Opening & Product Keynote | GLOW 2024

Good morning, everyone. I'm Andrew Lau, co-founder and CEO of Jellyfish. I hope you're all caffeinated and ready for a journey through time. Let's take a moment to appreciate where it all began. Software is not that old of an art. We all came from humble origins, from ones and zeros to the digital landscapes we navigate today. My career started back in the day doing systems-level programming. I was right there with you. I was trained on C and probably was building on this. Now I think we're building on this. We're in the cloud now, but guess what? We'll soon be building here. The last 20 years have been quite the journey, and the only constant through all of this has been change. With all the rapid advancements, adaptation isn't just a choice, it's a survival strategy. But before we get into the why and how, let's look at what we're experiencing today and beyond. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, brace yourselves folks. Change isn't just coming, it's already here. Retail, finance, hospitality, automotive, healthcare, software ate it all. They are all operating as some form of software brain today. And innovation's bringing a new way to operate, hire, manage, make decisions, build, and ultimately deliver. In recent years, we've seen massive changes as a result of the move from bare metal to on-prem to cloud, the transition to mobile-first development, the introduction of IoT and fully connected devices, the ability to write and deploy software regardless of hardware. We've seen the introduction of machine learning and AI tooling, and so much more. But what does that all mean? Let's orient ourselves. We've all been on this cloud journey. Today, close to 95% of us are already using it. And if you aren't, what are you doing? Come on, 5%, the rest of us are already spending. Software spend today is at $1 trillion in the US alone. That's 18% of US GDP. And that's not the only thing that's increasing. The number of software developers continue to increase from 23 million in 2018 to almost 30 today. We added almost 4 million developers in the last 4 years alone. And these are only the folks that identify as software developers. We all know that everyone's actually touching code today, and all 30 million plus of us are evolving as well. We're all embracing the hybrid environment, which has almost doubled in the past few years, from 42% in 2021 to 81% today. With all these advancements come new questions and new ways to think. How do we build winning teams in this environment? How are they feeling? Do we have the right folks? Are we looking in the right places? And how do we manage this tech? Are we taking full advantage of it? How do we capture this opportunity? Are we working on the right stuff? What should we be measuring to actually know this? How do we know if we're succeeding? And the innovations of today are only the beginning. There's so much more in the not-so-distant future changing our teams, our jobs, our lives. Immersive experiences will soon replace screens. Software will actually get closer to the way we think, enabling further human and software symbiosis. How about when software meets biology? That seemed like a stretch not so long ago, but they no longer feel that far apart. And then, how do we keep it all in check? I know all of that sounds like a distant future, but it's right around the corner. What about even further out from there? Forget those expensive goggles and AI coding, cuz we're venturing into the unknown. Brain-computer interfaces, fully immersive alternate realities, quantum internet, software that thinks like humans, mind uploading, post-scarcity economies, the singularity. That rate of change is truly mind-boggling. I could say we should pause here and take a breath. But, you know, there's no time to waste. As a reminder, our industry has only had 60 years. That's nothing. Let's consider things like cars, pyramids, skyscrapers. They've had hundreds, even thousands of years to figure this out. We're now finally building cars that drive themselves. We're building skyscrapers that are made of glass and steel. And yet, we don't have the templates on how to lead teams of thousands of engineers. We're figuring that out, how to do that on the fly. Because the truth is, there isn't a playbook for this. Because the things that we all do are new. And this should keep us up at night, right? Because the future isn't just knocking at our door, it's about to kick it down. And that's why the time is now to see how this all fits together in our world and how it fits together into our businesses, how this impacts the teams