DXCTechTalk

Digital Directions
Digital transformation is entering a new phase. Let's discuss how the next phase of digital transformation is playing out across major IT domains, including cloud, security, analytics, applications, workplace and delivery.

Which of these will be the most critical in the next year for an enterprise on the digital transformation journey?

   6 years ago
#DXCTechTalkFourth Wave of HealthcareHow can healthcare organizations create real-world evidence and deliver it in a contextual way back to physicians? How will contextual data shift the provider/payer paradigm?
   5 years ago
#DXCTechTalkSecurity in the Digital WorldOrganizations on a digital transformation journey must make a parallel trip, one that integrates security and risk management into DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CD) processes. Join our security experts to discuss security in the digital world.
Lisa Braun
The idea of bias in AI is really interesting (and scary). @GlenPRobinson can you talk more about that. How can you spot negative/harmful bias in AI and address it? @JerryAOverton ?
Glen Robinson
What a great question. We are seeing the emergence of AI ethical audits which is a sorely needed approach to ensuring the potential bias doesn't create risk.
Glen Robinson
Just recently Amazon found that their cv screening bot was filtering out women, because it had the bias in recruiting men, as that was the majority of the gender recruited recently. That was a poor outcome.
Lisa Braun
@GlenPRobinson So this has to do with ML and training and retraining the AI. But I have a feeling that, just like the news, there will always be some amount of bias even though the aim is to be neutral/balanced.
Nathalie Vancluysen
@GlenPRobinson so that's the reason why we have so few women in IT! :-)
Dan Hushon
I think that the best that you can do is continue to audit to find the gaps and then reinforce. Machines Learn from the data given so we may need to train with some change intentional data?
Sukhi Gill
This is where Sociology meets Technology. There is a need to understand the Diversity Bias as you train.
Graham Chastney
I think that there's also a need to recognise the amount of bias already built into organisations and the decisions that they take. We tend to forgive ourselves as humans and judge the machines more harshly.
Graham Chastney
@sukhigill Agreed, I think that there are huge opportunities for those with sociology and psychology skills in the future platform world.
Lisa Braun
@GrahamChastney Interesting point...judging the machines more harshly. Indeed we call come with biases.
Frederic Auberson
I was reading "Ethical by Design - A Manifesto", which raises that very point: Not only deploying biased AI, but also letting it drift because we're not continuously monitoring its performance is an ethical issue (https://goo.gl/V4KiQR)

(edited)

