The Hidden Chasm

In our latest episode of The Hidden Chasm, Rob Shaw shares critical insights on bridging the gap between intent and execution in Agile transformations.

Key takeaways include:

• Intent vs. Execution: Why hope is not enough; the importance of having real conversations about customer and market expectations.
• Technical Excellence: Defining the level of technical quality needed for long-term investments.
• Proactive Conversations: The necessity of starting these discussions early to ensure success.

🧩 Agile transformation requires more than just good intentions. Understand how to align your efforts with market needs and technical excellence, to find your way out of - or avoid entirely - the Hidden Chasm.

Creators & Guests

Host
Bo Motlagh
Founder & CEO @ United Effects
Host
Josh Smith
Co-founder, Head of Product @ United Effects
Guest
Robert Shaw
VP of Agile Practice, Clearly Agile

What is The Hidden Chasm?

An ongoing discussion of how tech debt and legacy solutions become barriers to growth and innovation for established SaaS companies.

Bo Motlagh:

You're about to listen to a recording of our second episode of The Hidden Chasm. You are going to hear some pops and some audio disruptions here and there. We were having some small technical difficulties. It's not your connection or anything like that. We cleaned it up pretty well, and I think you're going to enjoy it.

Bo Motlagh:

But just wanted to give you a heads up. Thank you. You're listening to The Hidden Chasm, a discussion of how tech debt and legacy solutions become barriers to growth and innovation for established SaaS companies. The Hidden Chasm is sponsored by UnitedFX, where our purpose is to help companies break free from legacy tech, improve retention, and empower m and a growth. Learn more at unitedfx.com.

Josh Smith:

Hey. Welcome to another episode of The Hidden Chasm where we're exploring the growth challenges some high growth, midsize enterprises face as they find themselves struggling to compete, bring product to market quickly, and maintain their customers.

Bo Motlagh:

That's right. Another episode. We're on a roll. We're up to 2. So this is fun.

Bo Motlagh:

But really excited today to have really an old friend of ours. Josh and I have known Rob for many years. We actually worked together at one point, but Rob Shaw, who is an agile guru specifically, he is the VP of the agile practice at Clearly Agile, where he and his team of business agility and transformation experts use agile frameworks to empower organizations to solve complex problems and succeed in rapidly evolving markets. Rob, how are you, man?

Robert Shaw:

I'm doing well. And it is good seeing you 2 again. Like, getting the old band back together, that is fantastic. Yeah. Honored to be on in an early episode.

Robert Shaw:

Excited for

Bo Motlagh:

today. Yeah. We're excited to have you. Thanks for joining.

Josh Smith:

Just wanna remind you that you left us, and you chose Disney World over us.

Robert Shaw:

Oh, not quite Disney World. I chose not gray Pennsylvania skies in the winter. That was the real choice. Disney World is just that was bonus.

Josh Smith:

Yeah. Yeah. You don't like the Pennsylvania gray skies? Oh, okay.

Robert Shaw:

After 40 years, that got a little hard to handle. So moved on to palm trees and sunny winters.

Josh Smith:

I can dig that.

Bo Motlagh:

Rob, why don't

Robert Shaw:

you tell us

Bo Motlagh:

a little bit about what you guys do at Clearly Agile down there in,

Robert Shaw:

sunny Florida? What don't we do? So we are a boutique agile consultancy, which means we're more than just contractors. Our primary mission is to do the right thing for the clients who are looking to go on an agile transformation journey. Beyond just installing a framework or a process, how do we take them and tweak their level of business agility to where they get results that ties them into the market with a faster delivery of value and starts getting better outputs and outcomes for their customer from a holistic standpoint.

Robert Shaw:

We tend to move in more from a partner aspect than a consultant aspect. We're there to support the journey. We do that through 3 main areas, the first one being training. So we have a variety of agile certification training all the way from your basic scrum alliance training through the advanced certifications, all the way up into multiple multiple scaling platforms. So being able to just kind of set the stage for making sure your folks at an organization understand what it means to do this.

Robert Shaw:

And then we do a consulting standpoint. So everything from coaching all the way to filling in a certain accountability. So if it's just coach support, we're there, either from a full time or a fractional basis. If you need team members with certain specialties to kinda stand in the gap, we've got that, all the way into DevOps enablement and support on that end. And then the last one for those smaller midsize organizations, we do this thing we've been playing with for the past, I don't know, two and a half years, agile team in a box.

Bo Motlagh:

Okay.

Robert Shaw:

So we basically have all the pieces figured out, all the positions. The developers are ours. They already know how to work together as a team. What we need to do is point it at whatever value you wanna create. So you don't even have to worry about it.

Robert Shaw:

Like, essentially, a team shows up, they're ready to go, and they already have the hard stuff figured out, just point them at the value and let them chew through it.

Bo Motlagh:

Very cool. You and I chatted a little while ago, and I mentioned this hidden chasm thing. You're gonna hear us say the word chasm a lot. So if you think of a better one, go ahead. But with this problem space and the sort of wall that these enterprises tend to hit, agile transformation, a lot of what you guys do at Clearly Agile comes up a lot as part of that journey of something that they hit.

Robert Shaw:

You guys gave it a name, which I absolutely love. We've been searching for what to call this for probably for me the last 2 decades because you see it all the time and you hear technical debt and technical debt and technical debt. Well, eventually, technical debt has this collapse moment where an organization is like, alright, hit the gas pedal, seize the market opportunity, and the team's like, the engine's no longer hooked up to the transmission, and the tires don't turn. I don't know what to tell you. I think you guys nailed it is, ultimately, that's that stop at the end where you realize, like, uh-oh.

