A presentation at DeveloperWeek Enterprise by Quintessence Anx
How to Advocate to Not You Non-Technical Considerations for our Technical Tools Quintessence Anx Developer Advocate
It starts like this QuintessenceAnx
You want / need a tool. QuintessenceAnx
And so: you prepare a case, focused on your needs, and present them. QuintessenceAnx
Source: PhD Comics QuintessenceAnx
After being pulled off stage, you develop a new strategy that looks like this… QuintessenceAnx
Source: XKCD Comics QuintessenceAnx
Why does this happen? QuintessenceAnx
You are trying to make engineering arguments to non-engineers. QuintessenceAnx
What to do instead? 🤔 QuintessenceAnx
411 on Modes of Persuasion QuintessenceAnx
Pillars of Persuasion QuintessenceAnx
Source: Backdrops by Charles H Stewart QuintessenceAnx
Establish your Credibility • “10 years of engineering work has taught me that…” • “When I encountered a problem like this previously, I resolved it by…” QuintessenceAnx
Apply Logic • “Before we streamlined our workflow, we lost Y hours of productivity.” • “The addition of campaign tracking allowed us to see how impactful each of our efforts were.” QuintessenceAnx
Really Feel It: Empathize • “Implementing these new security features will improve customer trust.” • “Being able to more quickly resolve problems will reduce team stress, which will propagate upwards.” QuintessenceAnx
Keeping these in mind QuintessenceAnx
Know what and when to compromise QuintessenceAnx
Keep the discussion points brief and simple QuintessenceAnx
Provide Context QuintessenceAnx
Reciprocate: Give and Ask QuintessenceAnx
Tying this into the main question QuintessenceAnx
Q: How do we (you) convince nontechnical people to value the tools the way you do? QuintessenceAnx
A: You don’t! QuintessenceAnx
You convince non-engineers to value your preferred tools from their vantage point. QuintessenceAnx
Let’s do this. QuintessenceAnx
Learning by Example: Build a Case for a Monitoring Tool QuintessenceAnx
Some Anon. Monitoring System (SAMS) and Some Other Monitoring System (SOMS) QuintessenceAnx
Some context for your situation QuintessenceAnx
Currently you have either 1 ) no monitoring (👻) or 2 ) SOMS (👻 👻) QuintessenceAnx
And you want something that exists and isn’t terrible is good. QuintessenceAnx
Unfortunately, SAMS is … well … 💸💸💸 QuintessenceAnx
No problem! Just get your boss/company to pay for it! QuintessenceAnx
That’ll be easy! (Said no one, ever.) QuintessenceAnx
Start with the familiar: a basic technical case QuintessenceAnx
What do you want? • • • • What infrastructure do you have? What languages are your apps written in? What compliance requirements do you have? What other tools do you have (integration)? QuintessenceAnx
We have only started, but the rabbit hole already looks like … QuintessenceAnx
Well, this. QuintessenceAnx
Pause and breathe QuintessenceAnx
And then be more abstract QuintessenceAnx
What do you want? • The ability to quickly triage and troubleshoot issues • • The ability to integrate with other tools, in the case of monitoring usually at least • A ticketing system • An incident management system As much tool consolidation as possible • As much compatibility as possible QuintessenceAnx
What do you want? • To see latency issues • To see outages To see potential vulnerabilities • • e.g. If there are recognition patterns for various attacks • To see usage patterns Can help determine user experience (UX) • Correlate metrics with any latencies or failures • QuintessenceAnx
What do you want? • See how New Feature X is working out • Be able to work on Oh My Outage without pausing your work (too much) to give status updates • Be able able to link to specific errors / warnings in your tickets for later… QuintessenceAnx
How does this translate to what they want? QuintessenceAnx
Well, who are “they”? 🤔 QuintessenceAnx
Borrowing the “Persona”* concept, define something like… * You may also hear these referred to as “stakeholders”. QuintessenceAnx
Define The Personas (a.k.a. Stakeholders) • Allies Supporters • Antagonists Competitors Other Tech Deciders • e.g. security team(s) • • • Financial Deciders • e.g. executives / management (And so on) QuintessenceAnx
Focusing on management et al QuintessenceAnx
What do they care about? • How does this benefit: • The team • Other teams • The business, e.g. the customer experience • Them QuintessenceAnx
