Narrator: You're listening to the Humans of DevOps Podcast, a

podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,

knowledge, ideas and learning, or the SKIL framework.

Marco Gianotten: So, it's like yin and yang. But there's Yang,

but there was no yet so excellent is the Yang into this

funny, crazy world. Perfect example, if you have a first

full resolution, you also need a first class experience.

Eveline Oehrlich: Welcome to Humans of DevOps Podcast. I'm

Eveline Oehrlich, Chief Research Officer at the DevOps Institute.

Our title for the podcast today is "How to Master the Art of a

Perfect Experience". I'm hoping that this title is making you

curious. Well, I'm curious I'm very curious for the upcoming

conversation and I'm excited to have a fantastic guests today.

Today, we have with us Marco Gianotten . He is the founder

and CEO of Giarte. Hello, Marco,

Marco Gianotten: Yes, well, thanks for having me. I'm really

looking forward to this podcast.

Eveline Oehrlich: Again, I am excited to speak to you today.

Let me give our listeners a little bit of a background on

you. So I'll talk to you about you in third person. I hope

that's okay. So Marco's badge of honor in the C suite is the

friendly insult and I love that Marco is well known for outside

in market views and creative problem solving. He's also seen

as a thought leader in experience management and

axillae. We'll get to that in a little bit later. His favorite

saying Do or do not. There is no try. He's very sharp,

disruptive, a pioneer of the experience revolution likes to

speak at home and abroad and pushes change into overdrive

with compelling arguments to act. I love this description. I

hope Marco This is a compliment, of course to you. Is there

anything I have missed?

Marco Gianotten: No know, well, that I want to be a chef. But

I'm a failed chef. But that's for the aftermath of this

podcast. No, it makes me very humble, and also very proud. So

thank you for being on this podcast.

Eveline Oehrlich: Well, thank you again, welcome again. And

how I found your micro was I did of course research in and who I

would want to bring in to talk about service level agreements

and all of those wonderful topics. And I found a I think it

was on LinkedIn where you said that SLA stands for secret lies

and assumptions, which really caught my attention. As we are

in the month of February during a lot of conversations and focus

on the topic of Site Reliability Engineering, we, of course, are

very interested in the topics of SLA s KPIs and OKRs. And that is

really, why I thought I have to talk to you. So tell me about

the statement secret lies and assumptions. What made you say

that?

Marco Gianotten: Well, I love it. I love DevOps in ITIL. They

have many descriptions, starting with the word service, like a

service level report, or have a service level objective, or a

service level agreement or service manager or service

designed but actually, it's not about service. It's about

process. So to Beatty, business managers an SLA stands for

secret license assumptions. For example, at a large retailer,

all the it suppliers all the outsourcing the whole landscape,

everybody was protecting the SLA but the shelves were empty. So

system availability was their truth but shelf availability was

the truth of the business. So if the shelves are empty in the

basket size is empty and your customers are in a happy I don't

give a crap about an SLA. You don't do a good job. So this is

I wanted to reinvent the word SLA it's still a service level

agreement with for to the business when it doesn't work

when it's a watermelon so it's green inside all the metrics are

green in the service level report. But actually the

atmosphere the surrounding the emotions are in the red zone.

You have a watermelon and then when I came over and did

something else so it was secret life and assumption and and

outsourcing I call it sore loser agreement to catch my drift it's

it's something okay, what's the truth? What's reality and you

can you don't hide behind your own reality and claim I do a

great job as it you don't do a great job. But it is so

important to the business that we're not able to talk mumbo

jumbo Tech, we have to talk the language of the business.

Eveline Oehrlich: Beautiful. Let's explore a little bit about

Giarte. You're the founder of Giarte. I'd Love for you to

share with our listeners a little bit about what what you

all do at Giarte.

Marco Gianotten: So we're, we're focused on bringing touch into

tech. So, for true nerds were like, We're called the cities of

it. And we're proud of that we bring into touch normally, when

you say the word empathy in a software company, you get fired.

