Switched On with Paul Modderman and James Wood: Recent Episodes

James Wood, Paul Modderman

Bowdark Chief Nerd Paul Modderman and CEO James Wood explore subjects of interest to SAP professionals, Microsoft developers, and techies everywhere in between.

What We Cover

Why AI tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude Code are real productivity accelerators and how Bowdark is actively using them
The 70/30 split: why only about 30% of a technology project involves writing code
What human-centered design actually looks like in practice and why it can't be automated away
A real client example where a "detailed requirements doc" turned out to be a list of unanswered questions
Why AI is a powerful tool in skilled hands and a risk in the wrong ones
The right frame: AI is additive, not replacement

Many organizations enter transformation initiatives with genuine commitment — and still go nowhere. In this episode, we dig into why so many leaders find themselves ready to move but stuck in place, and what it actually takes to break through organizational gridlock.

We explore one of the most common and costly mistakes in transformation: treating it like a side project layered on top of everyone's day job. Real transformation requires a dedicated team capable of leading an end-to-end effort — from research and design through build and rollout. Buying technology, it turns out, is not the same as building capability.

The data backs this up. A recent McKinsey study found that 70% of large-scale digital transformation efforts fail due to lack of resource availability and insufficient investment in the right foundations. CIO.com reports that 67% of transformation projects are delayed because of skill shortages — particularly in AI, cloud, and modern data technologies. And according to Gartner, a leading reason these efforts stall is the absence of internal expertise and change leadership required to actually execute.

We unpack what those gaps look like in practice, why change leadership is so consistently underestimated, and what the difference is between executive sponsorship on paper versus real ownership in the work. We also get practical — what does a leadership team do today if they feel stuck? How do you balance quick wins with long-term sustainability? And what should progress actually look like in the first 90 days of a well-run transformation?

If your organization knows it needs to change but can't seem to make it move, this episode is for you.

This episode dives into the transformative world of Microsoft Fabric with Microsoft MVP and "Data God" Chris Wagner. Whether you’re a data enthusiast, a business leader, or a technology professional, this episode will give you an insider's look at how Microsoft’s latest data platform is reshaping the way organizations manage, analyze, and act on their data.

🗂️ What’s in Store:

The Origin Story

How Microsoft Fabric evolved into the unified platform it is today.
Key milestones in its development and the strategic vision behind it.

What Sets Fabric Apart

A breakdown of Fabric’s unique features, including its unified architecture.
Comparisons to traditional data platforms and what makes Fabric a game-changer.

Notable Capabilities

From Data Factory to Power BI and beyond, explore Fabric’s ecosystem.
Highlighting powerful tools like Data Activator, Lakehouse, and Real-Time Analytics.
How these capabilities empower teams to innovate at scale.

Building a Data Culture

Why building a data culture matters for modern organizations.
Practical steps on how Fabric enables everyone in your organization to access, analyze, and act on data securely.
Real-world examples of businesses transforming their decision-making with Fabric.

✨ Key Takeaways:

Microsoft Fabric is more than just a data platform; it’s a revolution in how data is managed and used.
Unified tools and seamless integration make it easier than ever to build end-to-end data pipelines.
Fabric fosters collaboration and puts the power of data-driven insights in the hands of every user, from analysts to executives.

🔗 Show Resources:

Chris Wagner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wagnerchris/
Chris Wagner's KratosBI YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisWagnerDatagod
Microsoft Fabric Home Page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-fabric
Bowdark Fabric Services: https://www.bowdark.com/services/spark/microsoft-fabric

We flip the script and interview ourselves. James puts interesting questions to Paul about generative AI and the UX possibilities that are starting to open up. Sometimes Paul wanders off to uncharted territory.

We're in the age of Copilots. Discussion focuses a lot around Microsoft - but the implication is clear: they're everywhere, and they're just getting started.

James and Paul pontificate on their experiences working in, with, and under business-led IT, shadow IT, and corporate IT. What's the best way forward, for IT orgs to have real impact on business outcomes?

We talk about the Copilot Studio demo and other possibilities. "Everything you categorized in your head as 'I can't do that,' pull it out and rethink it. It might be possible now."

Alan Chai, Microsoft Power Apps MVP and Head of Digital Transformation & Innovation at Schlumberger, wows James Wood and Paul Modderman with his tales of enterprise creation, curation, and learning new things.

Highlights Check out Constellation’s October event: Connected Enterprise 2023 * What a great sense that things are ALWAYS exciting — but in early days of his career that exciting-ness was slower. * “Smith” — highly common last name these days — tied to the old profession of blacksmithing. What’s the new “smith” these days? Probably producting software. * Holger: why can’t email be done better? (Yeah. I agree here for sure. It seems like a useful holdover ripe for some kind of sea change.) * The art is finding the right ratio between human and automation. Find the right pace of digital transformation for people*. * Stay until the end where Holger catches me forgetting what we’d discussed in the pre-show! * The “money quotes” section below is intentionally truncated. Holger says so many little nuggets of wisdom that I found myself just transcribing the episode.

Money QuotesHolger

It’s all about how we will work, what we will work on, what we will get paid to work on…and it’s changing rapidly.

You have to reinvent yourself every 5 years.

You have to find the right balance between the skills of people and the automation you can provide them. Companies who do that right do amazing things.

SAP is like concrete: it’s great when it’s warm and moving…but [after time] you need a sledgehammer to fix it.

James

You’re seeing the veil between the back office and the front office be torn apart — but it’s also creating lots of consternation and hand-wringing.

Paul

It’s never been more clear than now that what you do for work and how you do it have the distinct possibility of changing right under your feet. Difference is faster, now.