we love. The time is now to understand what's going on, to point our teams in the right direction. The time is now to build the right playbook together because the frameworks of yesterday are not enough. I remember a few years ago, we're all talking about things like DORA. We're focused on, are we moving the machine fast enough? Is that service staying up? Yeah, moving fast and making sure our services are up is totally important, but unfortunately, it's necessary but not sufficient. And then, once we got moving a little bit faster, we asked ourselves, is the path impeded? Do our teams feel stuck? We were introduced to things like Space, which brought sentiment as a proxy for productivity. And yes, it's great too, but again, necessary, not sufficient. All of this is important, but we can only build the right playbook if we understand what we're playing for. And yes, this includes building an efficient machine. And yes, we need to make sure the teams feel enabled. But ultimately, we're all playing for the same thing at the end of the day, business impact. And business impact is only realized when we have alignment with business outcomes. Let's pause there for a second and make this clear. I'm talking to you right now. Your business partners don't want more story points this, burn down that. They want innovation that drives top-line growth. They want a product that differentiates from the competition. You want a product that differentiates from the competition. Because when you build the right product, the business value wins. Your team wins, and a winning team is a more productive and effective team. And more productive and effective teams deliver better products, which increase customer satisfaction, increase their loyalty, and helps them win. And not only that, Winning teams build trust. Increase customer trust. Increase team trust. Ultimately, isn't that what we all want? We want to be trusted to deliver the best products. Trusted to bring creativity to a problem. Trusted to do the right work. So let's go back. How should we be thinking about building winning teams of the future? The nature of the job is changing so fast. So hey, check in with your team because their needs and skills are changing, and so are their roles. What it means to succeed will change. What it means to be good at the role will change. So let's call it a few shifts affecting our teams even now. With the assistants doing the basic coding, we're all becoming full stack with a greater focus on architecture. Not to mention, we're all becoming data scientists too. And with that will come an increase in code quality and ultimately better products. Our roles will start to overlap with other functions. As every engineer becomes an architect, every architect will have to become a product manager, which means closer alignment to customers in the front line. The technical folks and the product folks will need to be more in sync. And hey leaders, you, our teams are already experiencing a skills revolution. Have you done simple things like change your interview process? That take-home coding test doesn't make any sense anymore, does it? You may have to hire for different roles, enable and train your teams on architecture, focus them on business impact, Ask yourself, do we develop and retain the best talent in this new world? How big does this team need to get to deliver that business value? In the end, we'll have to become more connected and able to produce higher quality work faster. Fewer bugs, higher performance, better user experience. And as I've said before, increase business impact. Well, it's why Jellyfish exists. And why we believe we're building the best platform for engineering teams, which is more than just the frameworks of yesterday. Reminder, it's more than just sentiment and activity. Again, all of this is necessary, but it's not sufficient. What's critical is to connect everything we do to driving businesses. It's the only way we can build a playbook for the future. It's the only way we can build winning teams. And there's only one engineering management platform that brings it all together to increase the business alignment and build winning teams. And we all know winning teams deliver better products, better products create winning customers, and winning customers enable successful businesses. Whew. Now, let's all take a breath, but only for a moment because it all begins today. I'm not gonna steal the product team's thunder, so I'll stop here, but I'm ecstatic about where we're about to go. Here's Christian to talk about the future of our platform and what we're building for the teams of today and tomorrow.

