PlatformCon 2023 Sneak Peak – Suzy Julius, Realtor.com

This is Techstrong tv. Hey everybody. We are talking about Platform Con 2023.

That's just coming up, not right around the corner. June 8th, the ninth. It's a virtual conference focused on platform engineering, s r e, DevOps, a great, uh, a great suite of topics and talks that are being held there.

I'm excited for the conference. Um, it's been extremely popular and I bet there would even be more people there this year. So, um, please hang with us.

I'm, I'm, we will tell you the details about where to go find out and register. First one to introduce our guest is one of our, uh, speakers, featured speakers at the conference. It's Susie Julius.

com. Welcome, Susie. Thanks for having me.

So, tell us a, that's a long title, a lot of responsibility packed into there. com. Sure.

Yep. Uh, you know, like I, like you said, um, I run both our product and engineering teams for platforms and really in essence, we're trying to enable and accelerate the delivery of initiatives across the organization. We wanna increase the speed of delivery, reliability of our infrastructure and ops, um, and just, you know, build that, um, platform that creates significant leverage, uh, that makes everyone else go faster.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. The whole idea behind platform engineering and right of everybody to be productive, especially focusing, focusing again on the technical folks.

So your talk, tell us the title of your talk and love to hear about why you decided to, to make that your talk. Sure. com where platform dot platform as a word wasn't really accepted.

Um, you know, people felt like it was gonna slow us down and they didn't really have, they weren't bought in, uh, to platform engineering. So this is about how we came to be, uh, platforms, um, and where we're at today. So it's really that journey, um, a lot of learnings along the way.

Wow. Well, we, I'd love to have you do your talk right here, but I can't, I can't have you do all of it, but, so well tell us a little bit about, um, you know, what it, so if platform wasn't recognized, I worked in a company, by the way, who, you couldn't say database on my, gimme a break. Let's all, let's, let's get real here.

So what did you have to do to kind of get past that hump to kind of sell the idea of platforms to the company? Yeah, good question. You know, first full transparency.

I think there was a lot of awareness at the e l T level, um, about where our tech stack was at the time. So overly complex, often duplicated tech stack. Um, so the company was going through a transformation and our leadership was extremely open and news way new ways of working.

So I think that kind of opened the door. Mm-hmm. But the three big things that I think about when I think back to selling this is one being very crisp on the outcomes we're driving and how it unlocks acceleration and even innovation across the business.

So really focused on the why. Um, the second thing is just making sure evangelism is part of our day-to-day. Uh, finding those advocates, being very transparent about the work and always tying it back to that end user and consumer.

Um, and then lastly, I think just the ongoing, never losing sight of our, our, um, continued investment in the platform and kind of thinking ahead. Uh, so when I think back to how we sold it, I think those, those were the three big key aspects of what got us started. It.

It's interesting, you can't do it just cuz it's, you know, all the kids are doing, it's the latest craze, right. You know, you gotta have some really decent good, good tangible reasons to get senior management buy off. I'm just kind of as a side, was that a pretty tough process to figure out what those benefits were gonna be?

Or did you have, were you pretty clear on what you thought this was gonna bring to the organization? Yeah, I mean, I think our, what I call our success story was really compelling. So I think that helped, but it's still hard to tr to track it from a data perspective.

You know, it's why I'm looking forward to the, the impact tracks this year. Platform Con is, it's really hard to do that. Um, I found, so while we had a really compelling story, we're still trying to hone in what is that exact measurement to show the progress that we're making.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. We, we don't need to count lines of code or how many commits or how many deploys per whatever.

Right. It's gotta be Right. A little more business tangible type, which sometimes can be tough, but, you know, kudos to you for working on figuring that out cuz you know that it's how you get funding more than for one year.

Matter of fact. How, how long did it really kind of take you to get platform and the idea of platform engineering, uh, accepted and funded? Or you still in that sort of getting everybody on board phase or have you passed that and kind of feel like you've crossed that out?

Yeah, you know, I will say it's an ongoing journey, right? As new people leave and people come to the company, um, kind of back to my first answer is nev never losing sight of it. Um, but I think just constantly connecting our work, again, as an example and Slack are in all hands celebrating those wins and align them, lining them back to our why, um, including those success metrics.

But I think platform as an abstract concept took probably a little bit over a year because I, I think that there was a cultural shift to say, Hey, let's not working silos debunk the myth that it will slow us down aligning to solving those business problems, but then building out a, a platform so that it can be adopted. Right. And then I think lastly kind of having that product mind shift mindset shift to starting to get really strong in how we think about platforms of the product.

Um, so I think it's ongoing, but I would say about a year before everyone was, you know, hitting the ground running. Okay, well that's not too bad. Uh, year is years, uh, pretty good actually, I think to make some significant changes like that.

Not that it's done and you're right. You know, obviously it's an ongoing process. So when you, when you started this journey, how did you decide how to go about forming this?

You know, sometimes it's the, the boss says we're gonna do this, so I'm sort of stuck on it and I'm doing it cuz it's he or she thinks it's important, right? Um, sometimes it's you sort of figure, figure out the cadence and DNA a of the organization like, we operate like this, so let's form it this way and we'll have a better chance of it sticking or, you know, I'm just, I'm just kind of just thinking through what I've gone through. How, how did you decide how to do that?