James and Paul discuss the upcoming events in the fall conference season - especially Microsoft Power Platform Conference and SAP TechEd, and come up with their unique spin on a wish list for them.

Podcast Episode! Season 5 Intro: The Future of Work
James and I sat down to ruminate and prepare for our upcoming next season: The Future of Work. It’s obvious that GPT (and especially ChatGPT) has completely saturated everyone’s brains. It seems like we’re finally seeing the veil between front-office and back-office start to tear. But most of all, we are PUMPED about this season — as both a way to learn from great guests, and as a time capsule of a unique moment in tech history.

Money QuotesJames

You’re seeing a shift from systems being systems of record to decision support.

The proliferation of low-code tools are making it much more accessible to interconnect front-office and back-office systems.

This is coming very soon: enterprise-grade GPT services that train on your data.

Intranets are usually where information goes to die.

Paul

The future of work is about the new ubiquity of really good tech. There’s a shift going on in how much businesses believe they can actually do with technology.

I see the lights turn on with more non-techie people now, when the conversation turns to what you can do with it in your business.

The fact that the world is changing so fast means that there is such a thing as “The Future of Work”.

ChatGPT made the magic of tech real to people who don’t give a crap about tech. We as techies live in a world where we have always believed [that tech could make a real difference], but now it’s clear to non-techies.

James and I closed out our season of exploring digital transformation and its various meanings with a wrap-up conversation.

Awesome Episodes This Season* Season 4 Premiere: Digital Transformation * Continuous Everything with Jon Reed * Digital Transformation as Improving Processes with Alex Jones * De-Mystifying the Digital with Paru Sankar * Innovation with Purpose with Diego Dora * An Agile SAP Development Platform with Nestor Lara * Compassion in Software with Dustin Bruzenak * Season 4 Finale: Digitally Transformed

Money QuotesJames

In a healthy, modern enterprise, we should constantly be renewing ourselves…There’s no getting around the hard work that it takes to continue maturing your organization.

The compounding benefits you can see from “continuous everything”…it’s hard to quantify.

Paul

We still live in a world where experts are truly experts. That expertise can lead to things where, when we get in the room to do design…they themselves may not have agreed or have codified how they get their stuff done.

It has never been the case where we have digitally transformed something utterly out of a human’s hands. I have never obviated the accounting department.

If you do digital transformation, what is being transformed?

James and Paul sit down with Dustin Bruzenak, co-founder of Modern Logic - a Twin Cities-based software development shop specializing in projects that emphasize compassion and human-centered thought. Dustin offers great thoughts on the software industry: building the products, building teams, and finding your cultural center.

Make sure to get more from Christian at myNewsWrap and Twitter.

James and Paul discuss the Nuve platform with founder Nestor Lara - among other geektastic subjects. We discuss ins and outs of SAP DevOps, ABAP containers, and generally speaking platform-y things that will make your nerd heart sing.

Dawn Clark and Lori Beck from Bowdark's Microsoft team guest to help us create a roundtable to geek out over the latest Microsoft Copilot offerings. See https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/ for more details.

Paul and James talk to Diego Dora, longtime SAP buff and founder of DIFF Consulting. Diego is knowledgeable about cloud, development, and system integration topics that should be helpful to ANY enterprise, and has a special flavor of SAP + GCP knowledge mixture.

Paul and James discuss possibilities for future seasons of Switched On. Data/AI? Cloud maturity? Other...things?

Paul and James talk to Paru Sankar, Managing Director for Mindset Consulting in Asia/Pacific, who transforms their understanding of digital transformation. Paru is a world-ranging technologist, and gives great perspective on a wide range of topics.

Paul and James outline their wishes for the upcoming year in tech.

James and Paul talk to Alex Jones (not THAT one) from NetSPI about the heretofore unseen connections between penetration testing and security. Alex brings a fresh perspective from his sales and marketing leadership positions, and it really stretched our imaginations.

James and Paul point the hard questions at themselves - asking each other the questions that they usually reserve for guests. What do people not understand about what you do? What excites you most about the future?

James and Paul talked to Jon Reed from diginomica about our seasonal "digital transformation" topic. He's been on the hunt for this very same idea for years - and his wisdom shines through.

We kick off a new season of Switched On with the topic: Digital Transformation. The sub-question should probably be: what the heck is it? James and Paul explore their own thoughts before the rest of the season kicks off into a bunch of great guests!

Podcast Episode! Season 3 FINALEThis is it! The end of season 3! Lots of solid leads on the question “Why can’t IT keep up with the business?” — and probably most importantly, a concession that the question probably started off a bit loaded. I think we came to several points of agreement, led by our awesome guests.

Highlights* Yeah. It’s a loaded question. * It really comes down to how much the IT job has changed. There are a lot of conflicting requirements. * IT kind of winds up supporting systems that were shoved onto them, versus fully owning them * ‘Prioritization is key to the whole game’, well said Wade at TSI

Create your own APIs and consume them in your app. Make them fundamental.
IT’s role 5 years from now:
James: more integration, more facilitating data; fusion teams. Still places for pro-code developers, even as landscape shifts.
Paul: need to grow more solution architects. Need to have more understanding of the solutions that are needed, even if I can’t know everything about the minutiae of every black box.

Money QuotesJames

When you start talking about complex hybrid landscapes…a lot of middleware and legacy warehouse solutions are showing their age.

As long as I have that [integrations/interfaces], that’s like a safety net if the app doesn’t do what I need. There’s a lot of legacy systems that don’t have that.

Paul

IT has a little bit less time to develop real ownership mentality of the solutions they provide to the business.

Data is probably one of the key indicators of the whole mess these days. The value of data is greater and more challenging than it was before.

We have to participate in telling the whole story. Support and ongoing help — our whole industry will have to get better at that part of the equation.