Thanks, Andrew. As Andrew illustrated, one thing is clear: change is all around us. You're all familiar with the realities these changes have created. New tools and practices are rapidly evolving. Software strategy is now your business strategy. And as a result, there are more eyeballs than ever. On research and development. We've experienced this new reality too, and at Jellyfish, we want to help you ride the wave of this transformation so you can use data to build stronger teams and engineering organizations. We understand the challenges you're facing. For the last several years, we've talked with thousands of engineering leaders and served hundreds of customers to help them adapt to this changing landscape. In our conversations with these leaders, we hear exasperation over not having a clear answer when asked, "What is actually going on in engineering?" While some believed engineering couldn't be effectively measured, we saw a different future. We built our patented work allocation model not only to answer that long-awaited question, but to provide a revolutionary view of where engineering teams are investing their time. One engineering leader told me that Jellyfish has been career-changing, and it's nice to use data to make decisions instead of feelings. If you talk to any engineering manager, you'll know the agony they feel in answering the question, so when will this project be done? Or how do I know if my team is doing a good job, and how can I help them? At Jellyfish, we replace that guessing game. First, with Scenario Planner, a trusted guide for engineering teams to course correct when delivery is off track with data-based forecasts. And second, with Team Benchmarks and Lifecycle Explorer, which provide clarity on your team's performance and pinpoint exactly where you can offer support. Now when there's an issue, gone are the days of running around trying to figure out where the bottleneck is. Of course, with any organizational change comes some degree of skepticism, and we're no stranger to the fact that this shift to a data-driven engineering management could create waves for engineers. But in fact, we've heard the opposite. We've heard about remarkable improvements in connectivity, such as better conversations between engineers, managers, and teams. We've heard about a shared language that engineers use to advocate for what they need, and we hear they are more effective at collaborating on what's actually possible to deliver. This shift has strengthened the connection between engineers, their teams, and leadership. And we know the challenge of building software Doesn't stop in R&D. Take finance, for example. Too many organizations were spending time chasing down timesheets, asking for estimates, and going back and forth with engineering on capitalization reporting. So we introduced DevFinOps to automate the process, increasing audit pass rates by 94% and saving companies time and money so they can focus on innovation instead. Jellyfish is the engineering management platform that unites all of engineering and supporting functions into a single command center, creating a new standard for how best-in-class development teams operate. Although we've been hard at work partnering with engineering teams to solve their most pressing problems for over 7 years, We're nowhere close to done. As Andrew illustrated, we know future changes will introduce new challenges, and Jellyfish is here to guide you through them. Today, we're excited to discuss 3 of those new challenges in particular, and Jellyfish's approach to solving them. First, measuring and managing developer experience. Second, achieving predictable delivery, and finally, we'll help you assess the impact of GenAI coding tools. With that, please let me introduce Sam to walk us through the future of developer experience.

Thanks, Krishna. From all our conversations with engineers and their managers, we can't help but sympathize. Today's dev teams have it rough. They're given new AI tools and told to move faster while facing unclear requirements, opaque release pipelines, poor testing environments, and everything in between. In the midst of our new remote work reality, increasing economic pressures to do more with less, and the continuing rise of burnout, it's more important than ever to understand developers' lived experience. Those who invest in their team's experience are seeing higher engagement, better retention, and more productivity. In fact, research conducted by Google shows that organizations that invest in a healthy development culture have a 30% higher rate of organizational performance. So while we know that understanding and investing in your developer experience is non-negotiable if you want to build great products, it's hard to know exactly where to make those investments. Today, most teams try to tackle this themselves by asking their engineers for feedback in one-on-ones or conducting labor-intensive surveys surveys, but these are time-consuming and offer limited insight into what's actually happening. That's why we're excited to introduce Jellyfish DevEx, the latest addition to our engineering management platform. With Jellyfish DevEx, you can quickly set up and distribute surveys and questionnaires that elevate engineers' perspectives. We combine these qualitative insights with quantitative data to get you the complete picture of the health of your engineering organization and track your improvements. Let me show you how it works. Creating and sharing a survey is easy. You can spin one up in less than 5 minutes, and in fact, we'll set one up even faster than that right now. We'll create a new survey using our baseline template, which is a great way to get a snapshot of where your organization stands on key developer experience topics that drive satisfaction and productivity. We can drag and drop the questions to reorder them, dive deeper on a topic of interest by adding more questions, or even build custom questions. All of the questions in the question bank are based on the latest research into what drives high-performing engineering organizations. You can check out the survey experience with shareable high-fidelity previews that are just a click away. And once the study is live, a single shareable link works for every participant. Taking a survey is as easy as clicking a link and providing an email address. We never share individual survey responses or even the fact that an individual has participated in a survey. We've carefully crafted the survey experience to avoid fatigue. We ask agree/disagree questions first and then allow developers to expand on topics they're passionate about. This helps us deliver prioritized and actionable insights without annoying the folks taking the survey. Once