Patrick Turner CTO of Small Footprint

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:01) Today we are talking to Patrick Turner, the CTO at Small Footprint, and we discuss DevOps, culture hacks, product strategy, and how he geeks out over home automation. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. Are you a fan of Alexa?

(Patrick Turner at 00:00:31) Well, it's funny. I was just listening to your podcast where you guys were lamenting about Alexa. Yeah, I have it at home, but I find myself using Siri a lot more.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:42) Oh, what can you do with Siri?

(Patrick Turner at 00:00:44) Well, I'm a big home automation geek, and so I can kind of do everything with Siri. I can open the garage doors and turn on lights and set the thermostat and just play music on my Sonos and all sorts of fun stuff. So I can do all that with Alexa too, but, you know, I have an Apple Watch, so Siri is just kind of always right there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:08) You have access to SiriKit yet? Is that something that's out for developers or no?

(Patrick Turner at 00:01:14) Well, I think it is, but—oh, I need to mute my phone. I think it is, but I actually kind of have used this Raspberry Pi hack called Homebridge. Are you familiar with Homebridge?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:29) I am now. Homebridge. I'm writing this down.

(Patrick Turner at 00:01:31) Yeah, so you can basically install some Node libraries onto a Raspberry Pi that's sitting on your network and hook it through SmartThings. And then basically it goes like Siri to the cloud to your Apple TV to your SmartThings. It's kind of convoluted, but it's actually not that hard to set up. It takes just a couple hours to do. And so now I can do everything with my watch, which is really fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:02) Oh, I'm excited now.

(Patrick Turner at 00:02:04) Yeah, yeah. It's great too because my wife, who was like, "What are you doing this for? That's so ridiculous," and now she's the one when we're going to bed, she says, "Hey, Siri, good night," and then the whole house shuts down. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:15) Oh, because it runs on routine.

(Patrick Turner at 00:02:16) Yeah, and here's my phone actually thinking I'm talking to it. Yeah, so it runs routine and makes sure the doors are locked and the garage doors are down and the thermostat's set right and all the lights are turned out and all that. So, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:29) You're rocking the Nest?

(Patrick Turner at 00:02:31) No. I'm using Ecobee. I like open systems, you know, and the Nest is a little too closed for me. I like systems which is ironic since I'm a big fan of Siri because that's kind of closed to your point about the SiriKit. But no, I kind of like things that I can hack into a little bit. I don't get a chance to code during the day with my regular job, and so I kind of take advantage of my time at home and my home automation geekiness to code a little bit. Wow, what a rabbit hole this goes into, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:10) No, this is the value.

(Patrick Turner at 00:03:11) This is the value.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:14) You like the Ecobee? Because I haven't used it yet.

(Patrick Turner at 00:03:16) No, it's really good. It actually gives you tons of great information about the energy that your house is using, and it has remote thermometers, so you can put thermometers in other rooms. So for example, during the day, it's paying attention to the living room and the den, and then at night it pays attention to the temperature in the bedrooms. And so that way, you know, you're really paying attention to the rooms that matter when you're in them, kind of thing. And of course it can figure out if you're there or not too. So it's actually a little smarter than Nest, at least today. I don't know, I haven't looked at Nest in the last year or two, but, you know, these things are always leapfrogging each other. So who can say?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:58) Yeah, I'm going to hook a sensor up to my daughter so I can tell when she's sick.

(Patrick Turner at 00:04:02) Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:04) Or my wife so I can see when she's mad.

(Patrick Turner at 00:04:07) I was thinking conversation you had in the podcast about Alexa was pretty interesting, though. And it sounds like you've embraced yours. You guys were talking about, I think, a little bit about just sort of whether you trust Alexa or not and all that. And I guess, you know, maybe I'm too trusting, but I'm right now kind of just letting things go out there and see what I can get accomplished until someone scares me away from it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:35) I'm playing the signal versus noise game where I just create so much Alexa content that good luck trying to sift through it.

(Patrick Turner at 00:04:43) Yeah, I think whoever figures out how to understand natural language the best is going to win. And I think Google and Alexa and Apple are all competing for that right now. I understand Google's doing the best job of it. I haven't even played with Google Home yet. Have you played around with that one?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:03) Yeah, we got one for the office, and I was actually talking about this the other day too. I think it's a strength that Amazon has Bezos behind it, and Facebook has Zuck behind it. And Google, their person behind them isn't much of a force that you imagine about. They're very split, right? When they went off into the Alphabet, and now they have all these different sub-CEOs, and they're not like—I like that I can imagine Jeff Bezos behind this.