Robert Shaw:

We made some wrong decisions, and it's monumental to get back to a point where we're healthy. We see it. We try to educate. We try to get people progressively on that journey to avoid it. So many times, organizations by choice or accident wind up at the precipice of the chasm, sometimes over the chasm.

Robert Shaw:

I don't know what you call that. In the chasm, over the chasm, they try the Evel Knievel leap over it and have that Wile E. Coyote moment about halfway across.

Bo Motlagh:

I like that. We should put that on the site as an image there, Josh.

Robert Shaw:

Okay.

Bo Motlagh:

Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. You've probably seen this. You've probably consulted at 100 of companies at this point.

Bo Motlagh:

And I'm guessing you see this I mean, do you have a rough, like, percentage maybe where you've seen this across the board, do you think?

Robert Shaw:

Oh, in the chasm heading to the chasm, which one do you wanna metric on?

Bo Motlagh:

Generally at risk of the chasm. How's that?

Robert Shaw:

General at risk. Okay. So they've seen the warning signs, turn left, don't go, danger ahead. I mean, solidly without even overthinking, probably 80% of what we walk into are on some journey

Bo Motlagh:

there. And do they know it? That's the interesting part. When you get there because they've called you for their perspective of the problem, do you then kinda go, oh, hold on. Did you know this is happening?

Robert Shaw:

There's a yes and a no to that. I gotta say, since we chatted last, I was thinking about that. How many are actually aware? And I think there's two levels of answer to that question. I think at a project, small team, small group silo, no.

Robert Shaw:

I don't think they think about it. I don't think they know about it. I think it's so much like heads down, blinders on, just work, work, work, work, work. It's like this notion of we'll just defer that, or we'll save time or I need to get this person off my back. They operate very much with that tunnel vision on.

Robert Shaw:

At more of an enterprise level or a portfolio level. I think there's an awareness to it. I think there's an awareness that it exists. I think a lot of organizations know they're in trouble, but I don't think they know how to get out of it. I don't think there's a connection between turn the wheel or pump the brakes or take a different route.

Robert Shaw:

Generally, I I would say there's a broad awareness, but head scratching on NowWatch. What do you guys see with you're in that solution space? So what are you seeing? Something different or about the same?

Bo Motlagh:

I guess what I would say is they know something's wrong. What we've seen and from what we've talked to and transparently, we probably haven't spoken to hundreds of companies like you have, but we're speaking to a lot now. What we normally see is that these early warning signs that get them confused and frustrated, and then they start the process of, well, let's tackle it. And I'm being vague because I don't want to ask you what the warning signs you saw were to compare them. But in general, the reaction that we see normally is the executives will be hyper focused on one of those things.

Bo Motlagh:

And it's like, I just need to fix this and then everything will be okay. Then you begin to peel back that onion and you go, yes, you do need to fix that. But the reason this is broken is because this chain of things that goes way deeper than you realize. And so there's always this sort of educational process to help them understand the people process technology behind that.

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. It's interesting too on there. There's 2 flavors. I don't have 2 2 flavors. It's a better way to enter into that.

Robert Shaw:

Because I think there is that hyperfocus moment where they're trying to solve the problem in front of them, and they don't realize they need to step back up and look at the problem from a broader thing. Because the path they're on doesn't have a solution. What they need is to step back and look at the broader number of paths in front of them and go, oh, let's explore some of these other paths. But the big thing that's in there, and I think larger organizations suffer more than your midsize or smaller organizations, is expectations. I think in larger organizations, there's this expectation that somebody on my team, somebody in the organization is working to figure it

Bo Motlagh:

out. Yeah.

Robert Shaw:

And I don't think it matters, like, what level of leadership you're at. We see this anytime we start up a new project is there's an expectation that the team is managing technical debt, and they they have a solid technical approach, and they understand what the customer needs and the market needs and what the product expect there there's, like, this assumption. And then they get 3, 6, 9 months into it, and they're like, wait. Hold on. We didn't get that?

Robert Shaw:

Who had eyes on that? I find that fascinating that the awareness is there. They know it's there, but there's this disconnect between how to approach it, how to solve it, and who even owns it Yeah. In a lot of organizations.

Josh Smith:

Could that relate at all to the bystander effect? Have you ever heard of the bystander effect?

Robert Shaw:

No. What is it?

Josh Smith:

I use an actual real life example. When I was growing up, it was in the middle of the night, and I only heard about this in the morning. Streets away, someone in their car had gotten accident. Terrible, but they were alive, and they were lying outside of the car. It was late at night and everybody heard it, but nobody found him until the morning.

Josh Smith:

Sun had to come up. He was right there on the street because every single person, when questioned, they all thought someone else was gonna call my name one.

Robert Shaw:

Absolutely. I love that. By the way, I'm gonna borrow that. I'm doing a training Monday, Tuesday. I'm gonna figure out how to work that in.

Robert Shaw:

I like that. So for those that are agile literate, there's this thing called the definition of done. And the definition of done is at a team level and it it can on scaling, you can live at an enterprise product level. What is it? It's the definition or the gateway into production.

Robert Shaw:

When does it mean to actually be done with something? It's all the technical pinnings, the correct architecture. We've done the design, the reporting. It's the golden ticket into production. When organizations set out on that, I don't think they pause and have that conversation of what does the market actually expect.

Robert Shaw:

They approach it with hope that the teams are gonna do the right thing, hope that my people are gonna do the right thing. Was it Frank Tate that used to say hope is not a strategy? I think it was Frank that used to say that. That echoes through my head all the time.

