Technology Transformation: Technology is the easy bit, culture is the hard part

Digitization is like eating cake

Link to part 1 from 2016

Happy New Year to everyone and hope you are all doing well. I am glad to leave 2021 behind and I look forward to a COVID free 2022 going forward. Those of you who know me personally would say that I am passionate about cloud-native engineering, and enjoy leading and transforming organizations through this journey. No kidding. I am on my 5th large-scale transformation and am still learning. Each one comes with its own nuances.?

I also love cake. I make my own cake and don't feel guilty about eating it, since I know exactly what goes into it compared to what I buy from the store. It’s satisfying and makes me happy. Modern engineering is very much like eating cake, and there is enormous satisfaction when you deliver value to your customers and the business using modern engineering practices.

Early in my career I was a developer working on building products for internal employees. My mindset as an engineer at that time was I have to build this feature within this timeframe. I didn't really think much about who I was building it for, how I am going to create capabilities that are reusable, and didn't really understand the higher purpose of why I am building it. We released software once every few months, fixed bugs, operated in silos as dev, test, and operations. It worked for a number of years when the pace and rate of change was slow, and competition was slow to respond as well. Usability, real-time insights was an afterthought. We all know this model won't work now and yet organizations struggle to make the transition to more modern engineering.

Let me explain what modern engineering is in my view and why it is required today more than ever. Modern engineering is about using a set of practices such as Agile, DevSecOps, SRE, etc. to build great products and experiences for our customers using frameworks and tools that help improve developer productivity, deliver quality products, write secure code, and manage reliable operations. It is also about creating a flexible architecture that evolves and scales over time. When done right, organizations gain the ability to create great products for their customers.

Organizations born in the last 10 years are native to these practices and have a competitive edge. They are either born digital or have minimal legacy practices to change. It’s much harder for organizations that have existed for decades. Most leaders mean well, but don't have the wherewithal to make the hard changes required to transform. As human beings, we are comfortable doing the same things that we are familiar with and what worked for us in the past. As humans, we have also evolved through learning and adaptation. I am happy to share our digitization journey at DISH and how adopting modern engineering practices, tools and processes has played a pivotal role in modernizing the organization. All things said, it comes down to culture, mindset and people, and it's like playing non-stop soccer. It requires speed, endurance and tenacity.

We have made tremendous progress at DISH and I am extremely proud of our teams. We still have room for growth and will continue to work on it feverishly. Some areas we have focused on are:

• The hard problems that require tremendous focus; they’re the worst because of resource constraints and competing priorities from multiple stakeholders. It requires more than technical know-how, it takes tremendous discipline and flexibility. Skills we’ve needed to prioritize and strengthen.
• Rapid test and deployment of new features to receive immediate feedback. It has been great for our customers and engineers by driving satisfaction and productivity.?
• Small batch deployments to maintain system integrity. Issues are resolved faster and there are fewer failures.?
• Increased test automation and performance engineering to improve overall deliverable quality. You get a better, more secure product.
• Leading with data and insights gathered from user behavior and system performance. It’s critical for improving the product and application performance.

Common pitfalls to avoid

Migrating applications as-is to the cloud: Many organizations embark on a cloud-native journey and fall short of expectations. They end up migrating applications as-is to the cloud without taking advantage of capabilities the cloud offers, they implement rudimentary automation and declare early victory. This happens primarily due to a lack of understanding as to what it means to be cloud native and the process required to get there.

Transformation in silos: Organizations that adopt cloud-native transformations in silos realize some benefit, but not all. It’s important that the product, design and engineering teams work together as one team and solve problems for customers. It’s important that every leader is aligned on delivering value to the customer.?

Inconsistent tools strategy: Having the right tool chain, knowledge on how to use them to get the most value, and skills required to transform are critical for success. Most organizations have a myriad of tools with no clear strategy on how to get the most value from them.

Want to hear more? Leaders from DISH Tech will be sharing their journey during this live stream event on Feb. 24, from 8:00-8:50am (MT) and would love your participation. Happy modernization and welcome 2022!