(Patrick Turner at 00:05:30) Yeah, it's like...

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:30) A human part of me that I can feel is hooking the situation. Like everybody loved Jobs.

(Patrick Turner at 00:05:35) Yeah, not just a department.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:37) Yeah, it's not—it's like I'm cool with Amazon being a mega corp as long as I can put a head on the corp.

(Patrick Turner at 00:05:43) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I guess it's why The Boring Company was able to sell flamethrowers. So, it's the cult of Elon Musk. You know, we—oh, well, he's using it. We've got to get one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:56) But he's just cool.

(Patrick Turner at 00:05:57) Yeah, I wanted to buy one, but they sold out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:00) All out. We can make some. We can IoT. We can make like a little IoT one, right? So you can see like the status of my flamethrower and see how much like propellant's in it. Like, that'd be fun.

(Patrick Turner at 00:06:09) I want to say, "Hey, Siri, you know, throw some fire." That would be fun. Oh, fireball. Of course, I live downtown in a condo, so I'm not sure how much my neighbors would appreciate a flamethrower coming off the balcony, but it would be interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:24) Well, you could make a party out of it, right? Get some hors d'oeuvres, and then you could, you know, roast the food with it.

(Patrick Turner at 00:06:30) Fondue.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:31) Fondue. There you go. Flamethrower fondue. There's a new restaurant. Oh, we've got to do that franchise.

(Patrick Turner at 00:06:38) Or at least the party theme. That's great, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:41) So you're in North Carolina?

(Patrick Turner at 00:06:43) Yeah, yeah, which is also funny because you mentioned the weather in North Carolina the other day too. And so I was thinking, gosh, that's kind of ironic talking about the weather in North Carolina.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:54) Oh, big fan. Every year we go up to Murphy and that whole little area right there where it joins with the place in Georgia. Forget all the time the name of the town I love there, but it's like ten minutes or twenty minutes from Murphy, but it's in Georgia. So...

(Patrick Turner at 00:07:10) Like in southwest North Carolina?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:13) Yeah, yeah. We go up there in the mountains and we do an Airbnb cabin.

(Patrick Turner at 00:07:17) Oh, nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:18) And then we had a baby. So...

(Patrick Turner at 00:07:21) Congratulations. That's what happens with Airbnb cabins, I guess.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:24) Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, that's hilarious because I didn't even draw that parallel. So, so yeah. Is that your home? Is that your hometown? Is that where you grew up?

(Patrick Turner at 00:07:35) No, I grew up next door in Tennessee. So I really grew up in Nashville and Memphis, but went to school in Knoxville, which is not too far from where you were. And just fell in love with the mountains and love North Carolina as a state. We're not far from the ocean, and we've got bad skiing not too far away. And so, you know, it's a really nice spot. And the weather's nice, speaking of the weather. And, you know, we have seasons, but it never gets too hot or too cold. So no, it's a great place. I like the people too. It's—I've been here about ten years and plan to retire in North Carolina. So...

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:13) You know that they were looking at—North Carolina is looking at, I'm not sure if it already happened or if they're doing it, but privatizing the DMV system?

(Patrick Turner at 00:08:21) Is that right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:22) Yeah, because I can't—I don't know how much I'm going to say the least amount possible, but I was doing consulting on a technology project of an individual who was going to be taking that business, going to be running the business. And they were looking at how to make the DMV more efficient and using technology to do that. And then I was involved with consulting on that project.

(Patrick Turner at 00:08:47) Wow. That's pretty cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:48) We came up with some awesome ideas, by the way. Like we could make the DMV so much better and it took what, like an afternoon of us whiteboarding. And we're like, oh, we've got the answers to how we can take this whole DMV experience and just like instantly flip it around. And it should definitely be—that should, I don't care if it's privatized or government. I don't care. I just—those efficiencies should happen everywhere, everywhere.

(Patrick Turner at 00:09:12) And all of government. Yeah, absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:14) All of them.