We bring empathy, we bring experience to the world of tech.

So you have the general trend of experience management, that's,

that's real big that we bring experience management into the

world of tech, and technology and outsourcing an ecosystem. So

we focus on the X. And that's about three things that's about

customer experience, or employee experience, or developer

happiness. So the human, it's about business impact. And the

funny thing is, if systems go down, the word outreach and

outreach, outreach, different one letter. So that's the

business impact. And the third one is about collaboration,

about Win Win by design. So these are the three value

drivers. And we put it into a concept and that concept evolved

into a framework. And we call that now XLH, the experience

level agreement. Very good help large, we sell we help large

companies with Well, let's say Steve thinks it's a mindset. So

flip thinking, great example is there was a famous German, or

there still is famous German carmaker in Bavarian, and they

claim for damn file on there, enjoy driving, but they use 853

KPIs just for workplace management. So there was no

emotional or experience metric included. So that was a typical

Secrets, Lies and assumption that was not actually the

reality. So helping those companies to get into the

mindset. And having the skills like for example, Experience

Management, what kind of capability is that? And also,

what kind of tools do you use, to measure to monitor to

optimize and use experience because from experience

everything that's digitally related.

Eveline Oehrlich: So something caught my attention on your

website. And again, this is related to our months of Site

Reliability Engineering, and I'm going to quote from your

website, it says, excellent is a powerful new addition to the

traditional IT service level agreements, or SLA is one that

builds on the SLA concept by measuring human sentiment and

using this to break down silos, and think and act from the

perspective of a user. So I have a three prong question. First,

explain to us what are x delays? Second, how different are they

from service level agreements? And can I if I am in that, for

example, company you were talking about or any others if

I'm managing SLAs? Can I move from SLA s to xls? And how would

that look?

Marco Gianotten: Oh, great questions. Okay, the first one,

okay, what's an excellent, it stands for experience level

agreement. Actually, it's a framework, but also a commitment

to apply Experience Management in organizations and ecosystems,

for example, outsourcing relationships. So it's a

framework and a commitment. The second question is, okay, you

have the world of azules and ITIL. And we're, we're agnostic.

So you have to rethink about it. And it is left brain oriented.

So it's about the details. And if we look to SLA, it's about

the important details. It's about process. First, it's about

tangible outputs, like the efficiency of freight or of

surfer so uptime, or availability. So it's technology

centric. So actually, it's about the bigger picture. It's about

the impact you have on the business and especially human

beings. So it's like yin and yang. But there's Yang, but

there was no Yang. So excellent is the Yang into this funny,

crazy world of tech. For example, if you have a first

call resolution measurement, well, you also need a first

class experience. So you can look at incident management, but

also okay, what was the impact on lost productivity? You can

focus on problems but also prevent them because you're

repeat. It's the same difference between if a product is not

available on the shelf because of an IT problem. That's

reality. And if you claim that the system is still up, that's

not reality, because the business is hurt, and people are

not happy. So at klm they started rethinking about their

metrics. And eventually they are in business so flying planes Got

it, but they need it to support their main business. So if you

have a flight delayed due to it, because above and below the wing

IT systems fill, then you have flight delay due to it. And our

goal as it is to have no flight delays due to it. Because if I

have a flight delay, that's costing you money, you have to

pay a penalty, your net promoter score will go down. Because if

I'm there, you know, I'm not able to fly as a customer, I'm

not happy, I wouldn't recommend you and you have to change the

crew. So finding out where we go, key provenance indicators,

what actually makes the business or the customer or the ecosystem

tick and focus, and focused on the things that really matter.

So that's why we introduced key proud indicators, because they

motivate you to do the right thing and you know, you do the

right thing.