Bo Motlagh:

Hi, Frank, if you're listening.

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. Frank, hi. Your words mattered. We understood.

Josh Smith:

Oh, and for the audience, he is a significant m and a strategist now of sorts. Right?

Robert Shaw:

Yep. A lot of wisdom in that, man. But I think that's kind of at the crux of it is the intent is there, hope is there, but the real conversation never happens. What do the customers want? What does the market want?

Robert Shaw:

What's the expectation? What's their tolerance for pain? For this product, is it throw away? We only need it for a couple months. We can go run fast.

Robert Shaw:

Or is it an investment into our bread and butter for the next 5 years, 7 years, 10 years? That changes what goes into that intentional definition of done. And so many times when we walk in with clients, they're like, well, what is it? Well, the team figured it out. Well, you sure you wanna do that?

Robert Shaw:

I mean, they're smart people, but you're banking a $60,000,000 investment into a new enterprise platform, and you just told me you've had zero conversation about what level of technical excellence and how you wanna design it and the architecture and the patterns and the quality and building it in 0 conversations. Is that what you're telling me? And since you frame it that way, yes. Like, yeah, sheepishly. But I think a lot of organization, it's not a hard conversation to start or just start earlier.

Robert Shaw:

If that's the one thing we want organizations to do from an agile perspective, start having that conversation more. It's missing. It's absent. Yes. There's a whole lot of complex stuff that happens afterward, but that's the starting point that seems now I don't know.

Robert Shaw:

Oh, we're agile. Well, what does that mean? We skip over that. We just start sprinting and we'll figure it out and they'll get it and just get it out tomorrow. No.

Robert Shaw:

No. You still need that. Right? It doesn't go away in agile organizations. It doesn't go away in agile development.

Robert Shaw:

You still do that. It's still important. Yeah. It's still relevant.

Bo Motlagh:

Coming back to those early warning signs, I'm thinking I know that we've been seeing sort of a common thread, and I guess I'm curious when you start, what are the things that you immediately pick up on in terms of those hyper focused elements that the executives might be asking about or that you start to see these are things that are happening in the organization, either from an organizational structure perspective, interactions or just technology might notice. But what are the business indicators that you've noticed are there that ultimately predict or really illustrate the hidden chasm concept?

Robert Shaw:

Hold on. So the business indicators or general indicators? Because that is 2 separate questions.

Bo Motlagh:

So pick 1 and then let's do the other afterwards because I'd be curious what you would say.

Robert Shaw:

So business indicators. Probably the most prominent one for me is the culture of chasing squirrels. Squirrels with dollar sign. Chasing squirrels. Squirrels with dollar signs on their back.

Robert Shaw:

You're in an organization that seems to be driven by chasing revenue. And And then when new revenue comes up, they pivot and they chase the next one and the next one and the next one.

Bo Motlagh:

One off.

Robert Shaw:

One off. Yeah. And what you tend to see is without that binding strategy, you start to see the technical approach fracture because the team is in whiplash mode. Their jobs are to keep their head above water and just deliver. And it loses continuity of what is our product, our solution, our value stream, our path, our purpose.

Robert Shaw:

It doesn't mean that doesn't ever change or that it doesn't pivot inside of there. What you see is that start to fracture, and it becomes competition inside the organization chasing the biggest promise of dollars in business, which means technical excellence suffers, and then you start to see it fracture at the team level. Because what does the team do? The team responds I'm gonna use the word cut corners because I don't think most engineers want to cut corners. Most of them want to be professionals.

Robert Shaw:

It's survival mode. I think for me, that is the earliest tell that I see in organizations. You start seeing that behavior happening above, and it has anti pattern effects down at the team level that you won't see for months because it doesn't happen the first time you do it. You don't see impacts the second time you do it. Heck, you don't even see impacts the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, the 1st year, 2 years you do it.

Robert Shaw:

Right. What you're gonna realize is 2 years, 24 months, 36 months down the road, stuff ain't working. And it's not something they did last week, last sprint, last month. It's something the organization started to do years before.

Bo Motlagh:

What about you were making a distinction between that and general in indicators. Did you have a thought there?

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. So you start to see the teams behaving like factories or treated like factories. So it goes a little bit back to, like, Frederick Taylor's scientific rules of management Mhmm. Back at the industrial age. Right?

Robert Shaw:

You have managers. Managers get paid to get smart, be smart. And how do we take the craftsmanship out?

Josh Smith:

Yeah. And if you're not managed and left to your own devices, only bad things will happen.

Robert Shaw:

Only bad things could happen. Right? We don't want craftsman or expertise. We just need human cogs in the machine. And I think there's still a holdover.

Robert Shaw:

Even in fairly decent agile organizations, there is still this holdover that you can still just plug people into the cock. Right? You can structure them that way. And you start to see the mindset of it's a factory it's a feature factory. And you see backlogs heavily weighted, teams get told what to do versus having real conversations about what is achievable, you see very little prioritization or cross prioritization across stakeholders.

Robert Shaw:

And you start to just to see push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push. Well, when you're pushing that much in, the stuff like refactoring, technical improvements, focusing on continuous integration delivery, continuous testing, good practices, building quality versus testing quality mindset. All that stuff, there's only so much before that stuff starts overflowing out in there. So I think at the business level, you see some business behaviors, but at the team level, you see them at the tail end of that, like, just what's a factory? We put our wish list in and magically, stuff comes out the other end and just keep pushing features, features, features, features, features, and it's not sustainable.