(Patrick Turner at 00:09:15) I mean, you know, broadening that picture. I don't know if this was something you guys did, but one of the nice things now is you can go online to renew your driver's license, which sounds like no big deal. But what most people don't realize is if you go to the DMV office to renew your driver's license, you have to like retake your test or something crazy like that. But if you do it online, you just have to give them your credit card number, and they mail you a new one. So it's a little hidden secret about that, where the analog world hasn't caught up with the digital world yet. But, oh, I'm going to give you credit for that. How about that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:52) All right. And trust me, yeah, our state, Florida, has had that for—I've done it the last two times. It's been eight years. So Florida—I mean, Florida's had the renewal. It's you can do it two times and the third time you have to go in or something like that.

(Patrick Turner at 00:10:05) I'll bet that's the same. I've only done it once here. I don't actually know how long it's been around, but, gosh, it's definitely a convenient way to do it for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:13) And this was even farther optimization. Like all the reasons other than that that you would still need to go in, it would take it beyond that. So I was pumped. But we'll change the conversation so I don't violate any contracts.

(Patrick Turner at 00:10:27) You're hitting up against your NDAs now, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:30) I don't even want to wonder if I am. I just want to—I want to talk about your DevOps. You talk about culture.

(Patrick Turner at 00:10:37) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:37) Culture hacks, DevOps. I want to hear what your thoughts are in that world.

(Patrick Turner at 00:10:41) Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We at Small Footprint, we got into Agile sort of around the same time everyone else did, you know, let's say eight, nine years ago. And we've been doing pretty well with that. And then all of a sudden, sort of this DevOps thing started happening a few years ago. And like, I think, the rest of the world, I was really looking at it as, okay, I have to figure out which tools I have to learn. We have to figure out how to get people trained. We have to figure out how it's going to change our processes and everything. And as we were doing this, you know, we realized, especially now, a lot of those decisions have gotten really easy, and it's really sort of the way DevOps affects your culture and the way your culture can actually impact how you are successful with DevOps. Because ultimately, it's changing how people in the organization are working and what they're responsible for. So it was really a kind of a light bulb effect about a year and a half ago when I was really talking to the organization and to our customers about DevOps and kind of realizing, gosh, the tools aren't even the biggest challenge. It's the people. And so it's really been impactful. And I'll tell you, we continue to work today on how we have to change our culture to really embrace DevOps. And as you know, I'm sure, you know, whenever you're implementing anything new, you kind of start looking at your tech debt, looking at those old projects that you were working on and realizing, you know, okay, it's not as simple as taking that piece of code and putting it into your Git repository and spinning up a Jenkins instance. It's really about getting folks to think differently. So it's been a really eye-opening thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:33) Like CircleCI. I'm joking. I'm sorry.

(Patrick Turner at 00:12:38) It's okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:39) I ran Jenkins for a long time, and then I switched. And...

(Patrick Turner at 00:12:42) Oh, okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:43) So I just want to give some context. So your company, you want to talk a little bit about what you do there?

(Patrick Turner at 00:12:48) Yeah. So we're a software innovation company. We've been around about fifteen years, and we work with customer partners all around the U.S. And about half of our business is working with enterprise clients where we're helping them create software products for their organizations and to solve business problems that, you know, they can't solve with off-the-shelf software. And then the other half of our business is working with ISVs, so working with companies of software as a product. And we help them with everything from product strategy, like, you know, how to determine what your MVP needs to be, all the way through to delivery of the product and helping, you know, come up with the strategies around that and, of course, implementing it. But we've—our practice really more and more over the last, especially, three or four years has become less about the development, although we still do that, and more about the consulting. Because, you know, what we all have to kind of admit to ourselves is that building software is not easy to do. You know? And you really have to think less about the technologies and the headcount and more about, you know, the processes around doing it and making sure that you're solving business problems, not just writing a bunch of code. And so we've actually shifted more and more to where, in fact, the last couple of years, most of our hiring has been around folks with, you know, a lot of experience in software development who are working as consultants, either as digital strategists or Agile transformation experts or user experience, for example. So some of these areas that most software development firms didn't even think about a few years ago. So it's been fun. It's a good time to be in software development. And if you've been, you know, working with CI, you know how much that's changing things.

(Patrick Turner at 00:14:43) And so, you know, I've been doing this myself professionally since the mid-nineties. How long was that? A long time. And, you know, I really view the last few years as some of the most exciting in the industry. And a lot of it's around DevOps, especially the last couple of years and how that's impacting our organizations and the companies that we partner with.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:06) So how did you meet your co-founder Richard? Is he gonna go by Rich or Richard?