James and I went down to sunny (sweaty) Orlando for Microsoft Power Platform Conference (MPPC) 2022. Apart from getting to see a great set of announcements, learn a ton, and meet up with past pod-friends we also got the chance to sit down and have a conversation with Charles Lamanna — hot on the heels of his keynote address.

Join us for this Very Special Episode of Switched On, our chance to share Charles’ deeper thoughts on MPPC 2022 announcements.

First, our own quick thoughts on MPPC 2022:

James loved the enthusiasm. “Our industry is about to be turned upside-down.”
I had big love for the announced collaborative editing feature in Power Apps, with coauthoring. Fusion teams are even more equipped now.

Then — in an effort to avoid falling into a nerd black hole of our own excitement — we jump to the live-on-the-scene interview with Charles.

IT. WAS. SO. AWESOME.

Here is a sprinkling of his wisdom.

Highlights Charles loves the real-time coauthoring experience, same as me. Customers often have big development teams working on the same app — now think of it as the current Word or Excel. Your colleagues are there with you, making cool things happen quickly. * Power Platform as a low-code platform is interesting in its comprehensiveness*. Don’t forget that you’re doing a lot more than just Power Apps. * James notes the Azure backdrop for Power Platform as a game-changer: “substrate”. * There are “no cliffs” — there’s always an escape hatch to go one layer deeper on customizing and powering up apps. You can always drop into a deeper layer of code or functionality.

Charles Lamanna

Approximately 25% of Power Platform users are professional developers, and they often collaborate with non-pro devs.
Fusion teams, CoEs, etc — those are functionally customer innovations on top of the delivered platform.
7.4 million Power Platform developers. It’s only just beginning.
Low-code development platforms in 3 years: 3 trends. Data [there’s a massive amount of data from every system, it’s not easy to put it all together → data poor to data rich, connectors], AI [from big data to big AI, “there will be more UI built for AI than for humans”], collaboration [all this great stuff is happening in tech — it’s still all about the people using it].
AI is leaking into Power Platform in ways where you don’t see or know it. It’s just there, powering things.
We talk about humans collaborating, in the future it’ll be humans and AIs collaborating.
Charles: serverless is the now-future.
Fun fact: Logic Apps come from an internal hackathon project at Microsoft called Wolfkrow (“workflow” backwards)

Money QuotesCharles

That’s the amazing thing about platforms: you build it, and your mind is always blown by what people are able to do with it.

Power Platform has definitely entered the ‘flywheel is a blur’ stage…every quarter there’s a game-changing experience. [nod to Jim Collins]

I remember in 2013 what it felt like for public cloud. It feels exactly the same way for low-code in 2022.

Technology is what enables the feature, technology is not the feature.

James

Because it’s getting to a certain level of maturity it’s like…how far can we take this? The answer is: pretty far.

Paul

MPPC 2023: Field of Dreams

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't

This is the last guest episode for our season question: “Why Can’t IT Keep Up With The Business?” Luke Komiskey is the founder of DataDrive, a managed analytics provider, with a cool approach to things. Seriously, go check out the website and scroll down to the On Your Own vs Growth Plan comparison. You’ll see what I think is true out there in the world — companies going it alone in [any!] tech space in which they’re not bona fide experts is probably a money pit situation.

Go for a DataDrive, or a DataWalk up some stairs

Put simply, Luke is a “data guy”
Started work at Cargill after college (briefly on the same team as yours truly!)
First Slalom analytics hire in the Twin Cities market
In 2016, Luke and spouse quit jobs, sold everything, and traveled the world until the money ran out!
In the world of data and analytics, the answer to this question has been to strive for self-service analytics
Self-service has a scale of success — not many orgs have found the highest nirvana state
DataDrive’s differentiator is an engagement model focused around the continued relationship with a client versus the consultant swoop-in/swoop-out model
IT has to have more conversations with the business to be successful

Money QuotesLuke

IT just has different responsibilities that conflict with having to move fast with the business…scale, security, process

How do you get a business user engaged enough with the data to ask [a question] all on their own, without having to go back to IT?

Self-service is a constant learning journey.

James

IT needs a more immersive perspective to keep up with the business.

We ask ourselves a question that underpins a lot of what we do: is it realistic to expect enterprise software to move to a vanilla, SaaS-ish place that minimizes or even completely eliminates customization?

Podcast Episode! MAUI Hotness with James MontemagnoJames and I talked to James Montemagno to take a deep look at tech that will absolutely have an impact on our business app customers. Montemagno leads the developer community team, part of the developer tools division that builds all manner of the tools that many of us nerds use on the daily. I’m deeply appreciative to get this kind of tech insight, and Montemagno is a great communicator of his interests.

Leaders of enterprise development orgs, I would strongly advise you consider .NET and MAUI as your approach to cross-platform development. C# knowledge is basically ubiquitous in the business developer community (and I freakin’ love the language), and working from a single codebase for applications that might demand multiple platforms is a killer time-saver. If your team has .NET skills, MAUI just makes tons of sense.

Highlights* Part of division that builds .NET, Visual Studio, VSCode, C#, TypeScript, and more (holy cow, this division more or less makes my job go) * .NET MAUI is the evolution of Xamarin, launched recently and discussed in depth in this episode * Dev advocacy is an important part of his career. This involves a few things: the goal should be to enable, grow, and nurture a community around a product. It’s about relationships — not (directly) selling. Hire people that love your product, and love to show other people.

MAUI is an important step in .NET’s larger goal of enabling developers to build for anything
MAUI enables developers to build for multiple platforms from a single, C# codebase. iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows!
MAUI stacks up against Flutter, React Native, and other multi-targeting frameworks primarily through its C#/.NET community strength — but you’ve always got to look at the team you’re working with and going with its strengths, too
Don’t forget that .NET can actually power mashups between your pro-code solutions and your low-code tools, especially well-done in MS Power Platform
James is excited by augmented and mixed reality starting to arrive.

