Bowman: We have a lot to learn. We have a new capability, but we just don't have the ways yet to figure out how to use it for anything other than very simple use cases. AI isn't ready yet -- Tobias Schlottke: absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now obviously, like most listeners as me, think of Alexa not being able to do anything Eric Bowman: Oh, Tobias Schlottke: and, and, Eric Bowman: Alexa. Tobias Schlottke: No, I
Eric Bowman: you please turn off the lights, please? Could you keep trying until you connect with the device that's out there controlling the lights? Just keep trying.
Tobias Schlottke: yeah, yeah, yeah, no, let's, let's be patient with that. Right. Let's, let's be patient with, with Amazon adopting it. Um, let's, let's be patient with, with the word adopting it. And I think that's also what you sometimes have to do. Right. I mean, things, um, or like, or especially GPT in the year 22 wasn't, wasn't done.
Tobias Schlottke: Right. It's, It's, just like. It is just like the ignition basically, and, and, and not like the, the, the, the, full introduction of, of, of an innovation to the world. Right. But rather like, um, something that you set, set into the wild to, to make people and, and, and see people adopting it. And, and then, um, at a certain point, something that, that makes people actually more productive, but that, that takes ages. Tobias Schlottke: Right.
Eric Bowman: yeah, no, absolutely. And it, you know, it is fooling us. It's capable of fooling us in very convincing ways that it is a sentient thing. And it's just, and it may become one, but it absolutely is not. It lacks, you know, Common sense. It's, uh, well read, but, um, not actually aware, but if it's able to play on our emotions and our perceptions, uh, in ingenious ways, and it's incredibly useful.
Eric Bowman: Don't get me wrong. I use it all the time, but it's not that use is not scalable yet. And I can't really imagine yet actually automating something meaningful. Where you really couldn't just let it go. Like the automation of it is way more complicated than just the doing of it much of the time.
Tobias Schlottke: Yeah, and that's what we have to understand, right? Also, as tech leaders in the next years, like, how do you actually, I don't know, build agents? That's like the new trend, right? Agentic AI, etc. And how to apply it to really solve business problems. But let's see, let's see, let's be patient. Eric Bowman: for it Eric Bowman: to believe Twitter, all that stuff works, but. haven't seen it yet. I "Innovation": Why he hates that word --
Tobias Schlottke: So, um, what's then your final take on innovation? Like, um, if you could describe innovation in three sentences, what, what would it be?
Eric Bowman: think I only need to. Define problem, solve problem. I actually hate the word because it's so weaponized. And it's like, you know, I mean, the joke I keep making is like, if you want to see real innovation, you know, let's watch how Amazon employees get out of five days return to office. The problem has been defined, and they will come up, I'm sure, with very clever solutions. What people mean when they talk about innovation is like, you know, how do we get our people solving the right problems and not solving the, the platform sucks or, you know, the tech debt is too high or whatever. And again, that really comes down to kind of building these causal chains of understanding what we're trying to accomplish.
Eric Bowman: Then that becomes the problem to solve. And, um, you know, the idea of having innovation teams or the innovation is only for hack weeks. Nah, it's an everyday thing. That's what makes the job so Tobias Schlottke: Corporate incubator, right? Eric Bowman: Yeah. Tobias Schlottke: How helpful. Tobias Schlottke: So, um, uh, let's, let's, um, we've. Quickfire Round: Tools and Tech --
Tobias Schlottke: We slowly have to come to the end and I prepared a little like quickfire round for you. So, uh, just, just three questions, uh, name a tool or piece of tech you can't live without. And one you think is totally overrated.
Eric Bowman: Uh, can't live without, I mean, uh, I mean, right now it is actually, unfortunately, chat GPT. I could not, I don't want to go back to the before time, rather cliche answer, but, um, they're definitely before and after. And overrated, um, I mean, at the moment it feels like every single app that I use, Unless it is truly great is terrible. Like I can't remember the last time I used an airline app that was, that wasn't literally terrible, but I don't know if that meets the bar of overrated. Um, huh. That's a good one actually. I mean, I think Slack is probably overrated.
Tobias Schlottke: Unfortunately. Well, I don't know if it's overrated or if it just, um, if someone is just not. Maintaining it well, right. I dunno. Eric Bowman: So there's something, something wrong, man. Tobias Schlottke: Okay. Eric Bowman: I think return to office is overrated. Alternate Career? -- Tobias Schlottke: Okay. Yeah, that, that's, that's a good one. Um, if you weren't in tech, what completely different career could you see yourself pursuing?
Eric Bowman: So, yeah, my stock answer to that these days, I think, ever since I read the book The Goal, is actually I think operations would be super interesting. Academia. Would be interesting. Um, actuarial work. I wish I were smart enough to do that. Um, but yeah, I, I wish I had more time to write as well. Jetlag Hacks --
Tobias Schlottke: Okay. Is there something tech related or not that you're currently obsessed about and that you basically recommend to everyone apart from bt Eric Bowman: Time shifter for managing, um, jet lag, as an app. Tobias Schlottke: ah, yeah. I, I see, I saw that app. Yeah. Um,
Eric Bowman: to that, there's something called Lumos. tech, which is actually, it's an eye mask and there's a super fast flashing set of lights in it. And you, it reprograms your circadian rhythm while you're sleeping. I think it might even be better than time shifter, but either one, like, At large, the technology for managing jet lag for people unfortunate enough to have to travel across time zones is a total game changer. Like, no reservation, strong recommend.
Tobias Schlottke: if you had to leave my listeners with one key insight or innovation or ability, what would it be? Final words: Learning loop. Time to value -- Eric Bowman: Um, build that learning loop, make time pay off. And it's two things. Time to value is everything. Tobias Schlottke: Thanks a lot, Eric. Was a great pleasure to talk to you again. Um, Eric Bowman: It's a pleasure.
Tobias Schlottke: really, really, insightful. Um, you're, you're a true wise guy and, um, yeah, um, uh, let's, let's, let's have another chat Tobias Schlottke: in a year or so. Eric Bowman: See you soon. Tobias Schlottke: Thanks a lot. Bye bye.