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Eveline Oehrlich: I was just traveling across to the US at

Christmas time, and of course, there was a huge challenge from

one particular flight provider travel company, who, yeah, we

did not, we were not delighted. And what really made me a little

bit upset was when I was sitting at the airport. The news hit

that it was infrastructure, and it who was responsible for the

outage because they had aging systems. Of course, I wasn't an

I am not part of that company. But I felt a little bit offended

that their IT department is blamed for this situation, and

they make it very public. So an excellent example. And I am a

KLM flier, lucky me that you guys have worked with them. But

I felt really, really sad for this IT organization who gets to

who is blamed for all this mess happening over Christmas in the

US, anyway, sorry.

Marco Gianotten: And that's also what happens to it. People don't

celebrate success or no product, because they're always on the

wrong end. You know, they always get the blame, and they accept

the blame. It's the same as it starts reporting, oh, my

metrics. I don't celebrate success. You know, I know. I

don't know if I report metrics. And I think could do a good job.

But actually the business is going down, for example, these

IT guys working very hard. But actually, there's inter

investment, or they don't have the wrong metrics. So they, for

example, they don't have the backup procedures, because well,

they didn't have enough money. But if you don't have the backup

procedures, and you have an outage, your recovery time goes

up. So your recovery time objective, you know, that's

really key. So, if we're down for 10 minutes, that's okay. If

we're down for three hours, okay, that's totally wrong,

because then the system will collapse and we have to replan

everything but those kinds of discussions are not business it

alignments of I don't know what they're talking about, because

we invested a lot of money in business it alignment and I

don't know what they're doing. There's only one language in

this the language of the business and the customer do if

it starts talking about business. For example, I also

make a joke that's EBIT earnings before interest in tax so most

IT guys it just means earnings before it. talk the language of

the business and I really help those people but even at klm

people within it, they weren't very happy, you know, and they

started outsourcing and instead of helping the service providers

there were blaming them because they were bullying them because

they were bullied by the business. That was so so about

you know, when you're doing a great job, I don't have to be

managed by someone if I have no flight delay due to it. I know I

did a great job when the answer is zero when the Friday because

then we have celebrate and we have drinks because I know I did

a great job because it's my impact on the business. So

Heineken invented the beer KPI on the impact of SAP hosting on

on the on the production and especially the selling of beer

in Asia and Africa. Because you don't want to do with change

just prior to the end of the rainy season Africa because then

they celebrate and appear. Yep. So being in the mind and being

thoughtful and understanding the business because the business is

very tricky because they have the money so the relationship

would do between IT and business or the doesn't work. If they

speak different languages and having a service level

agreement, it actually is a watermelon. So it's called

secret lies and assumptions to the business. That's, that's not

good for it. Because it's, it makes you depressed even. Yep.

Eveline Oehrlich: As an IT person I am. This is music to my

ears because I would love to have a proudness indicator,

which helps me to share and celebrate what I've done. But

here's another question. You guys talked a lot about the

human experience and tech. And I think you talked about left

brain, right brain. Many of our listeners are developers site

reliability engineers, DevOps and team members. If it did,

they don't really do a lot of you know, thinking in terms of

human experience and technology, maybe it's user experience. But

again, if you're an operations or in DevOps, not too much

concerns about that. Give us a little bit more insight on your

guys's thinking in terms of human experience and technology.

How can our listeners start such new thinking?