https://goo.gl/V4KiQR
http://uir.ulster.ac.uk/38683/1/p51-mulvenna.pdf
Bill Murray
Natalie, I can think of five horrible reasons there is not enough gender equality in IT, and my colleague Caitlin Macdonald and I will be putting out a piece on diversity it Tech very, very soon.
Lisa Braun
Thanks for that link, @Frederic. Looks interesting.
Chris Swan
I was talking about this recently at a customer event in Vienna. Some of the problem comes from our (natural) language, and the fact that it carries many biases (e.g. patriarchy)
Nathalie Vancluysen
@BillMurray500 looking forward to that! we can think about plenty of reasons... but how do we solve it?
Bill Murray
Frederic, can I commend a thoughtful piece by my colleague Caitlin McDonald ...The Winter of AI discontent!
https://leadingedgeforum.com/publication/emergent-...
https://leadingedgeforum.com/publication/emergent-trends-in-algorithmic-ethics/
The Winter of AI Discontent: Emergent Trends in Algorithmic Ethics
The Winter of AI Discontent: Emergent Trends in Algorithmic Ethics
We’re not fighting a battle on tech ethics: we’re fighting a battle on ethics, period. 
Dan Hushon
@GrahamChastney totally agree on organizations innate bias... reasons the next challenge which is understanding the need for dimensions in which you evaluate diversity
Bill Murray
Interestingly Natalie the Norwegians just experimented with quotas and it went well. It's not just an issue of fixing the pipeline; the leaders are fixing progression, retention, pay equality and representation all at once.
Dan Hushon
How do we build trust with participating employees as this level of #digitalchange occurs in an enterprise?
Chris Swan
communicate openly about what's going to happen. Don't ruin expectations by changing directions without any explanation.
Dan Hushon
@cpswan good point, direction + reasoning to enable employees to join in/drive the change
Arin Dey
Better to inquire what is most important to your employees for building trust, ask how they prefer to be recognized, find out how they like to receive feedback and prefer to communicate.
Howard Hinman
create inclusive experiences to make them feel like part of the journey
H Higgins
@cpswan How do you change culture across the enterprise... beyond the tech community?
Dan Hushon
is this about using community collaboration tools to enable this shift - how do we create inclusion at scale?
Chris Swan
@HHigginsDXC my favourite definition of culture is 'the way we do things around here' so culture change for the whole org involves everybody being brought along and changing their day to day approach
Glen Robinson
@cpswan @HHigginsDXC People need to change behaviours, which means they need to form new habits. Enforcing an old culture, is basically people doing things the way they've always been done. You need to measure people differently, to drive new behaviours.
Lisa Braun
Seems that culture change is both top-down & bottom-up. Leaders must demonstrate the desired change(s) & at the grass roots level, employees must do the same & learn from each other. Probably spreads faster that way. But as Dan once said, culture change is emergent.
Chris Swan
there are ways to bust past Dunbar's number (e.g. Workplace), but we also can do more to grow communities that stay tight and still share learning
Chris Swan
@GlenPRobinson but not measure too soon, because people in pathological and bureaucratic cultures will game the system and ruin the culture change
Dan Hushon
@cpswan agree, but I do believe that #DevOps and #SRE + 2PBTeams become interesting intersections for the culture change ground game?
Glen Robinson
@cpswan Indeed, which is why top down support is essential for any wholesale org change.
Glen Robinson
I also agree. At the same time, you need to be mindful of cliques that form, and you need a process to ensure great org wide collaboration. You don't want the 'jocks vs the nerds' type situation.
Chris Swan
indeed - there's an intersection between what the team does, and how the team's organised. I've found myself referring to https://web.devopstopologies.com/ a few times today already
https://web.devopstopologies.com/
DevOps Team Topologies
DevOps Team Topologies
The primary goal of any DevOps effort within an organisation is to improve the delivery of value for customers and the business, not in itself to reduce costs, increase automation, or drive everything from configuration management; this means that di...
Dan Hushon
@GlenPRobinson this is where double deep organizations w/ deep business & engineering skill, operating skills, and innovation skills can each be valued
H Higgins
.@GlenPRobinson Great point. Even as adults, we have to remember the "sand box" effects especially in today's connected world that can create "disconnections" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-technology-can-le...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-technology-can-lead-to-loneliness-in-the-workplace/
How technology can lead to loneliness in the workplace
How technology can lead to loneliness in the workplace
As face-to-face contact diminishes -- especially for remote workers -- disengagement is on the rise
Carl Kinson
@cpswan the awareness there is more than one model is important, then picking a model which suits your business is key, one size may not fit all.
Sukhi Gill
Platform Organisations have a detailed understanding of the value they bring to the Ecosystem they enable. Traditional Enterprises are still locked into the boundaries of the Value Chain they support. What would you suggest that Enterprises do to shift their mindset?
Max Hemingway
Changing culture as well as mindset is important.
Carl Kinson
not sure they are locked technically, i think the inertia is the $ & human investment in the current landscape.
Dan Hushon
@Max_Hemingway how do we measure the culture change?
Glen Robinson
mindset/culture... on a day to day basis they are basically peoples behaviours which are driven through habits. So you need to find a way to change peoples habits, which will change their behaviours, which will develop a new mindset, which should align support culture.
Ged Cunliffe
re-imagine the business. Wardley Mapping can help as an aid to this.
Stephen Nicholls
@danhushon I think you measure cultural change by the behaviors exhibited.
Max Hemingway
@DanHushon Culture is a soft concept so measuring on actions and behaviours is a start but its different for each company
Dan Hushon
@nichosteve1971 I struggle with the performance based side (what does the top 10% look like) vs. the shift of the bell curve towards good?
Max Hemingway
My thoughts on Having the Right Digital Mindset - https://maxhemingway.com/2017/12/04/having-the-rig...
https://maxhemingway.com/2017/12/04/having-the-right-digital-mindset/
Having the Right Digital Mindset
Having the Right Digital Mindset
Digital is used as a title to cover the current business and computing era. Being Digital is about having the right mindset. There is no magic course or exam that you can take that will pronounce y…
Stephen Nicholls
@DanHushon IMHO there are a set of leaders at the front of any movement, a set of followers and set a resisters (drag anchors). The real problem is with drag anchors.
Sukhi Gill
By getting Enterprises to understand the full value chain all the way to the actual user/consumer and how an Enterprise could be disintermediated can be a useful scare tactic to drive fight or flight!
Dan Hushon
Do companies need hard principles like "API on everything", "All logging on", "Log to the commons", "all information is sharable", "Put your name on everything"? to get trust & attribution
Carl Kinson
those high-level dare i say Standards! are important, we don't specify the specific, but what would the world look like if everything developed had to talk through an API. The value of analysing Logs provides an insight in the service operation.
Ged Cunliffe
I think so at least why they get started.
Arin Dey
I don't think so if we consider the agile methodologies enabling digital transformation. All these principles or partial of them will stand as obstacles in the journey.
Carl Kinson
With a multiple services based ecosystem, the combining of log data provides a unique lenses of the operation of the system which Ops and Security can act on.
Chris Swan
perhaps, but they should watch @bcantrill's 'Principles of Technology Leadership' first to avoid some pitfalls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc
https://www.youtube.com/embed/9QMGAtxUlAc
Principles of Technology Leadership | Bryan Cantrill | Monktoberfest 2017
Principles of Technology Leadership | Bryan Cantrill | Monktoberfest 2017
The kind of talk that only Bryan Cantrill of Joyent can give, one which (enthusiastically) explores the importance of leadership principles ranging from the ...
Graham Chastney
Do you think that some of the "hard principles" will work there way through as regulations in the future, and hence table-stakes?
Dan Hushon
sure but the harder part is business + technology leadership. It's hard for companies to lead if not double deep!
Dan Hushon
@GrahamChastney funny that I was watching an #AI platform - showing the value of logging for predictability. To this extent, I can only imagine regulations emerge to provide transparency