(Patrick Turner at 00:15:10) Yeah, he goes—I call him Rich sometimes, but he goes by Richard. No, it's actually interesting. He actually founded the company when he lived in Hungary and then moved to Winston-Salem in North Carolina about the same time I did. And so I actually met him as a customer. And so I had—I spent about fifteen years in corporate America and was, I'll be honest with you, a little bit fed up, you know, kind of seeing things done for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways. And got to know Richard as a customer and really liked the approach of really a hands-on, helping me figure out what I was trying to accomplish from a business goal, not just, again, you know, writing lines of code. And so, as I say, I was fortunate enough to be laid off during the recession and actually bought into the business almost ten years ago. This is my tenth year with Small Footprint. And it's been a great ride since.

(Patrick Turner at 00:16:10) So we've been doing this together. We actually still like each other. We're still good friends, and so I'm very fortunate about that. But no, and it's really been great.

(Patrick Turner at 00:16:20) And the nice thing is that a lot of the reason that this company was founded was cultural. Richard wanted to create a good culture, and I was attracted to that culture. And he and I have continued to grow it and morph it. And like I said, you know, we started in the maybe early days of Agile and seeing how that affected it. And so a lot of the decisions we've made about processes and things like that we've run in the company have been really focused on how it impacts the culture internally and how we work with our customers and the impact that culture has on them, which obviously had a good impact on me because I was a customer and liked the experience so much I bought into it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:01) And what does an average day—I'm actually looking over all the stuff you guys talk about on your capabilities and your website. I'm reading about product strategy design. I like you guys because you're saying—

(Patrick Turner at 00:17:13) Oh, that's it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:14) You're saying the things that I talk about. Like, this is what it is. I can always—you know, you get a feel when you go to a site and you start reading through and it's like it's either very ambiguous or it's older buzzwords, or it's like you can just tell that the content isn't written by someone who's extraordinarily knowledgeable about the subject. And as I'm reading this, I'm like, oh yeah, you know, they're saying the right things. Like, that's more than half the battle is to be even selling and saying the right things. Right?

(Patrick Turner at 00:17:47) Well, great. Thank you for that. That's a tremendous compliment. I appreciate it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:51) Yeah. And so what does an average day look like for you?

(Patrick Turner at 00:17:55) You know, for me—and I'm certainly more focused on the technology than some of the other areas—but a lot of what we do, especially in our leadership, is really making sure that we are working with clients where we feel like we can have an impact. And so for me, a lot of that is, you know, do we have the skills necessary and the technologies in our stack to be able to address a particular business problem or answer the questions that our customers have? But, you know, we really strive to look for customer partners where they're as eager to learn and get better as we are. And, you know, if they don't have outdated process or outdated technology or outdated user experience, we're probably not gonna be able to help them. If they're doing well on all those things, then we might not be the right partner for them. So it's funny—we spend almost as much time disqualifying our partners as we do finding the right ones. And when we do find the right ones, it's great.

(Patrick Turner at 00:19:10) And it's not that we know everything or have everything figured out—not even like culture. We feel like we still have a long way to go, even though we feel like we're more mature than most organizations. But we all really have this strive to learn and do better and help our customers do better because, you know, ultimately, we want to win with them and help them solve their business problems or have a successful product or whatever the case may be. And I'm glad you picked up on that in our blog because really, you know, what we strive to do and the way we talk on our website is really just share the challenges that we have that we're trying to solve. And in a way that, you know, we're certainly not gonna be preachy because we don't have everything figured out yet. But, you know, being open that, look, we're gonna tell you what we're good at, we're gonna tell you what we're not good at, and, you know, we have confidence in what we can do. And if you're willing to work with us and learn together with us, we can become a great partnership. And that's ultimately what we're looking for every day is to find those customer partners that we feel like we can grow and learn and succeed together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:27) Yeah. You mentioned, when I was—you set my mind off in about a hundred directions. I was like, squirrel, you know? So that ability to meet and find out if you can provide value to the other individual, even though, like, sometimes people are sold on, like, you being the answer, and then I'm like, I don't think I can bring you value. So that happens. That's a tough struggle. It's also—I just went through this process of writing my first book, and that whole concept of, like, when I started out with the editor, I'm like, look, what I wanna do is I wanna position this whole thing as here's my experience. Like, this is what's true to me. Take, you know, and then take that and leverage my experience. And then you can find yourself, as you're going through the process, getting really passionate in some of those items or, like, you have to do it this way. Like, this is the way to do it. Like, I'm very passionate about it. Others, I'm like, oh, this is the experience I had. You know, take it for what you will. And so going back and forth between, like, being—you know, trying to find the balance between preachy and sharing is always a tough thing to do.