Money QuotesJames M

There’s only one me. How do you create a thousand of me? By building trust.

Pick the best tool for your project and your team.

What I’m hoping about the future is that technology can de-clutter our lives.

Paul and James scratch their heads and ponder the ontology of ERP. James stays brilliant, Paul tortures a Ship of Theseus metaphor.

Podcast Episode! A Game Of Prioritization with Wade KrzmarzickJames and I talked to Wade Krzmarzick, Director of IT at TSI, Incorporated. TSI builds scientific measurement equipment (among other things). He gave us insight into budget and time questions, strategic direction he thinks about, and what makes him most proud of his team. It was a great conversation.

Highlights* Director of IT at TSI, Incorporated — they build scientific measurement equipment, a lot of focus on health * Started at TSI doing SAP Basis work (system administration) * Youth sports enthusiast * Favorite question from business partners: “Can’t we just…?” * Depending on an org’s size, they can’t just go out there and try every single new thing

The man himself

Key to this understanding is how much of an organization’s budget is eaten by security — it’s a growing concern.
Super interesting tidbit about a phishing attack — listen for details
Wade’s done work with both cloud infra and cloud app development, but TSI also still has their own datacenters
Strategic shift a couple years ago: built a SaaS solution for their consumer air quality products
IT is “a game of prioritization”
Most proud of culture of all hands on deck to provide help/support.
Wade foresees AI and automation really continuing to grow in importance in the next 5 years

Money QuotesWade

We don’t meet every need of the business, there’s no question there.

[Budget] is a huge huge factor!…If we have a budget for it, and we have time, we can do it.

[IT customers] don’t appreciate the fact that we need to prioritize their ask.

I’m always looking for the groups that will come alongside us and augment.

Paul

When you have an engaged team…that goes light-years. It’s worlds apart.

People have acknowledged that machine learning is a thing…nobody is doing it to even a quarter of what they could be…not enough people are convinced to open the door and see there’s a crystal ball there.

Paul and James extract their own theme from presenting and viewing sessions at SAPinsider 2022 in Las Vegas last week. Their chosen theme? Clean core.

Paul and James bang their heads against the idea of "digital transformation" and what it means - BS, reality, everything else.

James and I talked to Michael Pytel, co-founder and CTO of Fulfilld, a cloud SaaS warehouse management startup. As a fellow SAP nerd, we have shared background for commiseration. Michael has done some amazing things with the technology powering Fulfilld, and he and the rest of his team have given a lot of thought to matching that technology up to business needs for several warehouse worker personas. It was a blast geeking out.

Highlights* Techie with CNC machining in his blood — grandfathers, uncle, father * Co-founded NIMBL * Geeks out about digital twins — even got the chance to do a digital twin of 49ers stadium

The new face of bread

Mastered breadmaking during COVID
One way to look at goals: “how do we become the Uber and Waze of the warehouse?”
Why SaaS? IT departments are hampered by operations and maintenance. It’s HARD to get that innovation done with those burdens.
It’s freeing to come out of the limitations of the ERP systems to really build what Fulfilld wanted
It’s not vapor, customers are signed.
The cost to develop in new, open technologies is much lower than the traditional ERP realm.
Autoscaling infrastructure allows them to spend much less on infra and much more on engineering
It all boils down to: cost of license, cost of maintenance. Everything else is details.
Michael sees augmented reality (AR) as a natural next step for the future of the warehouse.

Money QuotesMichael

We walk into the warehouse, we see a bunch of mobile devices on the charger…no one using them.

Building open, building flexible. That’s the key.

If enough employees are trained on Fulfilld, could we create an on-demand workforce for warehouses?

Paul

[Choosing your own stack] It’s a breath of fresh air!

James and Paul discuss some of the worst and best qualities of the techical writing they consume, and where technical writing fits in the universe today. We left with more questions than answers!

James and I talked to Matt Ericson, founder of Trekka Logistics. Matt holds court with great wisdom and energy for his industry and business. He talks about growth, complexity, transparency, and evolving systems to keep things smooth. This is absolutely one of those episodes where — if we didn’t try to keep things down to a sane length — we could have talked for hours. I had a blast, so please give it a listen!

Matt gave me a bit to chew on here. He responded to one of my questions in a different way than other guests have — what excites him about the future? WE’RE LIVING IT.

I tend to think about “the future” in sci-fi terms. But I’m realizing that can put me into a perpetual state of “the really cool things are going to happen in the next 10 years” future fever-dreaming. I want to pursue more strongly the mentality that it’s my job to create the future.

Highlights* help people transition from a small platform to one that scales with them * it’s not so automated that common sense is removed * logistics is an “orchestra” to Matt * About Trekka:
– Their strategy is to let the business evolve, install systems that can scale roughly to $200M 3PL
– 2021: 100% quarter-over-quarter growth
– No sales team. Growth is through referrals * COVID has absolutely impacted — a generational shift, sped up the e-commerce industry by 10–15 years * What don’t people understand about logistics? The complexity behind the orchestra. * What has you excited about the future? WE’RE LIVING IT! COVID is the great accelerator. More buildings, more geography for Trekka — but the industry is in such wild speed of change that the future is happening NOW.

Money QuotesMatt

“We’re built on transparency and process”

“When we expand to a new building, we don’t have to rebuild anything [software-wise]”

James

“Projects that wouldn’t have seen the light of day before, they’re coming to the forefront” [COVID as accelerator of e-comm and tech]

Paul

“There’s a kinship between software engineering and physical logistics”

Paul and James tackle thoughts on RISE with SAP and the SI-created complementary services that IBM, Accenture, Infosys, and others have created. It all kinda wraps up under the banner of "digital transformation as a service" - but this isn't always clear.