Robert Shaw:

It's not sustainable for the long term, and I guess, eventually, you wind up at the Thelma and Louise moment at the chasm.

Josh Smith:

I've got several questions. My first one, I guess, is by the time an organization comes to you. Of course, we're talking about an issue, and you could tell me otherwise, where by the time it comes to you, they have found out that they've rooted it out to, okay. Now this is more like a technical problem. This is a technology.

Josh Smith:

This is an engineering issue. And, of course, they're looking at it from, I'm assuming, an operational perspective to bring you all in. But that's a company where assuming they figured out it's a technological problem. When you get in, do you ever get an ear to the patterns on the types of things that they had thought was the problem before they got to the tech before they realized it was the technology?

Robert Shaw:

That's really gonna depend on how self aware they are, Josh. You know, sometimes, one of the first things we do in the consulting world is we do our own discovery. We come in. We sit down. We understand how you guys create value.

Robert Shaw:

What do you want this to look like that's different? All that consultant jargon. But we're also observing and assessing. And even if they're not self aware, like, I talked to person a and they're like, our problems, a, b, and c. And you get to talk to person 2.

Robert Shaw:

And, oh, it's a, b, and c, obviously. And then you talk to person 3, 4, 5, and 6, and they're like, our problems are a, b, c, and d. Alright. Do y'all talk? Because I spoke to 7 different people, and you all just told me the exact same thing.

Robert Shaw:

You know you're shooting yourself in the foot. I think sometimes having a consultant in and hold the mirror up where they have to look into it and they have to talk about it is the trigger that gets them to see it. Because I think a lot of them would just blissfully complain and keep going down the paths they're on. So do they know? Yeah.

Robert Shaw:

I think individually, multiple people will know, and multiple people can articulate it. I think the forcing function of here is a mirror that's intended for change, gives either people permission to talk about it openly or it coalesces people around the common problems and, like, all of a sudden, there's freedom to figure out how to solve it. So I don't know if that answered your question or not, but that's kinda just the pattern that we see. Rarely surprises anybody. Even if we roll the findings up, we go back up to the leadership team.

Robert Shaw:

They'll often look at it and they're like, oh, yeah. We knew that. Okay. Okay?

Josh Smith:

That helps me because I have some hypotheses about it's more of a question. Do companies attempt to look out at the signals that are occurring in sales, in revenue, in support, and immediately think the problems exist in those areas. And then it's not until later that they start pulling the string and that it starts to lead into technology.

Bo Motlagh:

This is something we've been a little bit of is some of the early indicators at a C level and a board level that we've heard is our retention is slipping and we're under heavy competition and we're not sure why we can't keep up. And we're interested in M and A because we want to derisk, but we can't figure out how to actually do any of these integrations. And it becomes this, is it a sales problem? Is it a dev problem? What's going on?

Bo Motlagh:

Do we need new engineers? Or are they just not good? They're actually probably really great for having gotten you this far.

Robert Shaw:

So you pull the word support into there, and that goes back to an indicator early indicator that just didn't go into, but I think that is one to talk about. Looking at what your blowback rate is from support versus the ratio of value you deliver, I think is important. For however you score value on the output standpoint. There's output. Right?

Robert Shaw:

We produce 5 things, 10 things. We deliver 10 features. Right? That number is irrelevant. It's a pace.

Robert Shaw:

The value that that has to the customer, the impact that that has to the business is what you wanna track. Right? And then you can score that. You can categorize that. There's ways to put numbers and metrics to that.

Robert Shaw:

Right? Now out of that value you've produced, over time, what is your percentage of rework that comes back through the door that actually requires development intervention. And when in that process do you find it. Right? So if you have a high degree of in team found issues before it goes out the door, you may have a quality problem, but your team is also finding it.

Robert Shaw:

That's not bad. However, if your team is finding a lot and stuff is getting out into the wild and your customers are finding it, that's a red flag. Right? If that number is skewed heavily that direction, that's something that you need to address, and it probably has some sort of technical underpinning to it pointing towards the castle. Why?

Robert Shaw:

The system that you have in place that builds, validates, tests, and verifies what you're putting out has holes in in it. Stuff is getting out into the wild, and that could be because of architectural fragility, approach, systems that need to be updated. It could be your CICD pipeline and how you have that structured. There's a lot of things in there. But a lot of times, what we see is, well well, devs aren't working fast enough, so they see it as a volume problem, not a technical problem, or the devs get yelled at for having a quality issue.

Robert Shaw:

And meanwhile, they're standing there going, dude, we're like we've been saying this. Like, stop. Slow down. We need to fix this. So not that that exists.

Robert Shaw:

A lot of times we have to expose it when we go into clients. I'm not gonna name names, but we work for a prominent Fortune 100 global company in our client portfolio. Alright. Not gonna name their name. We have also worked with a top restaurant group in the United States.

Robert Shaw:

These are large, massive enterprise organizations. Nobody in both of those will ever looked at that ratio of value per due to the rate of blowback. And it wasn't until we just took the spotlight and said, alright. Well, that's one of the things we can track. Let's just see what the data tells us.

Robert Shaw:

We didn't have an opinion on it. We didn't say it was good or bad. We just came up with the metric for the ratio, and we exposed it. And it was by the time we got, like, 3 months in, 4 months in tracking it, they're like, oh, something's not right there. Oh, why do you say that?

Robert Shaw:

What are some things that can contribute? Well, it could be the developer is not working hard. It could be. Is there anything else it could be? Right?

Robert Shaw:

Because Right. A lot of times that first reaction is gonna point it to the wrong problem. And it wasn't until we started walking down that path did we get to the levers that were actually underneath that? You know, is it structural? Is it architectural?