(Patrick Turner at 00:21:36) Yeah, no doubt. And there are definitely some non-negotiables when, you know, when we engage. And, you know, one of those is that we have to all be engaged. And, you know, I think back in the days of waterfall, you know, where you would go sit down and spend six months gathering requirements and then go away for two years and come back and bring you the piece of software that they didn't want—you know, that was sort of the way the world worked. And we've all forgotten what it was like ten or so years ago. But so just saying you're Agile and having a daily stand-up is not gonna solve that problem. Really, everyone has to be involved. So one of our non-negotiables is that we have to have folks from our customer partners who are actively engaged with us, with our team. So it's not even a one-on-one. Like, everyone needs to be talking to everyone so that we all understand what the business goals are and that we can all talk through things and make sure it's really clear so that we're actually delivering something that people actually want that works and solves the business problem. And so, you know, that's definitely a non-negotiable, and that will never change—at least through my career, we'll always insist that people from both sides of the fence are talking on a regular basis so that we can all be prepared to go along. And the other one really is transparency. And, you know, I don't know if you've read this book that's been really popular lately, Getting Naked, which we hate to say because if you take it out of context, it sounds wrong. But the real sense with that book is that we all have to be honest with each other about the good, bad, and the ugly. And, you know, you can't expect me to understand everything about your business in the first five minutes. You have to be willing to let me ask dumb questions, and you have to appreciate that. And also know that even after we're working together for two years, there's still gonna be things that we get wrong, but we have to just be patient with each other and be open and honest and, you know, obviously with respect. But, you know, not hold back in those deals. So those are things that we really insist on that are non-negotiables. And in the moment that people disengage or they stop being transparent is when we know we're headed down the road to failure, and that sucks. So definitely non-negotiables.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:59) I like that you brought up the dumb questions because I am, like, I'm the king of dumb questions, and here's why. Dumb questions are an alias for the first questions people think of. Right? They're like, the dumb questions are simply—everyone considers them dumb because they know them. They know them because they're always around. They're always around them because it's what they're doing as part of their business. But they're not the dumb questions. They're the first questions that pop into people's minds. So if you alienate and look at them as dumb questions and push them away, what you're doing is you're preventing your perspective from being a fresh customer, and then that ultimately removes that ability from you. And you should always be able to see how fresh people see you. Right? You should always be thinking those first questions. So I like to use my dumb side of me, or I like to use that perspective and then bring it up, and I ask these questions. You know what's amazing? Is, like, I can ask these questions that people think are dumb, and then I can wrap a perspective around it and show them how it's not dumb.

(Patrick Turner at 00:25:03) Yeah, absolutely. It's funny. We were having a conversation internally last week. I would be curious what your perspective on it is, of going to that first discovery meeting with a customer. And how much research do you do upfront on the industry, the customer, the business problem, whatever? Like, how much do you want to know before you go in? And, you know, it's the question of, if I learn too much, I'm gonna walk in with some inherent biases. If I don't do any research, then I'm gonna walk in completely dumb. But, you know, sort of what that good balance is. And it's a really interesting topic and, but it's kinda related to what you're saying. What do you think?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:51) Okay. So it's—for me, it's dependent upon the industry. Right? So, like, let's say I'm gonna go—if I'm going to talk to somebody, I know that they're in the healthcare industry, I've got a lot of knowledge to pull on because my brother and mom are doctors. Right? And I grew up with that, so it's always been around me. If it's technology, building software, I've got a lot of. So if it's an area where I have a lot of comfort or it's an industry where I know, I will do a brief scan of—I'm less interested in their business and I'm going to their About page and reading their bio. I wanna know who these people are and how they think as much as possible before I meet the human. And I'm less concerned with their business because I have these core principles of, like, how I operate. And so I can always just—I'm never—I'm not usually creating new things. I'm just translating my principles to whatever the conversation is. So I'm a big fan of—I ask questions that are simple, and I let them respond. And I will listen until I have a level of confidence, and then I talk. So I'm, like, mining mining mining mining mining. And then once I have my head wrapped around the situation, I just go for it.