James and I interviewed each other to tee up our third season. Our theory: IT can’t keep up with the business. Our question: why? Lots of things floating around. Ideas. Half-formed questions. Ponderings from earlier in our respective careers.

What will we discover? Who will we talk with along the way? FIND OUT MORE this season on Switched On!

The guests are: us! We interviewed ourselves! We found us very insightful.

Highlights IT has capabilities on an unprecedented scale these days. Where does it go wrong in meeting up with the business? * Fusion/multi-disciplinary teams that focus on the business with shades of tech and biz skills are the ideal mix. We think.* * Is centralized IT itself part of the problem? * So much tooling in any job these days requires general computing skills, that the business is gaining tech skill faster than IT is gaining business skill * Several super-interesting guests and stories this season: * A startup (hardware AND software) in warehouse SaaS * A VP of IT at a mid-size * Logistics wizard * …and more!

Money QuotesJames

It’s kind of the elephant in the room at so many customers, and Bowdark too.

The hard work is figuring out what the business needs.

Paul

The business appears to have its needs move faster than IT can move to sweep the list clean.

Is it the right time for there to be Accounting IT and HR IT, only beholden to themselves for choices in processes and tools?

The cloud is the tech piece that makes it so IT departments can be less techie.

James and Paul have a quick discussion about the low-code space with respect to some new stuff out there in the universe from Microsoft, as spurred on by https://venturebeat.com/2022/05/26/how-microsoft-plans-to-improve-the-low-code-landscape/

Podcast Episode! Sapphire Orlando Reactions From BowdorksMoney QuotesTim Champagne

Is this just another fragmentation of apps out there? [re: iOS app announcements]

Kyle Bitson

If you look at what’s happening in the world…supply chain issues…they’re more relevant than they have been in a long time.

It’s striking a balance between the technical upgrade and unlocking the new features and showing business value to your end users. [re: finding out about SOAR]

James Wood

It’s amazing to me in 2022, we’re still having conversations about on-boarding suppliers and figure out how to trade ASNs. It feels very antiquated.

The elephant in the room: it’s incredibly complicated. The number of new technologies in play for an S/4HANA implementation. This was never going to be smooth.

Paul Modderman

For good or for ill — I don’t know — the act of doing things sustainably is entirely in the hands of customers and clients taking the actions. [re: SAP forays into sustainability]

I was hooked — that was telling me what actually happens with SAP solutions! I could literally imagine buying the pizza in the store with the app. [re: Casey’s pizza story]

Podcast Episode! Season Finale! SOMEONE DIESJames and I get together to expertly wrap all the amazing guests, topics, and information we digested over the course of season two. Stay tuned! Someone dies!

This season we had the extreme privilege to talk to these awesome folks. Go back and give these episodes a listen.

Em D’Arcy regaled us with tales of governance
Shane Young democratized our thoughts on low-code utility
Matthias Steiner straightened us out on platforms and app delivery
Holger Bruchelt brought home high-powered SAP and Microsoft unity

If you take anything home from this whole thing, it’s that there’s a lot more to unpack in this universe. We’ve got answers for governance, delivery, integration — but those things are just the beginning!

Teams have to evolve. Technologists have to evolve. We’re going to plug away at a new question in our upcoming season. Stay tuned to find out more!

James and I talked to Holger Bruchelt, host of the awesome SAP on Azure podcast (also watch on YouTube) and all around swell guy. Holger put us on the right path with thoughts about platforms and infrastructure, integration and Power Platform, and being a futuristic nerd with GitHub Copilot (a perennial favorite topic of ours). He’s just as fun to talk to when the recorders have stopped, so we hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did.

Highlights Closing out the “Multi-Vendor Mess” series * Former SAP employee now in program management for architecture and integration * Started understanding the mashup space all the way back with the MS/SAP partnered product Duet * SAP IT runs SAP on Azure * Recurring theme across SAP everything*: setting up single sign-on is always a challenge * Consistent UX is a best-of-breed challenge * Teams integration is top-of-mind for lots of customers in the integration space * Holger emphasizes that fusion teams are a thing that people should do more of. We agree. * Holger shares my enormous enthusiasm for the new AI tools for making programming better, e.g. GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Power Platform also taking a bite of this

Money QuotesHolger

I honestly think the Power Platform is an amazing extension to what you can do with SAP.

You can empower users in the company to create their own applications in the Power Platform.

James

We all had this vision of what could be, but there were technical obstacles. I don’t think any of us predicted how fast the cloud would unlock the bottlenecks.

Paul

The degree to which SAP data is the core to processes is astounding to me.

Simplifying how you get and interact with SAP data is a trillion-dollar idea by itself.

James and I talked to Matthias Steiner for the fourth episode in our second season. He took to the SAP Community blogs to defend low-code/no-code (and later reiterated at diginomica), and we took notice. We’d been fans previously because of his influence on the various cloud platform gyrations at SAP, and of course because he’s a willing Twitter prognosticator. We dove in on low/no-code and other platform things, for a great time.

Highlights* 17 years at SAP — 10ish as software architect for SAP customer development, rest in the SAP Cloud Platform/BTP space * Now Chief Product Officer at Neptune Software, doing all kinds of low-code shenanigans

The triathlete in his business attire

prefers “rapid app development” to “low/no code” as a descriptor of the modern tool evolution
Nobody says “Yes!” to the question “Is your IT department delivering all the apps your business needs to go forward?”
Says — and we agree — SAP is best at the boring-but-hard stuff.
NOT a blockchain guy. :)
Believes it’s all about culture. We agree.