Robert Shaw:

Is it build? Is it like, where are you not making the investment you need to make that's causing this? Right? What you saw as devs not working is a symptom. It's not appropriate.

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. Alright. Sometimes it's a problem. More likely than not, it's not the problem. It's the symptom.

Robert Shaw:

So I think once they see it, then panic mode sets in.

Bo Motlagh:

Okay. Yeah.

Robert Shaw:

The hair's on fire. We're gonna crash and burn. How do we get out of it? And that's always the interesting one because organizations have a ton of different reactions. But, usually, it's a process to just to get them to understand what it is and and where they're headed and to get that in front of the right people.

Bo Motlagh:

I think that makes a lot of sense. And you're basically defining KPIs that they can use to measure. And then once you've measured it, you go, see, I wasn't just making this up. You're leaving all of this on the table. These are the issues, and it becomes something that they can begin to grasp.

Bo Motlagh:

I've always found the moment, especially when it's financial data, that usually gets attention quite a bit faster.

Robert Shaw:

When is it not financial data, though? People are always like, Agile is a process for speed. It's an economic mindset. Every time you have a choice to spend team, dollar, and time on something that adds value or subtracts value from your organization, choose wisely.

Bo Motlagh:

Right. I'm curious when you think about you mentioned a few of the levers you pull in order to start righting the ship here. So speak more about that. Okay. You've made it clear to them from a leadership perspective.

Bo Motlagh:

And actually, this is a question is especially for you guys because you're coming in as an agile practice. And traditionally, a lot of executives may not recognize that that's a systemic organizational thing. They might sort of view that. I'm sure you run into this. You're going to work with my product teams, right, or my dev teams.

Bo Motlagh:

And so do you sometimes find that there's an expansion of footprint that needs to occur in order to help actually right the ship? And how does that conversation usually go?

Robert Shaw:

Oh, geez.

Bo Motlagh:

Like, I really need to talk to you, mister executive, even though you might not realize that I do.

Robert Shaw:

So this should be no surprise to you or your listeners. Agility comes into organizations basically 2 ways, top down or bottom up. So it's a grassroots that's a little bit harder of an effort. A lot of times, it's a small experiment that was given permission as long as you don't talk to the layers above it. But the minute you start pressing on that or if you press on that in the wrong way, you're always using agile language and you're trying to get the executives to do scrum.

Robert Shaw:

Like, that doesn't work. That's not what they're worried about. So somewhere on there, there's a pivot to draw them into the conversation to understand if the team is playing by these rules, these are the rules that help the business can use to help them to generate value better. Mhmm. And by the way, here's kind of the expanded picture of business agility.

Robert Shaw:

It's not just team agility. There's technical excellence. There's dev and operations excellence. There's architectural excellence. There's product and portfolio management that drives decisions.

Robert Shaw:

So a a lot of times in that bottom up model, it's slower, but you start working your way kind of across that broader spectrum by pulling people into business conversations, outcome conversations, not agile conversations.

Bo Motlagh:

Right? Right.

Robert Shaw:

The other one when it comes in from top down, that's usually a little bit better because our first conversation is usually based on a why for agile versus a what for agile. Moving to agile because you wanna do events, frameworks, ceremonies, you just wanna do scrum because it's what everyone else is doing is wrong. You're not gonna succeed on that. You're gonna get results you don't wanna do. On that one there, we usually have some sort of leadership here.

Robert Shaw:

We have usually done some sort of leadership training. We have some sort of executive action team that's responsible for the results of the transformation. Right? And their designees who are empowered to do that. So in that model there, they have the hard conversations upfront.

Robert Shaw:

We have a compelling reason why or why in the organization, and we're tracking back to those metrics, those KPIs for them. That lets us have better conversations. It really depends on, is it the uphill slog? Are we rolling the boulder up the hill? Or do we have blessing and approval going in and they want it?

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. It doesn't mean they take action or can take action or is now the right time, but the news tends to go a little bit better that way.

Bo Motlagh:

We did this together when we were at our company together, the 3 of us. We see it come up a lot with companies. It's the platform play conversation. The reason we even started looking at the hidden chasm and became interested in it is because we started from we were interested in building platforms. That's what our career, as you remember, was really about.

Bo Motlagh:

And so we were building these broad enterprise integration platforms and interested in that. And we began to see that very often the platform concept was a reaction to something, some of the elements of the hidden chasm. And so these things are coupled. So how often do you find yourself having the platform conversation, whatever that may mean to your customer at that time?

Robert Shaw:

So it's not 0. It's probably not 50% at the start. It's not an early conversation. Typically, somewhere mid stream, they have that panic moment where they realize, oh, we're still legacy monolithic, blah blah blah. All of the sins of the past are there.

Robert Shaw:

And the pendulum starts to go way the other direction quickly. Right? Oh, now it's a platform. We can't afford to rearchitecture. We can't afford a platform because they still think of it in terms of multiyear initiatives and big banking delivery.

Robert Shaw:

I mean, I don't know. 40% of the time, about halfway, it usually comes up in some way, shape, or form. Usually very knee jerk followed by gnashing of teeth and some panic of like, oh, this is too big or how do we just stabilize the boat? I think that's not bad. Then you could start to have a little more conversation about, oh, okay.

Robert Shaw:

Is it all on fire? Is it all on fire at the same level? And if we just take a step back, is there any way where we could start systematically putting things in place as an in place replacement as part of that strategy? Does it have to be all or nothing, Or can we start breaking things up a little more systematically, a little more logically, and carving things out to replace it over time? Just make it part of your technical strategy so you don't have to go dark for 3 years to do this.