(Patrick Turner at 00:26:59) Yeah. That's a good way to look at it. And I think that it's interesting you mentioned the people's backgrounds. And, you know, we're obviously—most new meetings start off with introductions around the table. And it's always amazing to me how many businesses bring in employees that don't necessarily have a lot of industry expertise because they want those fresh eyes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:21) Here's another perspective. So, like, I used—because I'll share some of the how I got here. So I used to do a lot of research. Okay? And I'd look at their business. I'd have all these ideas for them. I'd be so pumped. And I was like, oh, I can't wait for this meeting. I'm gonna show them how creative I am. I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna solve their problems. I'm gonna, like, help them out, help them out. I was, like, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I get in the meeting. We start talking and be all excited. It's not what they wanted. Like, it's not even close. They have this issue that can't even be seen that they're trying to solve. And it has nothing to do with, like, you couldn't even possibly imagine it. So now the first thing I always start off with is figuring out what their motivations are. Why—what value are we going to exchange for currency? What do they need me for? What are they looking to get done? Because without knowing who they are and what they want, like, I can know every fact in the world about their industry. Like, all the problems, all the money, everything, nothing—like, that is all secondary to who they are and what they want. And then my goal also is, like, is to set up a second meeting where I can actually bring them value. So I always bring the value on my end, and I bring it in a disproportionate amount. Like, I'm always looking to bring someone ten, twenty times more value than they were expecting, and then the deal happens. So because they're—because it's like getting a sample of working with me. Right? So I go there. I meet with them. I find out, alright, I'm a hundred percent. I'm not on my phone. Like, I'm not researching. I'm, like, phones away, eye contact. Who are you? How can I help you? What do you need from me? Okay. I consume a ridiculous amount of information from them, ask them questions and kind of, you know, along the lines of their goals, take that information. And then I go back and I figure out what I could do. I bring them value. I say, alright, here's A, B, and C. This is what I would do. This is what I would—and what happens is as I tell them, like, all the things I would be doing and all the value I'd be bringing them, they're like, oh my goodness. This person knows exactly what to do. Everything they say sounds really, really great, and there's no way, like, let the expert work. Let's just grab this individual and let him do his thing.

(Patrick Turner at 00:29:28) Yeah. And I think, you know, you really nailed it. And it's certainly the way that we look at things as well because very often, you know, when our customers sit down with us for the first time, they don't even realize that they don't understand their business problem. So if we come in with the solution in the first five minutes, we're probably answering a question that they don't have and probably not even answering the real question because they haven't even figured that out yet. And so, you know, that's certainly the way that we approach it.

(Patrick Turner at 00:29:56) And again, you know, going back to the book Getting Naked, that's the whole idea—getting in and really trying to find where the value is. You know, it's funny. We talked about talking about DevOps when we haven't really. But for me, probably the best thing with continuous integration and continuous delivery is that it becomes the Chihuahua effect, where you're able to deliver small chunks of value so quickly using Agile and DevOps that the idea from my perspective is that you're going back and saying, is this the value you need? Is this the value you need?

(Patrick Turner at 00:30:32) Are we adding value? Are we going in the wrong direction? So it's that cycle of being able to go back to the person who has the business problem or the business opportunity that they're trying to solve with software technology and very quickly iterating through to say, is this bringing you value? Is this good? Is this good?

(Patrick Turner at 00:30:48) And so that's one of the reasons I love the direction that we've gone, especially with containers and CI and CD, of being able to quickly roll those things out so that folks can see it and make a determination—are we accomplishing our goal, which is building and creating value? Because if we're not, we need to either change directions or stop. And so, you know, kind of cycling back to the whole DevOps conversation, that's what it is for me, and that's where the real value comes out of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:19) And so what do you typically do? I noticed you had some case studies, but can you give me an example of what you've done for a client in relation to DevOps?

(Patrick Turner at 00:31:29) Yeah, sure. So I mean, I think there's a lot of these situations where very often there's just a lack of visibility to the process. And so, you know, Agile helped the development team, for the most part, work better together. So they're talking regularly. They're planning regularly. They're taking ownership of things. But what we really—and the reason we've invested in implementing DevOps practices—is really the ability to give that transparency to everyone involved. So the idea is, for example, if you have a new build of a piece of software, you know, in the past it was sort of a dance to figure out what's in that build and is it ready for user acceptance testing, or is it even ready for QA?