Money QuotesMatthias

“Platform” means you need to see MANY people benefit from it. Where are the partner stories?

IT needs to change from being the one that delivers to the one that empowers.

James

Amazing developers can go in and build apps, but if you look at it from a budget perspective…[after a project cycle] what do we have? Fairly pretty CRUD applications. Look at all we’ve left on the table.

Paul

As a business user, you should not want code, you should want applications.

Podcast Episode! S2E3: Shane YoungJames and I talked to Shane Young for the third episode in our second season: “Power Platform Democratization”. Shane is the founder of PowerApps911, helping clients with Power Platform training and custom app builds in the Microsoft universe. He’s a fun guy to talk to, and he’s one of the most informative people you’ll ever follow on Twitter or YouTube.

Highlights* Shane is a “Microsoft nerd” — in love with it since the ‘90s * Prior to PowerApps911, he ran SharePoint911. I’m sensing a formula. * Digression into Ted Lasso * Shane says he’s seeing about a 50/50 blend of IT folks and business folks in the Power Platform world * Power Apps/Power Platform has 530+ connectors (as of the time of recording — more now!)

Shane said “You’ll appreciate this as nerds” to James and I — and yeah. We did. :)
Major customer moment(s) for Shane: getting past simply reproducing a paper form, and really unlocking the tech things that platforms add.
Shane looks forward to continuous democratization of technology.

Money QuotesShane

You’ve got to be able to put firm rules around this thing [Power Apps] before you go.

Paul

People don’t realize how flexible they are, when it comes time to explain their actions to a machine.

The tragedy of IT is that some people [who only incidentally use tech] feel dumb because they can’t figure out the tools.

Podcast Episode! S2 E2: Em D’ArcyJames and I talked to Em D’Arcy for the second episode in our second season: “Meeting Demand Through Governance”. This was a refreshing talk for me — I have issues to work through with the word “governance”, and Em is helping me walk the walk and do the work to get there. It’s great material along the course of our second season theme of “Simplifying the Multi-Vendor Mess”, as part of simplification can be distributing power to those who need it.

Note that since we recorded this episode, Em has updated their personal pronouns to “she/they”. During the recording James and I spoke in terms of a previous preferred name and “she/her” — this blog post will retcon our usage to “Em” and “they”.

Highlights* Sr. Solutions Architect and MVP in the MS Power Platform space * Originally from Ireland, now tooling around Philly * Skydiving accident survivor! (Let’s not explore their PTSD) * I think Em nicely turns around the “governance” idea to a positive spin — not an easy task for my pre-existing notions!

Em just casually crushing it

3 different types of apps on Power Platform:
1) one-person utility kind of thing, just does a thing for ME — a test app or simple calculator
2) department apps, 10–50 people, not mission-critical. Monitored by department, not IT
3) mission-critical, taking/using data from ERP systems, IT involved and governing
Note the COE Starter Kit: “a collection of components and tools that are designed to help you get started with developing a strategy for adopting and supporting Microsoft Power Platform”

Money QuotesEm

The whole point of the Power Platform is to give back time, money, and resources to the company.

Governance is about making a safe space for makers to create.

[Give] people their own dedicated space…and encouragement to go out and run things.

James

What we’re wresting with is: what is the best way to curate data and provide an on-rails experience?

Paul

It’s not the thing, it’s how people feel about the thing. That’s the actual battle.

Podcast Episode! New Season: “Simplifying the Multi-Vendor Mess”We have a thesis: the enterprise tech world continues to move to best-of-breed; and while new solutions abound, organizations continue to feel the pain of improving their overall business processes while simultaneously keeping their disparate systems in harmony. The “multi-vendor mess”. This episode is an introduction and the first of a short season on this thesis. The rest of the season will feature luminary guests and interesting topics related to this mess, and innovative ways — and tools — to solve it.

Highlights* First episode switching more strongly into a seasonal format: “Simplifying the Multi-Vendor Mess” * We have so many opportunities for improvement across information technology as a whole. * Excited to get the guests on who can highlight even more of the pieces at play.

Money QuotesJames

There’s such a backlog of requests, no one can even wrap their arms around it…at best, you keep the lights on.

The reality is: we live in a best-of-breed world now.

We can use technology not just for the sake of using technology.

Paul

Rather than just make the pipes better, we can make the business processes better if we attack that tools angle of the question.

Podcast Episode! Microsoft Ignite with Lori BeckJames and I spoke with our highly-esteemed colleague Lori Beck about the recent Microsoft Ignite virtual conference. Lori leads our Microsoft consulting practice, and has great depth of knowledge and insight into Microsoft Dynamics. We had a great time talking about Logic Apps, Power Apps, Teams, and OpenAI GPT-3 (find below the poem that the AI wrote for us).

Highlights* I love the Ignite book-of-news feature. Super slick. Other companies should absolutely copy this. * Power Apps pay-as-you-go plan, making things palatable for a certain class of customer * Dynamics SCM * Azure Communication Services now more tightly wound with other things, like Teams — and getting SMS short codes * Logic Apps can now run fully disconnected in Azure Arc * OpenAI ALL THE THINGS! New Azure OpenAI Service, Power Automate helper, GitHub Copilot (not part of Ignite but too cool not to mention) * Listen to me nerd out for like 10 minutes straight on GPT-3.

Money QuotesLori

Collaboration and presence awareness and that kind of interactivity, even among developers, is increasing everywhere.

They’re doing everything they can to break down silos in the enterprise.

James

At the end of the day, the customer wins here. In a big way.

The story of ERP up to now has been: I enter the transaction of whatever I’m going to do, and then I turn around and do the real thing [in some other system or platform].

Paul

Red Vines are superior to Twizzlers in every way.

