Tom Killalea

For the past couple of weeks, I've been revisiting the insightful book, “The Goal,” by Eliyahu Goldratt. This business novel on the “Theory of Constraints” was a recommended read during my MBA at UCLA a decade ago. The story follows Alex Rogo, a manager tasked with saving a failing manufacturing plant, who receives guidance from a physicist named Jonah through Socratic questioning. In this post, I’ll explore one concept from this book and share my thoughts on its relevance for a manager of managers. Read more at my Substack

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We published an article about all the awesome product observability features of Segment we have today and upcoming in the near future. Bookmark this if you are a Segment user!

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𝗔 𝘄𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗺𝗲 "𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗹𝗹 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘆𝘄𝗮𝘆." Early in my career, I went all-in on rebuilding systems. As engineers, we’re tempted to start fresh, use new technologies or write “better” code. But over time, I’ve learned a ground-up rewrite usually isn’t the smartest move. It takes more time and resources than we estimate, and it rarely delivers significantly more value. These days, I caution my team against this rebuild reflex. I prefer that we zero in on specific component parts to refine or optimize. The question I always ask is: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵, 𝘪𝘧 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥, 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘴? Years from now, we won’t remember the beautiful code we wrote or the bleeding-edge technology that we used - but we will remember the problems we solved for our customers, and the success they achieved as a result.

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97% of tech professionals report challenges with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), from managing multiple tools to enforcing consistent configurations. The 2024 Stacked Up: IaC Maturity Report highlights these pain points—and more importantly, shows the way forward. Curious how your organization compares? Download the full report to explore how IaC is impacting teams across industries. #IaC #CloudNative #Infrastructure #TechLeadership #InfrastructurefromCode Download the report https://lnkd.in/ehMFjDde

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One of my favorite acronyms in #SoftwareEngineering is WTF - Where to Focus. When you have a small team you should focus as much energy as possible on the pieces that make your business competitive and buy everything else. I guarantee your cost estimate to justify building a tangential capability over buying it is missing a bunch of hidden cost factors.

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We need to move past the idea that knowing everything is the best; asking good questions is a much more critical and underrated skill that we need to embrace. I’ll demonstrate with a case study on how the exact problem to solve can dramatically shift based on answers to basic questions. But first, why does this matter? This is because good questions are the cornerstone to truly understanding the underlying requirements. So many issues would simply not exist if the right questions were asked at the right time - Many products with little to no adoption would not be built - Numerous designs would not be scrapped very late in the game - Countless incidents would be caught before they make it to production Let’s use my favorite leveling question shared previously https://lnkd.in/gxCHTWSu. "Imagine you join our team/company X and discover that our SLAs (Service Level Agreements) are consistently in the red. What steps would you take to address this issue?" Fundamental questions to ask: Q1: Are the customers actually unhappy? If there are no customer complaints, the problem may boil down to a simple SLA update. If there are complaints, changes to the system are likely necessary Q2: What specific SLAs are in red? How long is “consistent”? If multiple SLAs (latency, availability, consistency) have been red for 12 months, it's a deeper systemic problem. If a single SLA is red for 3 months, it’s a simpler problem. Q3: What is the SLA and what is the system performance? If the SLA and system performance don’t diverge that much, it can be solved with incremental steps. However, if the SLA is 99.99% and performance is 99%, then deeper issues must be addressed. To recap… Asking the right questions at the right time can entirely transform the approach and solution, saving a lot of time, effort and grief. It is a critical skill for senior engineers. I’ll leave you with this iconic clip from Margin Call… “Explain, as you might to a young child. Or a golden retriever” ~~~ ✍️ Do you agree? Share if you have examples where the right question changed project’s direction. ♻️ Repost if this is helpful.

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You know there's some momentum happening if Marty Cagan decides to write about a product topic you've been at work trying to enable for years. Love to see it, and BIG shout out to Stacey Langer for providing her expertise in this article! 🧘‍♀️ Here are a few other pros that came to mind for the product model: 1. The government product model makes product (public) value and risk management possible. Product risks—such as value, desirability, viability, and feasibility—are not risks that traditional project management models can effectively manage. Government agencies interact with the public through the services they offer, but government digital experiences are not always inherently valuable. It’s what these digital services do for users that create individual and public value. Building tech alone ≠ value. 2. Evidence-driven decision-making uses discovery, iterative delivery, and testing with actual end users, where you continuously learn. This enables many things, mainly building with your users while validating the solution direction. It can also enable an incremental funding option specifically for products/services (traditionally called ‘projects’) that are especially complex, high priority, and/or contain many unknowns. 3. Driving technology from a place of vision and strategy measured in outcomes that can align and even influence policy changes. 🤸‍♀️ Some realities in trying to adopt a product model in gov: 1. The word ‘product’ often can be confusing, especially when it doesn’t fully represent what is being built and managed. A lot, if not most, of the technology work happening in government often involves solving service design challenges. So, in gov products, you focus on solving for the end-to-end experience, which can mean processes and non-tech things. 2. Conway’s Law and government systems replicate the organizational structures in agencies, which are often siloed and isolated. This is often represented as 'legacy tech.' Much of the work in 'product' in government is modernizing legacy systems, which requires the same principles as the product model but often a different emphasis on its varied approaches. Not all products or digital services start from the same place; many are not greenfield. 3. Traditional ATO structures can stop the product operating model in its tracks. To overcome this, it is important to integrate the ATO into the product model, utilizing a ‘continuous ATO’ operating model. But see point 2 above. At the end of the day, the product model isn’t a process you learn to implement and then just implement. It’s not just ‘Agile’ or Scrum or DevOps. Those methods can (or sometimes can’t) enable the product model. It's a mentality and discipline for continuously using new inputs to deliver value throughout a product's LIFE. It's a cultural change as much as an operating change, and there is no 'single way' to do it. However, operating from product thinking principles can help us start from the right place.