you've closed the survey, your results are available. We first reveal your results in an interactive experience that presents the key takeaways in an engaging way that encourages feedback and discussion. These are available for your whole org or individual teams, so there's really something for everyone. Let's take a look at how this works for an individual team. First, we set the stage with participation data and trends for the overall org. Then, the big reveal: key topics for your team. For these, we note your team sentiment and how it compares to others in the org. At the org level, we show you how you compare to industry benchmarks. The whole experience is interactive, so anyone viewing it can react to the insights and offer their thoughts and feedback. We also call out how your team compares with the rest of the org. Then, we highlight the topics your developers prioritize for improvement with actionable suggestions of steps to take next. The entire experience is shareable across your org and easy to export via slides or PDF. Behind all of this is the extensive data you've come to expect from Jellyfish, with detailed breakdowns of sentiment by team and other segment data, verbatim responses, and scores for each question. You can also explore benchmarks and changes across multiple surveys. All of this is shareable and exportable, both at the organization and team level. With the introduction of Jellyfish DevEx, Jellyfish now provides both quantitative and qualitative insights across the entire developer experience, giving you a more complete understanding of how to improve performance. Engineers can easily share clear feedback so they can get the support they need, making work more engaging and satisfying. Engineering managers can finally get actionable insights into what their direct reports need, so they know where to focus their time and attention to improve their team's experience. Leaders can improve team retention and attract top talent by prioritizing developer experience and staying connected with team members. If you're a current Jellyfish customer, you can access Jellyfish DevEx in the app today. Not a Jellyfish customer yet? Join our waitlist now to get Jellyfish DevX for free. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Krishna.

Thanks, Sam. We're so excited to share DevX with not only all of our customers, but anyone who needs to level up their developer experience. And we're especially excited that it's free. Early customers of our beta experience have told us that Jellyfish DevEx got us twice as many responses as we got running our own survey and gave us insights into individual teams we couldn't get before. And that's just the beginning. While developer experience is certainly on everyone's minds these days, so is predictable delivery. And here to tell us all about it is Alexa.

Thanks, Krishna. With all eyes on R&D, lean teams, and intense scrutiny on delivery timelines, engineering leaders are operating in highly complex, pressure-filled environments. Predictable delivery is more important than ever, and yet, what's the most common way we forecast team capacity and delivery timelines today? During conversations with engineering leaders about quarterly capacity planning, we were frequently shown very manual and often subjective spreadsheet-based processes. These processes, when they're run, tend to have a high risk of human error and are less data-driven than desired. After collecting all potential quarterly commitments and considerations from various stakeholders, Engineers are then asked to put in estimates on each deliverable, usually with little context, and then these estimates are doubled or tripled on every commitment just to be safe. In almost every case, organizations struggle to accurately calculate scope estimations for new projects, represent unplanned KTLO work, and account for carryover work from previous quarters, failing to remember that delivery doesn't happen in a vacuum. Unlike a new spreadsheet, teams rarely start off with a blank slate. Inevitably, these miscalculations lead to the creation of unrealistic and unachievable quarterly plans. It's not for lack of thought or effort, it's just hard. So when we get to the end of the quarter, instead of celebrating the amazing things we built, We're left with this false sense of failure because we unintentionally overestimated the number of deliverables that were actually possible for our teams to deliver. We lose credibility across the business and our teams are overworked and demotivated. Rather than play this guessing game, we need to be able to confidently share roadmaps across the organization that reflects what our teams can realistically achieve and respond to the simple question, Can your teams take on this work? With just as simple an answer. It's a problem we're solving and one we're investing heavily in. Coming soon, capacity planning in Jellyfish will enable engineering teams to create realistic roadmaps based on historical performance. First, Jellyfish will calculate your team's total capacity by automatically identifying how many engineers are committing code, and the historical allocations those engineers have against planned work. Because we use historical averages, you'll know how many priorities your teams can realistically take on without fear of overcommitment. Jellyfish will automatically pull in the work we know is in flight and projected to land in the quarter. So you can quickly see your team's current capacity broken down into ongoing carryover work, new work and available capacity. You can immediately determine whether you have the room to add more to your team's plate or if you need to draw the cut line a bit higher than anticipated. And of course, we're making the experience highly configurable. So you'll be able to easily add and remove initiatives, adjust scope, or increase team size and planned work allocations to see the overall impact on available capacity. With all this data at your fingertips, you can finally stop that chaotic guessing game and streamline quarterly capacity planning at your organization by rooting it in reality. Engineers can stay ahead of delivery schedules with fewer competing priorities and more focused time as a result. Engineering managers can set realistic expectations with leadership about what their teams can achieve. Leaders can move forward with confidence in quarterly plans and discuss trade-offs as priorities arise. If you want to provide input and feedback on the future of Jellyfish's capacity planning experience, please reach out to your account team to get involved. We're so excited to release this new functionality in the future and see how it makes your lives easier. But for now, I'll hand it back over to Krishna.