I would estimate that the chances are that almost all of us have read a piece of content GPT-2 or GPT-3 generated, and not known that it was.

OpenAI Enhanced PoetryBelow is the poem I generated from the OpenAI API with GPT-3. Above the dashes is the original poem, and below the dashes is what GPT-3 output.

And what it generated still kinda haunts me.

i shall imagine life, a poem by ee cummings (augmented by GPT-3)

i shall imagine life

is not worth dying, if

(and when) roses complain

their beauties are in vain

but though mankind persuades

itself that every weed's

a rose, roses (you feel

certain) will only smile

to better days

and there are, you are sure,

no better days to dream

about

and there are, you are sure,

no better days to bring

about

and there are, you are sure,

no better days to lie

about

Podcast Episode! Builders and the Developer Spectrum with Riley RaineyJames and I spoke with the super-interesting Riley Rainey. Before you get to any of the regular industry-specific goodness we talk about, check out his GitHub repositories focused around replicating the Apollo Guidance Computer. I was tempted not to talk about anything in the SAP or development world and just blast on about nerdy space things. But we did eventually move on to things in the here-and-now, and it was great fun.

Riley and Episode Highlights* At SAP for 8 years, past 3 in developer relations * Studied computer science in school, jumped into financial modeling * “Rambled around” in software from case management tools, to mobility, cloud, platforms, to developer relations — and others * Built an open-source multiplayer flight simulator!

We coaxed Riley into this photo by pretending to be rocket scientists

Kill a week — go find the NASA tech report server .
From Riley’s perspective, pro-code does have an important distinction from citizen developers using low-code.
The important thing is the guard rails set up in the citizen developer universe.
All heads nodding in agreement: SAP CoE’s still largely isolated from other tech teams
The promise is there for low-code tools to eat away at IT backlogs.

Money QuotesRiley

Find a way to get out and do something different! You get exposed to different classes of problems.

A builder is anybody who is involved in the construction of software for other people.

When you graduate to doing things for more than just yourself…the considerations become very different.

Now we’re all citizen developers. Are we all citizen security people? Are we all citizen designers?

James

Figure out ways to bring the right teams together so everyone can play to their respective strengths. The community aspect is so important. [re: low-code and pro-code skillsets mingling together]

Paul

There are so many ways to produce so many software artifacts for so many different audiences.

The tools are ahead of the governance they require.

James and I spoke with the amazing Greg Robinette. Greg works at Newport News Shipbuilding as a systems architect. He’s got great perspective on watching ships being built and then marrying that knowledge to the SAP systems he’s architecting. We had a blast talking about organizational culture, decision-making, and value lifespans…all through the lens of the cloud.

Highlights* Got into tech at University of Dayton at University of Dayton in 1980 — and then was asked to leave that same year. So went on to being a fleet electrician in the Navy. * Programmed handheld PLCs for factories in late 80’s and early 90’s, and discovered a gift for troubleshooting and system analysis. * Found his way to SAP from his brother in mid 90’s.

Greg always looks this good, even when he’s breaking down systems

Greg is phenomenal at helping people understand what pool they’re swimming in.
Smart perspective on new technology and processes making it so that whoever is the most innovative with their data — whether it’s legacy or new businesses and industries — win in the cloud era.
You need to understand your industry to know what you’re up to, but the deepest knowledge is to understand what your industry really is. Great newspaper metaphor…listen around 18:00 in.
Cloud innovation can’t happen if technologists enamored of the tech don’t understand anything that businesses do. You can’t get anywhere just wanting to write code.
If you just translate your tech policies from on-premises to cloud without connecting the reason for those policies to exist, you’re not going to have the success you need.
Mention of Amazon Leadership Principles.
“Definition of success”: be real. It’s almost never a date: it’s the value you are (trying to) deliver.

Money QuotesGreg

When you connect people in back offices with actual products, your ability to participate in decision making is enhanced.

Decision-making culture has to adapt to the resources it lives in.

It’s as big a change for shipbuilding industry to go from oil/steam driven ships to nuclear-powered ships as it is to go from paper-based processes to digital.

The cost of delay and waiting is one of the most understated technology costs out there.

James

[re: cloud] The minute I have an idea, I have this medium I can put it into to get it in action very quickly.

James and I really dove deep into the recesses of Paul Aschmann’s brain for this one. Paul is a mobility development expert at SAP, originally from South Africa and now living in North Carolina. In the past, Paul started Lithium Labs, which built Metric². Became part of the SAP Startup Focus program (now @SAP_iO), then joined the enterprise mobility team at SAP. His resume is RIDICULOUS.

Highlights* Got into SAP with one of the SAP University Alliances. (I’ve seen those work well, too.) * Paul’s take on the native vs web debate: it’s tricky. Go back to: what is your skillset? If you’ve got a bunch of web — take on web apps and responsively mobilize them. If you’ve got a skilled native app developer — take it on! SAP internally has taken the native route. * There are still, of course, features that web apps just can’t deliver that native can. Anything cutting-edge won’t be web-flavored mobile first. * Paul encourages native when you have a blank slate choice.

The other side of Paul’s face is the evil side, a la Two-Face.

Paul is a huge proponent of user champions. How do you find them? Trick question! They find you. Listen to them! (They’re Paul’s favorite users.)
People who aren’t happy with your solutions should become your best friends.
Companies see mobility as a cost center, not as a place for innovation. We should shift gears!
Push notifications haven’t yet gotten the love they deserve. They could really be key in driving adoption, if the story is told right.
Paul is excited about things that happen at events like WWDC. The companies that announce their newest things really drive technologist excitement.

Money QuotesPaul Aschmann

I’m a firm believer that native app experiences are superior. I’ll probably get chewed on for saying that out loud.