What else do they care about? • To be kept informed / in the loop / transparency • So they can answer questions without needing to call someone • … or worse be called by someone and caught unawares. • To know the total cost • Not just licensing, but time cost to train and roll out To know what they’re paying for is being used • QuintessenceAnx
Keeping these in mind QuintessenceAnx
Find the overlap QuintessenceAnx
The Overlap • If already familiar with tool = decreased cost • • More effective triage + troubleshooting means • • • • (Less or no time needed for training) Better results for KPIs like MTTR, MTBF More features, it’s what businesses crave Integrations = more effective use of existing tools Compatibility = don’t need to add/replace anything to use it QuintessenceAnx
The Overlap • Decreased latency -> increased transactions -> increased revenue • • More automation -> less time lost to manual updates Tool consolidation = lower costs • Links in tickets = more visibility, fewer pings QuintessenceAnx
Beyond the overlap QuintessenceAnx
Ask for help QuintessenceAnx
“What abouts” discussion points? • What about SOMS? • What about budget? What if our needs change? • QuintessenceAnx
Exec / Manager Visibility QuintessenceAnx
Recall amongst their wants • To be kept informed / in the loop / transparency • So they can answer questions without needing to call someone • … or worse be called by someone and caught unawares. QuintessenceAnx
Non-IT use case: Exec Dashboard QuintessenceAnx
QuintessenceAnx
Executive Dashboard • Allows topmost view on health for various apps and systems • Allows the manager or exec to be able to answer “is there a problem?” directly if asked, rather than fencing the question to engineering team(s) • Mobile app, for if/when “on the go” is ever a thing again, would be a huge benefit for upper level execs QuintessenceAnx
Because… QuintessenceAnx
Even Starfleet knows the command staff likes dashboards QuintessenceAnx
Slides & Additional Resources on Notist https://noti.st/quintessence QuintessenceAnx
Thank you! Quintessence Anx Developer Advocate 🥑 @ https://noti.st/quintessence
One of the things I struggled with as an SRE was being able really grok what non-engineers/non-devs like my manager, whomever they reported to, and various chains in my employer’s business, cared most about when it came time to tool selections. A specific example that I will anonymize and discuss is a business case for changing from Monitoring Tool A to B (Some Anonymous Monitoring System and Some Other Monitoring System) - the final decision isn’t based on B necessarily being a superior tool for a team’s specific technical needs, but rather on other management criteria like license consolidation. Depending on the size of the employer, startup to enterprise, there are increasing numbers of non-engineering folks who have decision making power over the team’s tools. Thus, as devs, ops, etc. we cannot keep our focus on just the technical aspects of different tools and frameworks or we’ll miss the opportunity to appropriately make our case to these other stakeholders. In this talk, I’ll be discussing what these other groups need to know to help them make a decision in your best interest.
*** Important *** To view the ADDO Spring Break recording of this talk, you will need to expand the Cultural Transformation track.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
The modes of persuasion, often referred to as ethical strategies or rhetorical appeals, are devices in rhetoric that classify the speaker’s appeal to the audience. They are: ethos, pathos, and logos, and the less-used kairos.
What made those descriptions different from all of the rest?
In a nutshell, they expertly employed four powerful rhetorical strategies known as the modes of persuasion.
We are confronted by persuasion in a wide variety of forms every single day. According to a study by a media trend-tracking group, the average person is exposed to more than 5,000 advertisements per day. Food makers want us to buy their newest products while movie studios want us to go see the latest blockbusters. Because persuasion is such a pervasive component of our lives, it is often all-too-easy to overlook how we are influenced by outside sources.
Templates for different audiences, more lengthy guide than the title suggests.
Detailed ideas for how to make an IT Business Case
for free. You
can too.