Yeah, I mean I think it hope that, uh, as a technology organization, our strategy was simplified to scale and I said, well, we need a platform, right? And I think that could really help simplify down our tech stack. Um, and there was a lot of internal advocates, you know, some fantastic leaders that were already thinking and having that platform thinking, um, and, and trying to drive it forward without the buy-in.

So I think we kind of had the workings that we needed. And then I think, you know, going out and hiring some key skillsets that we knew we needed to kind of build out the organization because I think, again, thinking back to, hey, we have to think ahead. They have to have that industry knowledge of what's next, what's coming, what features do we need to start building out in our, in our platform to again, uh, propel the business.

Mm-hmm. It, it's interesting, uh, sounds like some things came together at the right time. Other people were thinking similarly, but also having that shared goal of where, okay, we've all been tasked with, we're transforming the business, we're simplifying, we're doing some things.

It wasn't just your group or, uh, part of the organization that also helps bring people together when they have a common cause. Absolutely. That purpose is, is super important.

Listen, then you can all say, here's what we're doing to contribute to the greater good or the greater objective. Um, what, what do you think you've learned most so far about implementing platform engineering Platform as a service platform as a product? I mean, I think the two big things that come to mind for me is how much I don't, and when I say evangelism, I don't even mean communication of here's the next features coming out, but really making sure everyone understands what we do and how important that is.

And I think that was a key learning on our journey was we could build the best platform, but it's not the field of dreams. You can't build it and they will come. You have to go out and really evangelize and advocate and really un have our stakeholders understand the problems that we're solving for.

And then I think internally thinking about those platforms as a products and treating the US like we're, hey, pretend like we're an external vendor and we're selling this and we have to continue to keep them happy. Everything just has to work and make it really easy to onboard. I think those two things were the biggest, uh, aha moments along this path.

Yeah. Sounds like some great learnings. I'm curious, kinda going, thinking about, um, platform Con, uh, since this is not your first one, what, what, what have you taken away from prior experiences at the conference?

I think just, I love the platform story track, so I'm, I'm honored to be a part of that this year. Uh, just how many, you know, the learnings exactly to your point. I think there's, I'm so big on the importance of failure, so just everyone has their journey to get to where they are.

And so really hearing other people and taking those learnings and kind of removing the barriers that you see coming because of what you've learned, um, I think is, is probably what I love most about the conference. Sounds like you and I share a philosophy about, uh, the, it is totally wrong that failure is not an option. It's required dying in space.

That's not an option, but failure is required, right? It's a little mis misguided messaging on that to do great things. To do big things.

It is, um, anything in particular you're looking forward to, uh, especially this year? I know you, you mentioned the story track, that's something you're passionate about. Anything else?

You're, you're, that's the thing. People don't realize that speakers go Yeah, you like to get your speech, your talk done, cause then you wanna go to all the other stuff and it's a virtual conference, so you can obviously do that a lot more. What are you looking forward to?

Yeah, I'm really gonna hone in on the impacts tracks this year. Hmm. Uh, you know, I found it extremely important to focus on the data, ensuring that we have an impact.

So, um, I'm really keen to understand, and I know my leadership team really wants to focus in the next physical year on how we talk about our success metrics and that data Going back to the results. How do I measure 'em? How do we communicate that?

Cuz obviously you're not gonna be the only person thinking, working on maybe struggling with that too. Right, Right. Very cool.

Well, appreciate you giving back, uh, to the community. Um, I've not been 20, this will be first time I've attended, so it's, uh, sounds like a fantastic opportunity and it's got a real kind of energy and nucleus to it of there are, there's something happening here, right. And that's, that's becoming very tangible.

That's at least that's my sense of it. How about you? Yeah, I mean, a hundred percent I think, you know, just the fact that I think the, um, ThoughtWorks tech radar in the last month came out with the, you know, one number, one thing to adopt is techniques and, and, and the techniques this month with applying product management to internal platforms.

Mm-hmm. So it's gaining momentum when I'm networking, there's a lot more product people saying, oh, I wanna be a platform product person and here's how I think that's different. Uh, so I think between that and just, um, around the industry, I think it's becoming, you know, getting a lot more hype and I'm excited about that.

Mm-hmm. And it's evolved a lot too. I think since some of the, the early kind of labeling things as platform engineering, it's changed it all in a good way.

Evolutionary and, and helping refine it, helping people understand what we're trying to do. For sure. Well, great.

Well, Susie, thank you much for sharing with us. I wish I could have pulled out the whole talk from you, but we obviously don't have time to do that. We'll just have to wait and, and uh, listen, when you share it as part of the conference, uh, folks can find out more.

com, uh, you can find it all the details. June, uh, eighth and ninth. Great stuff.

Please check it out. It's a great community to be a part of. And I think you probably would agree with me, Susie.

The content is wonderful, but it's great the connections you make, even digitally even you know, it is reaching out on LinkedIn or sending somebody an email. Like, I liked your talk, I really have a question. I want some help here.

And all the communication that happens in the hallway track, even a virtual conference. Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me.

Uh, it was so great to chat with you today. It's been a pleasure. com.

Thanks for sharing and be sure to go to Platform com, dot com, register and be part of the community. We'll see you all soon.