Robert Shaw:

I think it's a learning moment.

Bo Motlagh:

Right.

Robert Shaw:

I don't know what you guys see, but I find most organizations, most, not all, most, only need to hit that once in their lifetime.

Josh Smith:

I have a question, but I'll respond to what you mentioned because you said something that I've never heard before, but now kind of makes sense that the word platform in itself or thinking of this the changes that the organization needs to make as one monolithic thing and giving a name to it, platform, is a response to a mindset that needs to shift Yeah. Which means that when companies start to say platform, platform, and panic about this big thing, that is a signal that they recognize the problem that needs to be solved, but they're thinking of it in legacy mindset terms.

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. Absolutely. So, Josh, complete this sentence. Alright? So we'll try this and we can edit this out if this fails horribly.

Robert Shaw:

But word association, complete the sentence for me.

Bo Motlagh:

I love it.

Robert Shaw:

Alright. Today, we're starting our next big adventure of Vex Dig initiative. Today, we're proud to announce the kickoff of our platform

Josh Smith:

2.0. 1.0.

Robert Shaw:

Project.

Josh Smith:

Project. Oh, I spelled that one.

Robert Shaw:

Awesome. Right? Platform project. Oh. It gets into project based thinking versus product based thinking.

Robert Shaw:

If we think of terms of project, it's big bang, single deliverable, funding, lots of time, lots of people, but a project never really ends, does it? If you have a project and you work on a project and you have people on a project and it has an end date, is that the only value you ever deliver there? Right? There's gonna be enhancements. There's gonna be support.

Robert Shaw:

There's gonna be updates. There's gonna be maintenance. Project doesn't end. What you really start shifting is no. What you have is a stream of value in your organization that's attached to revenue and customers.

Robert Shaw:

That stream of value has 1 or more products in your solution. As an organization, stop funding projects, start funding the stream of value. And what life cycle are you in? Are you in emerging growth? Are you in r and d?

Robert Shaw:

Are you in ramp up acceleration? Are you in extracting revenue where it's a little more flat? Or is it getting closer towards end of life where there's no revenue left to extract on? If you start shifting even just a little bit to that approach, you could still fund projects, I guess, within that structure if you wanted to. But within there, that means that there's a business life cycle and economic decision to be made for it.

Robert Shaw:

If it's a 5, 10 year product solution, that means, like any car, house, or product that you own, things are gonna start wearing out, and you need to replace things periodically. And I think if just that little pivot puts things like platform a little less scary, it's an architectural pivot. Part of our architectural pivot means we have to carve out something out of a monolithic application to replace it, but it starts to stand alone. And then can we replace something else? I mean, yeah.

Robert Shaw:

Okay. Is there refactoring? Yes. But on the product level, your strategy is to extract revenue out of this thing for the next 10 years. So if that's still the plan, can you do that as it currently is?

Robert Shaw:

No. Okay. Well, what's the middle ground? Because you can't go dark for 3 years and just replace it. What is the middle ground that steps you along that journey?

Bo Motlagh:

Well, one, I think that's a really interesting take. I think a lot of the time well, there's a distinction here that's probably important, which is very often when we're saying the word platform, especially these companies, it's that vision casting, it's that reaction you're talking about. It's often coupled with a commercial concept of platform, which is very different than the thing from a platform concept on the back end that's going to help you evolve and get better. Right? So I always sort of differentiate them between whatever your commercial product strategy is, whether that's a platform or not, great.

Bo Motlagh:

We can talk about, like you said, how to carve that up into value streams that we can iteratively deliver. But when we talk about behind the scenes, how do we think about this? That's not a project to your point. Right? That's tools and strategy.

Bo Motlagh:

And so when we talk about that and and I've had customers that this comes up with, we're targeting 6 months or however long for this platform. And my response is why not just say it's here and start adopting the strategies and let's iteratively start evolving because it's not some destination. It's not like once you've done that, you're done. And I think it's a really important piece. And honestly, I think I've certainly been guilty of it because you get caught up in it because it is a lot of stuff.

Bo Motlagh:

It's a lot of tools. If you decide you want to build it yourself, it can feel like a massive investment that you want to then own and be like, well, of course, it's ours and it's a destination, but it's not. It's not really your business.

Robert Shaw:

There are 2 nuggets of wisdom, but I was chopping at the bit just because as you were saying it is so if platform is your play

Bo Motlagh:

Yeah.

Robert Shaw:

How on earth are you going to future proof the technology that's coming out over the next 3 to 5 years in a vacuum today to predict the future 5 years out? You can't do that. And anybody who tells you you can do that is I don't know. Maybe they can do it. Maybe they have a crystal ball that I don't have.

Robert Shaw:

But every time I hear that the platform play, the platform is a thing, it's gonna take us 3 years to build, and we're gonna design it today using the technology we have today, using what's available to us today versus saying our platform is there to support the revenue stream, and what are the pieces, elements, and components, whether we build by integrate or partner to solve that business equation. Right? They're they're 2 completely different mindsets. And I think you were pulling on the second one of it's not always roll your own. And Mhmm.

Robert Shaw:

At times, you're gonna be able to need to pull something else out, and off the shelf is fine, As long as it does what you need it to do or it can be configured to do what you need it to do. I think there's a mindset in old architecture world of, like, oh, no. I have to have it all on paper and connect all the dots, and it has to be perfect for something 5 years out.

Bo Motlagh:

I've done that. Yeah.