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Yes, our engineering team really did run CockroachDB on spot instances. I can explain. Our customers are running mission-critical workloads across clusters with hundreds of nodes, and it is paramount that our engineering team can test at a similar scale. But testing at this scale can get expensive. We need to be able to meet our customers where they are, but we also need to be able to control our costs as an organization. Spot instances can create significant savings over VMs, with savings of up to 90% a year. What if we could run long-running clusters on them? Besides saving money we would be able to leverage the unpredictable nature of Spot Instances for some exciting chaos testing! The effort to keep CockroachDB available and workloads predictable while nodes are rapidly disappearing would help us harden CockroachDB. Adam Storm's blog captures our entire journey, diving into the methodologies we chose, lessons learned, and yes—even the impact of preemptions. At Cockroach Labs, our engineering culture doesn't just push the boundaries of what's possible with a mission-critical database; it fuels technical innovation across the board. The results are fascinating, so give it a read if you're curious about running a distributed database on spot instances! Special thanks to Bilal Akhtar, Herko Lategan, David Taylor BabuSrithar M, Sambhav Jain, Shailendra Patel, Vidit Bhat, and Bhaskar Bora https://lnkd.in/et-aEjxm

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There are two kinds of failure. 1. "We're failing now and need to change strategies to succeed" 2. "This is a failure; let's not do this again" If you talk about failure, make sure your listeners understand which kind you mean! And, recall how powerful that first kind of failure is! It has given us basically anything worth having or inventing. If your children haven't given you the gift of asking to watch this clip 235,826 times already, I invite you to take the lesson straight from the sages: https://lnkd.in/gAyN3E9b

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Is process actually valuable? It often feels like it gets in the way, especially when new process is first implemented, but smart processes should be empowering. They lay out the path to successful collaboration. Consider how chaotic an assembly line would be if each step operated without coordination with the others. Or how slow and dangerous driving would be if even one person decided the accepted "driving process" wasn't for them. While poorly thought out processes can indeed be a huge hindrance to productivity, I believe carefully considered and constantly re-evaluated and refined processes are crucial for long-term and large-scale success. I wrote more about my thoughts here: https://lnkd.in/gH_g6RRf

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Announcing our guest keynote, Author, Speaker, and Leadership Consultant, Minette Norman! 👏 Award-winning author and former tech executive Minette Norman joins us to share insights for taking ownership of our careers, building resilience, and increasing joy. This talk will inspire you to find new ways to thrive in your career as we ride the wave of technology's latest advancements. Join us on May 8th to catch Minette's session live at Smartling's Global Ready Conference! Register here ⤵️ #smartling #globalready #globalreadyconference #virtualevent #womenleadership #careeradvice #languageai

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As a builder in a leadership role my mind races to find solutions. In team meetings this instinct often comes across as a combination of stream of consciousness and talking over others. It’s an area of improvement I identified for myself. This week’s “Tech Leadership Tuesday” was incredibly useful. Key takeaways for me: - In a large meeting hosted by someone else, focus on listening. Resist jumping to solutions. Let people talk and feel heard and try to be the last one to speak. - When dealing with other peer leaders, building strong interpersonal bonds creates room for understanding and forgiveness during passionate debates.

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The afternoon Keynote @ Stripe Sessions was Fireside Chat between Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe) and Jensen Huang (CEO of NVIDIA). Patrick was an excellent moderator — asked Jensen really probing, nuanced questions that Jensen answered with his usual sharp wit and unique (and impressively well rationalized) perspective. A couple of quotes among many that stuck with me: - “Current CPU installed market is $1 trillion of hardware, all of which will be upgraded to GPUs over the next 5 years. And I would estimate about another $1 trillion will be spent on top of that during the same time period as companies try to do more with AI. Add those together — and I think at least $2 trillion will be spent on GPUs in the next 5 years.” - “I like to go after Zero-Billion Dollar Markets — nonexistent markets that I envision & can rationalize well, but will be very hard, expensive & time-consuming to achieve.”