You need to just step back and listen, and encourage honest feedback.

The challenge is: mobility is still a bit immature in the enterprise.

James Wood

A lot of times the reason that we’re still, in 2021, with not a lot of mobile apps — we still don’t have a silver bullet. Absent that, we do nothing. [On why mobile still lags in the enterprise.]

Mobile is not a one-size-fits all.

Paul Modderman

Somewhere in the universe of the mobile equation, the person writing the check hasn’t had the mobile value communicated. You need to have the proof that it has value.

The most effective demo I’ve ever done: create a PO in SAP, click “Save”, and my Apple Watch dings with a notification. It blew people’s minds that that was a thing.

Highlights* SAP for 20 years, started out in Basis administration * Worked at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, on how to deploy SAP in AWS (so cool) * Became a devops lover — but ecosystem wasn’t ready. Jumped into big data instead at Mindtree, then worked with Hadoop, Vora * Operations are 3 buckets: build, run, change * System administrators have been somewhat underserved by UI/UX revolutions in SAP. There are hundreds of “Manage [X] Orders” Fiori apps, but no Basis apps. * Disk space and start/stop are low-hanging fruit in the administrative automation space

If you follow Chris on Twitter, you’ll quickly find about a hundred pics of him grinning at the camera for a selfie.

The most mistakes happen in ops in: teams don’t have a good handle on what they’re supposed to actually do. Their purview. (If it’s not functional or code, it’s Basis).
Currently playing with Kubernetes as development system units of build
What should the future look like? “There isn’t one ring to rule them all.” There should be an API/set of web services that programmatically control SAP systems at the system level. From there, you can create and extend whatever you choose — then RunDeck can be used to configure a system. Prometheus can pull directly from the system.

Money QuotesChris

I’m having a great time, basically playing with lots of things — anything that takes my interest as long as it has an automation focus to it.

Not everything should be automated, but you have to go through that discovery process!

It’s about quality and consistency, not about speed.

The bit that’s getting really interesting is: how do we now layer in BTP?

Paul

You’re building a thing that builds things, you’re making a factory factory!

Highlights* Hau’s been doing it 20 years! * Fell into analytics accidentally — got into the working world via an on-campus interview with PwC. Wound up getting business consulting training, without really expecting it. First project was in US Navy, doing purchase order stuff with pre-printed forms. * Being onsite is a consulting holdover that’s really shifted in COVID times * Hau is seeing more analysts with a technical background, seeing more developers with business acumen * Analytics project team size is starting to get smaller, each person can do more * With SAP analytics cloud, SAP’s approach is that the customer retains ownership and control of the data * Analytics Cloud is the easy part: you still have to tackle your data * Infrastructure connection pain points remain part of the challenge of any project. Overcome that hurdle quickly and you’ll be rolling

Money QuotesHau

Today, I am solving the same problems from 20 years ago — but I get to solve faster, and with cooler tools.

The struggle has always been: “How do i know what i have?”

You don’t even need to have my coding/engineering background!

[on SAP Analytics Cloud performance] It’s just as fast — or just as slow [as your source system].

How do I get this business person to see this insight really quickly?

Paul

You can’t have a bad source system and have an analytics tool make up for that.

It’s still boring, but it’s boring in the cloud! So it’s better!

James

We’re trending in a direction where it’s becoming more democratized. The tooling is making it more accessible.

We’ve seen a shift: let’s not even do traditional BI because of all the headaches.

James and I spoke with Carmen Bourlon, a virtuoso developer that just so happens to work with us at Bowdark. Carmen created margiemap.com, which visually illustrates the relationship between income levels and library access. She also wrote Let’s Take This Offline, a book introducing developers to the concepts of service workers and progressive web apps. Buy it!

Highlights Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are less of a technology and more of an idea. A web app should be fast, work offline, and be native-like…and now browsers include technologies that enable that. Foremost among these technologies are the service worker and, to a lesser extent, the manifest file which gives the web app a native-like experience on devices. * Android is especially* good in this play. iOS doesn’t have all the same features as Android at this moment, but the important ones are there. You can have a home screen icon, and have service workers (since 2018-ish). * This has great applicability to utilities companies. They are out in random spots all the time — so often without network, even without a cellular data connection. How do I get the information back to HQ? Traditional web app would demand your full connectivity before doing ANYTHING. * The beauty of this middleware is that there’s no cost. It’s just a JavaScript file. * There are tons of cases out there where an existing app can be converted without a full rewrite. * Carmen would love to see the world move closer to peer-to-peer mesh networks for connectivity purposes.

Money QuotesCarmen

PWA is less of a technology and more of an idea.

It should be mobile-friendly, and it should look as much like a native app as possible.

When you think about it, as a user you just want to press the button and move on with your day.

If you can write Fiori, you can write this.

Paul

Your web page or Fiori app doesn’t even have to know it’s offline.

James Wood

Super-nerd in SAP and Microsoft technologies for 20+ years!
Computer science undergrad, Master’s degree in software engineering
Started Bowdark in 2006
Twitter
LinkedIn

Paul Modderman

SAP, cloud, ML, and other various nerdings!
Monkeyed around in college and took 6 years to graduate
Started career in PC fix-it work, moved into application development after a few years
Twitter
LinkedIn

James and I are both authors of multiple books, check out the company media page to find out more.

What The Heck Do We Want To Do?

Level up ourselves and our listeners with our natural curiosity and amazing guests
Be true to our authentic nerd selves, but don’t just publish zeroes and ones
Get our creative energy out into the universe, and connect with fascinating people

Paul says:

I want to do the things that help our guests, and us, and our listeners learn at a different level.

James says:

I want this to be an environment where we can be naturally curious, and have meaningful conversations.