Robert Shaw:

We've all done that. I can't think of any single one of us that grew up in producing software in the nineties and early 2000 that hasn't done that.

Josh Smith:

We're gonna name this episode bread and butter because you're circling back to something you said initially, this threshold where you, as an agile partner, have to assist extrapolate now very intentionally when you build something between what are you building that we use the phrase secret sauce. What is the secret sauce? What is the bread and butter? What is the core value that you want to narrow and focus your internal engineering staff on versus what are the things that you have traditionally up to this date been maintaining and managing that is a capability or service that is now so common that you've seen so many companies building these things over and over. And maybe at some point, it was for lack of it existence and ubiquity, it's something that they can get off the shelf.

Josh Smith:

But having to at least have them start to think about separating those 2.

Robert Shaw:

So two things, I think this is where you're going, Josh. Follow-up question if you want to. It gets down into this concept of preserving options as you start to move stuff forward. Alright? There is not a singular solution.

Robert Shaw:

Everything is not a nail. Everything doesn't need a hammer. And, by the way, even if you were do do that, there's probably 20 hammers on the rack that you could choose from to pin on the nail in. So it's not singular. It's not a lock in now approach.

Robert Shaw:

What we try to get in with organizations and teams is preserving options. Can you make a minimum investment to explore an integrated solution versus building the solution? And what's your decision point? If you just made a small investment, grand scheme of things, it's probably gonna take you a while. What are the 1, 2, or 3 small investments that you need to proof of concept, evaluate, get feedback on to move that forward.

Robert Shaw:

Out of those, the best in breed will probably move forward. And then what's your next evaluation criteria? So one, getting out of linear single lock in, single point, single arrow thinking. I think the second thing on that is it's similar, but just getting design thinking conversations started in the organization. I mean, design thinking has two sides to it.

Robert Shaw:

When we're thinking about what our business strategy is, what our product strategy is, if we set that a year ago, it's probably time to pick our heads up out of the groundhog or prairie dog hole and take a look around. Is the market still the market? Has anything changed in the market? Are we still chasing down the customers we wanted? Has it pivoted?

Robert Shaw:

Is our strategy still right? What else is out there that we don't know about? Alright. And then let's come back and consume that. It's either gonna confirm that we're on the right path, or it's gonna tell us that the market has moved from where we thought it was.

Robert Shaw:

The second side of that is once you have that, then it's back to that solution option. There's more than one way to build things. It doesn't always have to be super UX heavy, pixel perfect, whiz bang, the greatest thing ever, but doesn't always have to be that 5 line, you know, that UX thing. It could be maybe 5 lines of code that gets the data that adds value to the customer. You could figure out if they like it, then make it better, make it pretty, enhance it.

Robert Shaw:

So there's options. Right? It's all design thinking is all about those learning how to listen, correlate, and get options into play.

Josh Smith:

There's probably another podcast between us around that because as a prior scaled agile practice consultant and, of course, UX leader, those in the UX community, they would see that as like a oxymoron. But

Bo Motlagh:

Wait. Didn't Rob train and

Robert Shaw:

verify you?

Josh Smith:

Yeah. No. Well, as a scaled Agilist, you did, Rob, which you were in that room too, though. Yeah. But

Robert Shaw:

Oh, you went on to get your SPC then?

Josh Smith:

I went on yeah. Yes. So I got that, but I was always looking for tie ins to figure out where we could deepen the relationship between design and and the and the general frameworks. And the thing that I kept getting back to is what you discussed, which was assume variability, preserve options through set based design. Mhmm.

Josh Smith:

When I saw that, I'm like, oh my gosh. That's the technical speak for design thinking. That's it. They do the same thing. They just use different terms.

Josh Smith:

And I was like, how do I screen this out to make sure that folks understand that it's not like an exclusive thing?

Robert Shaw:

I think that starts with making sure that you have some level of product management in your approach, not just project management, but product management. Do you have a vision? Do you have a strategy? Is there somebody who's watching the market that that's gonna pull that flexibility in and that alignment in for the organization? Right?

Robert Shaw:

Back to that first thing I said. Right? Without that, the teams are just making it up. Your organization is disconnected. They're running in different directions with scissors.

Robert Shaw:

You get what you get. You don't get upset. Or you could choose a different path. Right? Here's a strategy that we're heading to, and in there are options.

Robert Shaw:

Out of those options, when is the best one to move forward? At what level of technical excellence? It's a mindset shift. It's an organizational shift. And it's not always rapid, but it's worth taking.

Bo Motlagh:

We've covered a lot of ground, which has been amazing. I guess one sort of final thought here is what advice would you give to a SaaS leader who is maybe listening to this or has seen some other things or just is aware in general that there's a problem, but effectively finding themselves either on their way to the chasm or in the chasm. What advice would you give somebody that's be coming to that realization?

Robert Shaw:

Break the cycle of it can wait. But in all honesty, that is the one thing that we see is analysis, paralysis, or afraid to take a step in any direction because it's so big and so vast. And whenever we see that pattern we have clients. I mean, not every client always does everything that we want. Right?

Robert Shaw:

Imagine that. We have clients that still they get all this advice. Like, no. We're gonna stay the course. Okay.

Robert Shaw:

That failure to choose to take a step. When we reengage or revisit that client 6 months, 9 months, a year later, 2 years later, guess where they are? Same problem, no progress, no improvement to the system that builds, validates, deploys, and integrates the system. No improvements in building quality, no improvements in there, and there's still angsting about this looming cliff or they're in the throes of it. Honestly, take a step.

