Cloud-First Teams: Enabling Team Success With Cloud-First Digital Transformation

The ObjectSharp Podcast

This month we’re talking with special guests Diane Dale and Shane Castle about the people and process side of cloud-first digital transformation - how cloud-first development is reshaping software development teams and how to make your teams highly performant.

Minutes

• 01:00 - Introduction to today’s show on building successful Cloud-First Teams with Diane Dale and Shane Castle
• 02:58 - Jeff Zado talks to Diane Dale and Shane Castle about cloud-first digital transformation - what the cloud means for software development and IT teams, the changing of roles, infrastructure as code, the importance of understanding the cloud platform as client-server assumptions are continuously in flux
• 05:10 - Shane Castle talks about the idea of “infrastructure as code” and what that means for successful teams today, and why you really need good process to both manage code and the full lifecycle of that code - “infrastructure development” and managing the provisioning of the infrastructure.
• 07:30 - Diane Dale and Shane Castle talk about common assumptions and misconceptions that development and IT teams may have when designing and implementing a cloud-first digital transformation strategy, such as viewing moving to the cloud as an “end-state” rather than viewing it as an ongoing state that needs to be continuously monitored and managed; the need to manage security, audit, etc. efficiently as the pace of product development and infrastructure provisioning increases with cloud-first automation.
• 11:00 - Shane Castle talks specifically about security and compliance in the cloud, and how Microsoft Azure and other cloud platforms are now making it possible to automate a lot of important work that used to be done manually; how that changes processes and allows you to move resources to focusing more on the business and getting features out the door.
• 13:00 - Diane Dale talks about team culture and how process can’t simply be “installed’ - the business needs to look at what it needs, what its current maturity level is, and designing a roadmap for not only technology but also people and processes that can allow teams to practically get where they need to be.
• 15:00 - Diane Dale discusses Patrick Lencioni’s 5 Dysfunctions of a Team and what it means for a successful cloud-first digital transformation strategy.
• 21:38 - Shane Castle talks about the changing role of governance, security, and risk management - and how new automated tools require thinking about proactive compliance, and how that might involve different team members than historically, which requires truly cross-functional teams.
• 23:00 - Shane Castle talks about some of the tools and technologies that cloud-first IT or development teams are using to be successful in the cloud era, and the importance of getting visibility into what’s happening in the cloud in real time, such as: dashboarding and getting the right dashboards to the right people with tools like Grafana, Azure Cost Management - which allows you to monitor consumption against budgets, Azure Security Center. Shane talks about the importance of getting the right information to the right people at the right time, which isn’t an out of the box solution and requires strong strategy to implement well.
• 26:25 - Diane Dale talks about how enabling better oversight of what’s happening in the cloud also empowers teams to take greater ownership of their contributions.
• 30:00 - Jeff Zado asks what makes organizations and teams more performant than others when moving to a cloud-first strategy.
• 31:00 - Shane Castle talks about the importance of mentoring and embedded expertise, having people on your team who have the experience with previous cloud-first digitals transformation to help guide and lead and support your organization’s change.
• 34:00 - Wrap-up and conclusion.