Marco Gianotten: Yes. Okay. For first, for example, like user

interaction or user design, that's the settle. Excellent is

the horse. So holistically, it's bigger. And most people the most

important word in DevOps, or in Agile, the Agile Manifesto is

the word valuable. They made money mistake. They named it

valuable software, but it has to be value, anything you do. Value

is very abstract to understand as a human being, it has to be

valuable for me, like an end user or a business, but it has

to be valuable, or has to be valued as a developer. So if I'm

a developer, and I make coat not only makes that makes the

product owner happy, but the customer happy, because it's

easy for them to adopt, they love the software, they love the

feature, the usability goes up and user adoption goes up that

makes me proud to and especially in in the DevOps way of working

in releasing software, it's very important to understand what the

end user what the customer, what the employee is actually doing

with that software. And we have product owners that decide on on

the priorities. They have their own KPIs key value indicators,

and that's the first thing that goes wrong, that KPI is focused

on the customer. It's focused on the value is not a traditional

KPI like uptime, or availability or whatever. So if you start

changing from a KPI to a KPI in DevOps, that's a good thing. But

actually, you need something overarching, because you have

multiple teams and they don't really work together and the end

up, it's a bad customer experience. So a key proudness

indicator works very well as the mother of all key value

indicators. So I think in the DevOps community, in the

software engineering community, that they will adopt, excellent

thinking to, for example, they start thinking about experience

engineering, like they do in Product Engineering. If you go

to a carmaker, if you go to Boeing, if you go to any company

that makes great products. In product design, you also think

about experience, the famous book, emotional design by Don

Norman. That's a classic book. And it's well known in product

management and product design and designers. But actually, no

one almost no one in IT. And especially DevOps knows that

book. This guy, both two great books about the about design.

And I love the book, emotional design, because that's part of

the nature that's part when Boeing developed the Dreamliner

it was about emotion because this was the first airplane they

ever designed with a human being in mind. The previous edition

when there was designing a plane was about safeness. And then

they came up with a jumbo jet, it has to be cheap. And the

third real third generation in designing an airplane was about

human experience. And then you the first problem they

encountered at Boeing was when you start talking to people like

I'm in a focus group together with you, Evelyn. And you say,

Well, what do you want this I want more legroom and engineer

really understands that. That's a functional requirement. So I

say, I don't want to feel locked up. What happens with

traditional engineer? They say, my God, he's an idiot. Well,

should we make it into inconvertible? This sucker will

freeze to that because 10,000 meters minus 50 Celsius degrees,

something like that. That's not empathy. That's apathy. So they

change the design team also with social engineers, and now they

understand so the Dreamliner and the Airbus 350 are about the

human being and it's about humidity. It's about light. It's

about It's about the experience and you feel more refreshed

after a flight with a Dreamliner than a triple seven. So in car,

a in airplay in electronics in the iPhone, what Apple that's

all about design, emotional design, people have to love it.

But in software, we still have to embrace that thinking.

Eveline Oehrlich: I love that. I love that Dream Lighter example,

absolutely right on having that design for the relaxing journey

to your destination. Fantastic example. Just something for the

listeners, as you mentioned that Marco Don Norman, if anybody

wants to do some research in that he is a very famous thought

leader and is actually working on another book at this point of

time, I think it's called the Digital Transformation

experience. But I was fascinated by some of his writings and

actually have pre ordered his his book on this digital

experience. So just for our listeners, again, Dream Lighter

is an excellent example. Now, you are releasing an excellent

pocket book, I think, yeah, pretty soon. Yeah. Tell us Tell

us. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Marco Gianotten: Okay. When we started this, I was like, we