Robert Shaw:

Pick a step, pick a direction, and just start even if it's small. Don't stay put. Don't dig your feet in. Start. Typically, clients that start walking, we come back.

Robert Shaw:

6 months later, it's not solved, but they've put a dent in it. A year later, it might not be solved, but they put an even bigger dent in it. So movement, I think, is the biggest thing. What's the Tony Robbins line on there? Make a decision and then take massive action towards that or something along those lines.

Robert Shaw:

I just probably completely botched it, but I think that's true.

Bo Motlagh:

It's not good.

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. It's close enough. Right? Make a decision towards doing something, then start taking action towards it because that's the way it's gonna change. Don't give yourself the opportunity to look back a year from now and go, where are we?

Robert Shaw:

Exactly the same place with maybe some lesser different people because they got frustrated and left, but we still have the same problem. So take a step. Start walking. 1 foot in front of the other.

Josh Smith:

And I'm so sorry, but I do have, like, a question Yeah.

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. Go for it. Okay.

Josh Smith:

It's the last one. And maybe you can answer it, Rob. Maybe maybe you can. This the hidden chasm, this is about looking at the problem kind of, I hate the word, but I'm gonna use it holistically and Systemic. Yes.

Josh Smith:

Oh.

Robert Shaw:

You use the word holistically. This is gonna be good.

Josh Smith:

I have money. I gotta put money in the tip jar or money in the jar for using that word. So from your perspective as an Agile partner, facing this issue of the mounting tech debt, approaching it from your perspective as an Agile partner. If you could choose 1 partner type of partner, you can make them up to join you on this journey to address an area that's underserved, that may be outside of Agile Partnership, an additional area to join you along the way. What would that be?

Robert Shaw:

Wow. Out of all the choices, I get to pick 1. Honestly, somebody who has seen the solution options underneath there that understands, like, is it data sharing? Is it information sharing? Right?

Robert Shaw:

Because from my world, the technology stacks are vast. The architectural design patterns are vast. The data storage options are vast. Take a flavor. I don't always know what that client is going to be in.

Robert Shaw:

I'm no longer a technical guy. I used to dabble, but it's been oh, I mean, what? At 8 years, probably since I've opened up an IDE in any way, shape, or form. I do it occasionally. Yeah.

Robert Shaw:

I've done it occasionally for fun. So I think somebody that has an outside viewer lens of what the problem is and has seen how to make some of those connections, 1, from an architectural standpoint and 2, from an integrated solution validation standpoint. I think there's 2 avenues. You have your CICD pipeline. You need to have that buttoned up.

Robert Shaw:

And then you have your platform side of, here's the spaghetti mess, and it's all on the plate. Where's a partner that can come in and start pulling on the individual threads and help me make sense of it? Right? Somebody that could do both or somebody that can do each of those are probably who I'd want on my side going through that.

Bo Motlagh:

Awesome. Rob. Thank you so much for joining us here, man. This has been a really fun conversation. Before we sign off, I just want to give you the mic here.

Bo Motlagh:

Tell people where they can learn more about Clearly Agile and get in touch if they need any help and really just plug anything else that you think you'd like the world to know about.

Robert Shaw:

So let's do these in order. So one, LinkedIn, coach Rob FL on LinkedIn. That's me. I tend to be social. I'm not a stranger.

Robert Shaw:

Just connect. Happy to talk all things agile anytime. Clearly, agile.com. If there's something that we can do from a consultant standpoint, a getting the right talent standpoint or a team in a box standpoint, clearlyagile.com. Come find us there.

Robert Shaw:

Alright. And then Clearly Agile owns a training arm, which is the Brain Trust Group. That is a place to go for all of your agile certifications from scrum alliance certifications all the way up to the scaling certifications and a lot of things in between. We have a fantastic talent network of just top notch trainers. More than just a class, we try to make it fun, interactive, and engaging.

Robert Shaw:

All of that is coming together under, I don't know if I could share this yet, a thing called the Agile Network.

Bo Motlagh:

Here we go.

Robert Shaw:

Yeah. May 10th, that is gonna be launching. But I think there's so much bad information that's out there today that it was this idea that was born around, let's get the best thought leaders in the space together under one platform regardless of who they work for.

Bo Motlagh:

Under one roof?

Robert Shaw:

Under one roof. Let's get the top Agilist thought leaders in the world. They are all over. We have them from Europe and the United States under one roof, under one platform as a place to build community knowledge and how to get this conversation out to more people about there are better ways of doing it, and you may not be seeing it even though you're doing Agile. So that is May 10th.

Robert Shaw:

That's coming out, theagilenetwork.com. It's gonna be awesome.

Bo Motlagh:

Very, very cool.

Robert Shaw:

So that's it. Shameless plugs.

Bo Motlagh:

That's great.

Robert Shaw:

It's humility causes me to say that. It's a shameless plug. No. I enjoy this. Anytime Anytime we can get together and chat, fantastic.

Bo Motlagh:

Absolutely. We don't always have to record it either, but this is fun. So check out Clearly Agile. Check out all of the other amazing things that Rob is up to right now. Reach out to him and come back for more episodes.

Bo Motlagh:

Thank you for listening. We're gonna be continuing to look for different perspectives on The Hidden Chasm and explore this, so join us on that journey. This has been fun. Thanks, Rob.

Josh Smith:

Thanks, Ron.

Bo Motlagh:

You've been listening to The Hidden Chasm, brought to you by UnitedFX. If anything in our conversation resonated with you today, please reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Email us at podcast at unitedeffects.com, or simply visit us at unitedeffects.comorthehiddenchasm.com. Thanks for listening.