Thanks, Alexa. I can't wait to use capacity planning even here at Jellyfish. To close out this session, I wanna talk about something you're undoubtedly hearing a lot about these days. That is generative AI. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to discuss GenAI coding tools with a number of engineering leaders. In this conversation and in many others, the key questions they were hearing were, first, from their exec and board-level peers, how much better are we getting by using AI? What's the value and ROI? And second, from their engineers, how will AI impact my career? And so by now, perhaps you're ready to tune it out. It has become a bit of a buzzword and the impact is unclear. But I encourage you to tune in with us. In a recent study we conducted on the state of engineering management, we found that a lot of engineers love using these coding tools and may even feel like they're having some success with them. But that sentiment alone is not enough. Instead, the key is being able to objectively measure not only your team's adoption of AI, but its impact on building better products faster. Because at the end of the day, if AI isn't helping you create more value for your customers, it's probably not worth it. And measuring that today is difficult. Teams rely on anecdotal surveys to track who's even using the AI. There must be a better way, and Jellyfish is here to help. The first step for any organization is to understand who's using the coding tools. We'll help you with this by providing a clear view into adoption, including things like percent of your organization using, percent of suggestions accepted, languages used, and more. Beyond that, our goal is to quantify the impact of your investments for your business. We'll help you answer critical questions like, are you building software more efficiently? You can use cycle time, or any other operational metric in Jellyfish to quantify this impact. At Jellyfish, we found that using coding tools improved our cycle time by 50%. Another question might be, are you shipping initiatives more predictably? Look at the deliverables in progress and deliverables completed, and you can see if you're systematically overdelivering on your AI-assisted projects or not, and thereby delivering customer value sooner. And lastly, how is engineering changing? By comparing the allocations of those who are using AI coding tools to those who aren't, you'll be able to understand how the flow of engineering work changes. Where does the time go? Do engineers go faster on the roadmap and do more? Does the time get invested in tech debt? How do you as a leader want that time savings to be spent? And how do you as an engineer want to spend that time? With these new capabilities coming later this year, engineers can be better supported with tools that help them work more efficiently, freeing up more time for meaningful problem solving. Engineering managers can ensure their teams are effectively adopting and using AI, improving their team's performance, and leaders can prove the impact of these AI investments to the organization. Resulting in additional investment. We're excited to share more information with you as soon as this functionality rolls out, so stay tuned. Just as they have in the past, these new market changes and innovations will require each one of us to adapt and evolve. No matter where you fall on the adoption curve, the engineering teams of the future are being built and refined today. They're the ones that prioritize developer experience, use data to predictably deliver innovations and improve their operational efficiency. They augment their efforts with AI and of course, effectively communicate the impact of their work. And there's only one platform that brings all of this together. Jellyfish is the engineering management platform that enables you to increase business alignment, improve delivery management, enhance your team's effectiveness, and automate your financial reporting. So let's not be afraid of change. Let's embrace it together. Jellyfish is here to guide you through it now and far into the future. Thank you. And now back over to Jasmine and Glenn.