were like a lowly nut. So there's a famous YouTube footage

over like a video and the videos by a guy dancing on his own. And

then people start following. So we did a lot of good practices

already, for a lot of large companies in the US in Europe,

even in Japan, and we were infusing our thoughts with game

design or product design. And then you have to come up with a

glossary. And then we said, we're going to share this with a

lot of people we want, we want to have an academy, we want to

develop the skill sets for people. So now you have to start

codifying your knowledge. And we started with a pocket book, it

will be published in three weeks from now, the US version,

together with fan Hara publishing, I'm really excited

because we're now into the open. And then that will be followed

by something more spectacular in the summer that call to ritual

book this because the great thing about agile or especially

DevOps is about the ceremonies, it's about the sprint planning,

or a daily standup, or a sprint review, or sprint retrospective

keep ceremonies are like rituals. So we developed a lot

of rituals, like the key proud indicator, or the or the KPI,

stress methodology, or a lot of great things that could be

applied. And also law firms love this, to put it into the

contract. Because the spirit of the contract is really important

if you start collaborating. So we work to get other people, the

book, that book will be out there. And when this possible

will be there, people hopefully will look at it and they can

order it. And we have a lineup of great products, books

eLearning video content to share this. And we train people in

Lesotho. And my team is now working in Portugal and in Spain

and in France, and we're very proud with people start stealing

stuff from us. And we have that makes us very proud like because

if you're good artists copy great artists, you still go, we

help this community and a lot of young people and old people with

the spirit, the people from the title community, people from the

DevOps community, the people from any community, even with

people with Lean. And so we had to discuss what's what is so

great about this. And they said, well, like lean, we started all

about Lean thinking when I was in university, but was no waste

and lean it is there. So lean is about no waste. ITIL is about no

chaos. Agile is about no delay. And while we needed a fourth

one, we call it axillae. And it will be about no frustration.

And if we have no waste, no chaos, no delay, no frustration,

I think we'll all be happy with the digital transformation. So

we're on a mission, we love to share. And we love to hear and

it's great that sometimes we people send as well we apply

this in a way and when the most one of the most funny things is

that at the ditch we're way they launched applications on time on

budget like prints too. And people were actually crying

because I'm not able to work with this release. And they say,

well, well how can we celebrate success when the customer is not

happy? So on time on budget was not complete. So they said it

has to be on experience. So that's Oh x so it was on time on

budget on experience, and now it's called auto boxing. It's a

vert and we have to out Robots, it's in their nature in their

DNA. So the developers and the business are extremely happy and

only happy when the customers happy.

Eveline Oehrlich: Wow, fantastic. You know, after,

let's say 40 years, and it the no frustration is very, very

motivational, because I have done all kinds of work design

development, support, I carried a pager in the early stages. And

that was the most frustrating time of my IT career. So this is

absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much. For those who are

listening, the XLR pocket book, I will make sure that I will

share with you the website, it's actually pretty easy.

giardia.com Go look there. If you have specific questions,

reach out to me. I know where to find Marco. Now, Michael, I have

one more question. This has nothing to do well, slightly. It

has to do with experience, but not necessarily with tech. What

do you do for fun?

Marco Gianotten: Well, I do a lot of things for fun. I like

read but especially I am ambidextrous golfer, so I play

left hand the right hand. So I'm a masochist, that plays against

himself. So I do nine holes left hand and line holes, right

handed so and it's a very interesting way. It's also

related to Chinese sword fighting. So that's a very non

traditional way of playing golf. And a second I love cooking. I

started cooking for toddlers cooking classes and, and read

the thing because taste is so important for people healthy

food. But also if you have people only or maybe with

dementia and you you start to taste of your youth that's

really important. So I wanted to be chef my life I turned out to

work in it. But I still I started working as a teenager in

the kitchen. And that's still one of my biggest hobbies and

making people happy with food is also a passion.

Eveline Oehrlich: Fantastic. We have more in common than you

think. I also play golf but only right hand. So when you come

down to where I live, we can go and you can teach me the other

way. I love to cook. I always pride myself with that I'm the

best cook in in my family. And when I go to a restaurant, I

always say I can cook better than I can make this better than

these people. So I can cook for you. So come on down. Well,

yeah, thank you so much for this very, very enlightening

conversation. We have been talking to Marco Gianotten and

founder and CEO of Giarte Marco again, thank you for joining me

today on the Humans of DevOps Podcast. Again, for our

listeners, if you'd like to learn more about the axillae

pocketbook keep checking@yahoo.com And last but

not least humans of DevOps has is produced by the DevOps

Institute. Our audio production team includes Julia Pape, my

good friend and Brendan Lay, my good friend as well. I'm Humans

of DevOps Podcast Executive Producer Eveline Oehrlich. If

you would like to join us on a podcast in the future, please

contact us at humans of DevOps podcast at DevOps institute that

calm Boy, that's not a good name. It's a mouthful. Thank you

again, I'm Evelyn earlyish. Talk to you soon.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Humans of

DevOps Podcast. Don't forget to join our global community to get

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