(Patrick Turner at 00:32:19) But now, with DevOps best practices, we're able to actually know what's in a build because it's being delivered automagically to a known location. It's easier to share with our customers so they can actually see what's in a build. And like I said, you know, because you're integrating all of these systems, then you can tell exactly what's in that build and what's ready to be tested and the features that that customer can expect. And so that's one big part of it. Another big part of it is really in how we're using orchestration to better manage feature delivery, especially with software that has a large number of customers. And, you know, you're obviously putting out releases more regularly. You want to be able to have that be more graceful.

(Patrick Turner at 00:33:10) So whether you're doing feature switching so that you're not exposing a new feature to the entire user base, but just to a segment to see how things are going, and then being able to continue to roll out or to roll back if necessary. So it's really about increasing visibility and transparency to the process. And our customers, you know, it's kind of like back in the day when we were having to convince our customers that they really did want to pay for dedicated QA staff, if you'll remember those days. You know, now a lot of the question is, are our customers going to be willing to pay for the extra time required to set up these DevOps processes? And the answer that we're finding is yes, that customers realize that, you know, there may be a little bit more time upfront in creating a strategy around, for example, your feature branching or in how you're going to be doing the orchestration of your servers.

(Patrick Turner at 00:34:08) But at the end of the day, the time that you save and the way you drive down the risk is well worth the investment. And so we've gotten to the point where not all of our customers are asking for DevOps, but those conversations are becoming easier and easier. And certainly some of our larger engagements where they've had some segments of the product set up with these tools, you know, they're asking for it to be across their entire line of products. And so it's been really cool to see that transition. And we're not quite there yet, and obviously the industry isn't—I think a lot of folks don't even really understand what DevOps is yet.

(Patrick Turner at 00:34:46) But we're seeing the momentum really pick up speed, both within our organization and with our customers, and understanding what it is and what the impact it can be on their software products.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:58) Yeah. I noticed you write, and it looks like you speak a little bit. Are you speaking anytime soon?

(Patrick Turner at 00:35:04) We have, actually—my next engagement, we have a regional developers conference actually here in Winston-Salem called the Triad Developers Conference that I'll be talking more about DevOps and culture. And that's coming up in March, I think mid-March. And we'll—I also do regular webinars as well, and you can certainly find out about those on our website. And yeah, and I continue to write. And actually, that's one of my goals this year is to pick up the pace of writing as well as speaking.

(Patrick Turner at 00:35:39) So I would certainly love to do more of that this year.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:42) You going to put out a book?

(Patrick Turner at 00:35:44) Gosh. You know, you're not the first person to ask me that question, but I'm certainly thinking about it. I think I'm at the point right now where I'm taking some notes and thinking through over my career. Especially, I love this challenge of culture and opportunity there and how it really impacts everything. So maybe so.

(Patrick Turner at 00:36:04) Maybe so. Maybe you'll be the person who puts me over the edge to actually sitting down and spending some time on that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:11) Oh, I fully—I am that person.

(Patrick Turner at 00:36:13) Do it. Okay. I needed that one more nudge.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:16) Here you go. I was like the final straw. You've got to do it. You've got to do it. If you could go back in time—this is a good one. I love this one. It's always my favorite. Okay. If you go back in time ten years ago and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

(Patrick Turner at 00:36:32) One piece of advice ten years ago. You know, I think it's probably worrying less about some of the small things and really focusing more on how we're working together with our customers and internally. I think we get caught up in some of the minutiae of the little things and worrying about some of the little details and losing sight sometimes of the big picture. And so I think that's probably where I'd be. Now granted, ten years ago I was just getting started with Small Footprint, so I was just dipping my toes into the entrepreneurial water.

(Patrick Turner at 00:37:08) But I think, you know, that you can really get tied up in the minutiae of things and forget about having fun and looking at the big picture and appreciating what a great industry we get to work in and what cool stuff we get to do every day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:24) I love it. I love that advice. That's really solid, good advice. Thank you so much for the conversation today.

(Patrick Turner at 00:37:30) Yeah. This has been a lot of fun. I really enjoy your podcast. I've listened to several episodes now, and I'm looking forward to seeing you talk to more folks over the next few months. I think you're doing something great. It's been an interesting show so far, and congratulations on all your success.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:53) Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.