SpringOne 2020 The Brilliant Practice of Balanced Platform Teams Samah Majadla, Solutions Architect at VMware Christie Lynam, Solutions Architect at VMware Christopher Pittman, Product Person at VMware Taj Moore, Product Manager at VMware

1. © Copyright 2019-2020 VMware, Inc. All rights Reserved.
The Brilliant Practice of
Balanced Platform
Teams
Christie Lynam
Christopher Pittman
Samah Majadla
Taj Moore

2. Taj Moore (he/him) is a product management
player-coach in VMware Pivotal Labs. He has helped
customers like Pepsi, StubHub, American Eagle
Outfitters, and ResMed build better platforms. Taj
began his career in product management while an
acupuncture school administrator, spent ten years in
enterprise SaaS, and now works in platform services.
Introductions
Christie Lynam (she/her) is a Solutions Architect on
the Platform Services team at VMware Pivotal Labs.
She is a student of Agile/XP and enjoys working
closely with enterprise customers to drive innovation,
transformation and business outcomes. Prior to joining
VMware Pivotal Labs, Christie taught software
engineering at a non-profit coding school in Denver,
CO.
Christopher Pittman (he/him) is a product person at
VMware Pivotal Labs. Christopher loves helping very
large organizations move at the speed of very small
ones; identifying critical risks and delivering value
through continuous iteration. He is currently focused
on scaling product practices across client platform
portfolios.
Samah Majadla (she/her) has found her way to Product
Management at VMware by way of a journey in
software development and software education. She is
passionate about equity, representation, and
accessibility in education, the tech industry and
beyond.

3. We help customers modernize their
infrastructure, applications, and
processes.
Disciplines
● Lean product management
● Agile development
● User-centered design
● Site Reliability Engineering
We are VMware Pivotal Labs

4. Agenda
What will we be talking about?
● Balanced teams
● Why platforms?
● Platforms need balance
● How to: theory and practice
● Acceptance criteria

5. Intro to balanced teams

6. Users
product management
design
engineering

7. Users
product management
design
engineering
research

8. Users
product management
design
engineering
design requirements
research

9. Users
product management
design
engineering
business priorities design requirements
research

10. Users
product management
design
engineering
build and ship
business priorities design requirements
research

11. time
unvalidated
effort
design

12. time
unvalidated
effort
product managementdesign

13. time
unvalidated
effort
product managementdesign engineering

14. time
unvalidated
effort
product managementdesign engineering
Build it!

15. time
unvalidated
effort
Ship it!
usersproduct managementdesign engineering
The area under
the curve …

16. time
unvalidated
effort
The area under
the curve …

17. Let’s rearrange the
pieces!
product management
design
engineering
users

18. product management
design
engineering
users
Balanced Team

19. product management
design
engineering
users
Balanced Team

20. product management
design
engineering
users
Infrastructure
Security
Change
ManagementNetworking
Balanced Team

21. product management
design
engineering
users
Infrastructure
Security
Change
ManagementNetworking
Balanced Team
Platform

22. Balanced
Platform Team
Platform

23. Balanced
Platform Team
Platform

24. Expanding on the Balanced Team: Platform Teams
product management
design
engineering

25. The makeup of your balanced team is dependent on what
the most critical values of your product are.

26. What does a successful product look like to you?
● Secure?
● Easy to use and understand?
● Eliminates pain points?
● Stable?
● Continually improving?
● Supported?
● Legally compliant?

27. Expanding on the Balanced Team: Platform Teams
product management
design
engineering

28. Expanding on the Balanced Team: Platform Teams
product management
design
infosec
engineering

29. Expanding on the Balanced Team: Platform Teams
product management
design
engineering
infosec
SRE
SRE
SRE

30. Expanding on the Balanced Team: Platform Teams
product management
design
engineering
infosec
SRE
lawyer
infrastructure SRE
SRE

31. The makeup of your balanced team is dependent on what
the most critical values of your product are.*
* but this is just one of many ways to determine your
recipe of balanced team.

32. “True north is a direction, not a destination.” - Taj

33. ● Document toil
● Retro
● Demo
● Pairing/Rotation
● Consider psych safety
● Re-evaluate, together
How to cultivate balance in your team

34. How do you know if your team is balanced?

35. ● Multi-discipline collaboration
● Trust throughout the team
● Less friction
● Things go faster
● The team feels empowered and
accountable
● Improved metrics
How do you know you’re balanced?

36. Thank you! Please join us now for Q&A: a link is
posted in the breakout session Slack channel.