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Every leader of a Tech Organization should strive for making that org better: More productive, more customer-focused, more fun to work in. 🌟 There is tons of things you can do (and equally many to avoid) when it comes to: ➡ structuring your org, ➡ aligning its teams around common goals, ➡ dealing with technical challenges, ➡ getting ready for leveraging AI, ➡ leading your org through changes. As also leadership is most fun when it's done together in a group, I will host a full-day workshop "How to Build and Run a Successful Tech Organization". 😃 In a group of like-minded tech leads we will discuss the above topics at Digitale Leute Summit 2024 in Cologne. A few spots are left. Get yours now at https://lnkd.in/dXyFnvGi (The discount code "DLS24JAN20" gives you 20% off. 😉) 🗓 14.11.2024 📍 STARTPLATZ Cologne ⌚ 9:00 - 17:00 Have a look at the several other amazingly valuable workshops as well: - Design Sprint for AI solutions with Markus Maass and Lars Becker - Product Discovery workshop with Frederik Vosberg and Timothy Krechel - OKR workshop with Christina Lange - Effective Product Strategy workshop with Tim Herbig - Masterclass on Team Topologies with Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais (Team Topologies) 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 from Team Topologies #dlsummit

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Con is a pragmatic leader who is great to collaborate with on numerous engineering topics.

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My biggest takeaway from #ELCAnnual2024 last week was that trust and psychological safety are the foundation of everything we do. Whether I was listening to a talk on improving team velocity, product-engineering alignment, measuring performance, leading through change, or collaboration — trust was at the core. Without trust, your team will struggle to work through conflict.  Without trust, your team will become disengaged and stop delivering to its highest potential. Without trust, interactions will feel adversarial rather than collaborative. Here are 3 ways to build trust in your team: 1. Communicate the “why” behind decisions, rather than focusing on the “what”. 2. Start collaborating early in the process, asking for input and ideas on how to approach a project. Don’t show up with the solution and throw it over the wall to your team. 3. Address tension and conflicts directly. Working through conflicts builds trust because it shows you care about the relationship. What are your favorite ways to build trust on your teams? Check out all of the great resources from ELC: https://lnkd.in/gdZRuz-a

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Wanted to give a quick shout out to Pump.co - they’ve helped us save ~60% on our monthly AWS bill for free. They also stopped our AWS credits from expiring 😁 It took 5 minutes to onboard and they have no access to our infrastructure so it's super simple to just have it run in the background and know that we're covered. If you spend more than $1000/month on AWS - or have credits that you don't want to lose - you should definitely spend 2 minutes just running an estimate to see how much they can save you: https://lnkd.in/gbw4dwh2 It's literally free money.

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Recently, Eric Ignasik and Michael Sols from The Software House asked me about my first steps as a VP of Technology at Habito. It's been a fun 8 months in a supportive environment with fantastic people! 😉 This interview discusses a few improvements ‌I made with a big emphasis on why servant leadership is important to me. Hope you’ll learn from it, ➡️ https://hubs.la/Q02Bw-Bv0 #softwaredevelopment #cto #softwaredelivery

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Welcome to another episode of the Mob Mentality Show, where we jump into the dynamics of teamwork, leadership, and trust in the ever-evolving landscape of software development. In this episode, titled "Cultivating Trust and Influential Relationships with Leadership," we embark on a journey to decode the intricate nuances of fostering trust and building influential relationships with leadership. Join us as we explore a myriad of topics, including techniques for influencing leadership within mobbing environments and navigating the complexities of both positive and challenged relationships with leadership figures. We delve into the importance of inviting criticism and feedback, advocating for self-organizing teams, and navigating instances where leaders' actions diverge from their words. Is the "Good cop, bad cop" relationship dynamic a pattern or an anti-pattern? Throughout the episode, we emphasize the significance of relentless transparency, genuine curiosity, and vulnerability in fostering natural trust and rapport. From leveraging the natural side effects of Mob TDD/CD to addressing chasms in relationship maps, come join our quest to unravel the secrets of effective trust-building interactions with leadership. Tune in now to discover with us how to navigate the delicate balance between being at peace with your efforts and continuously striving for improvement while embarking on a journey towards unlocking the true potential of influential relationships in leadership. https://lnkd.in/dcu6fjXy https://lnkd.in/dEb5Ye62 #influence #influencing #persuasion #environment #change #business #tech #habit #7habits #relationships #networking #systemthinking #lean #deming #organizationalchange #continuousimprovement #growth #devops #mobprogramming #ensembleprogramming #agile #agility #leadership #management #systemsthinking #radicalcandor #transparency

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