WEBVTT

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I would welcome to another exciting episode
of Adventures and DevOps that might be live.

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I'm not actually sure. We're using
some new software today and it says

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I'm streaming, so if you're watching
this live, cool. I hope I

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don't see anything stupid and foolish.
I'm excited today to have as my guest

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Jack, Jack, welcome to the
show. Would you tell us a little

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bit about yourself and what you do? Yeah, Hey, Jonathan, pleasure

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to be here, maybe live or
or maybe maybe, but yeah, pleasure

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to pleasure to be here, and
thanks for having me on the podcast.

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My name is Jack McCarty. I
am a DevOps advocate at a company called

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gear Set. We are a DevOps
platform for Salesforce. So my background over

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the last four and a half years
is being helping Salesforce development teams streamline their

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release management practices at when it comes
to Salesforce helpum work carecept for for four

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and a half years and doing exclusively
that in the last year and a half

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in my role as a DevOps advocate, and that involved producing content. I

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run my own podcast as well,
which is called dev up Stories, and

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I present the whole wide range of
Salesforce community events and Salesforce events that you

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that you find in that ecosystem.
Cool. I'm looking forward to learning a

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little bit about Salesforce and DevOps.
But before we dive into that, let's

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set the stage a little bit.
I imagine that many of our audience know

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as much or less than I do
about Salesforce. So let me just sort

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of paint the picture what I understand
Salesforce to be and my experience with it,

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and then you can sort of fill
up the gaps. So yeah,

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not not not to start the show
off on a bitter note, but I

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lost my job to Salesforce once.
Oh no, it was okay, I

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was actually ready to leave the company
anyway. But uh I was. I

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was managing an e commerce team.
Uh, and we got the entire team

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got basically outsourced to Salesforce. H
now almost the entire team. My predecessor,

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no, sorry, my successor.
Uh, he's still there actually and

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manages the company. Uh and and
works with the Salesforce team. Uh.

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You know that that's mostly outsourced.
It's mostly a consultancy, uh to of

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course update Salesforce and so on.
But I don't really have a clear sense

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of what he does or what they
do with Salesforce. I mean, I

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know that Salesforce is a CRM.
I'm not a sales guy. I don't

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really keep track of customer client relationships. So you know, a CRM is

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sort of a nebulous concept to me
in the first place. And imagine many

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of our DevOps listeners kind of feel
the same way. Like that's the thing

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that marketing guys talk about it the
sales guys talk about, can you make

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it concrete? Like what is salesforce
from a technical standpoint? And how do

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salesforce developers and DevOps engineers and so
on interact with it? Yeah, that's

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a great question. So you're right. So Salesforce primarily is a CRM,

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so a platform used for managing the
relationships with our customers, managing how they

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market to them, how they store
their data, how they use their data

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to enable other business functions. So
that's where Salesforce kind of starts. And

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that's kind of a poor platform that
a lot of companies use. Salesforceport is

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the management of those relationships. However, Salesforce isn't just a CRM anymore.

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So Salesforce over the last over the
last twenty years Starry founded twenty one twenty

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two years ago or so now has
grown and the Salesforce suite of products now

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is huge. So you have solutions
for for sales, for customer service,

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for e commerce, for marketing,
for a whole bunch of things. Salesforce

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seem to bring out a new product
or a new what they call cloud every

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it feels like every month, but
it's not often nothing every every month,

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but a different a different cloud that
enables you to do different things. So

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what it is is ats core as
unifying the customer experience for any business.

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But a lot of people will use
it that commonly use it will be in

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in a sales team, in a
marketing team, or a customer success or

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service team. So that's that's kind
of the foundation of what Salesforce is now

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if we think about what Salesforce development
teams do specifically and how that relates to

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devils. So Salesforce is out and
out of the book solution. So you

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can buy Salesforce, you can buy
one of their their clouds and use that

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cloud to to start doing things for
your customers. So you'll have a base

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product effectively, and Salesforce developers and
Salesforce what we call admins or Salesforce administrators

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can configure their company's Salesforce instance to
do any number of the spot functions or

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execute the spoke business workflows. So, say a lead comes into your company

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and you want to nurture that lead
and how your sales reps and service reps

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interact with that customer. You can
design the spoke workflows based on what your

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company objectives and goals are and how
you market to those people, et cetera.

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So that's the responsibility of a Salesforce
administrator and then a Salesforce developer a

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lot more. The Salesforce developers will
write custom code and custom logic to match

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those business objectives and things like that, as well as to increase the extensibility

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of the platforms so that you can
have custom websites for customers or customer experiences

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custom experiences for those customers as well. So that's the core function of the

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Salesforce developer on the platform. When
it comes to debus and traditional develops,

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traditional devils doesn't really apply to Salesforce
because Salesforce posts host of the infrastructure,

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so things like things like standards,
security, standard scalability, and all those

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things are actually taking care for you
by Salesforce anyway as a platform as a

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service. Now where debups comes into
the mixes is all about the release management

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and how you can seamlessly ship new
features and the functionality and that extensibility.

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That was just mentioning about the platform
to your Salesforce end users. So debups

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is an integral part of the release
management cadence. So developers may well used

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to be using verse control systems and
they already have may have experience using CI

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tooling and things like that, whereas
Salesforce administrator doesn't. So a lot of

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Salesforce platform is clicks not code interface
and clicks not code building rather than custom

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custom scripting or writing a text code, which is Salesforce's development language. And

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as a result, the methods of
getting those customizations from a developer environment or

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what you call a sandbox in Salesforce, so this is like like a like

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a testing environment or a staging environment
if you will. Getting those changes out

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into a live production system in Salesforce
can be challenging, and that's why companies

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like gear Set exists to help with
that process and help you build automations to

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get it through However, many stages
of handbooks as you have and out into

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a live environment. So Salesforce develops
is a lottle bit atypical to to what

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the listeners of this podcast will be
more familiar with when you think about develops.

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Okay, fascinating. So it is
the salesforce development similar to say,

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right, developing against a Google API
or something like that. Or or is

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it more define like like imagine there's
a pis that you can talk to with

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in Salesforce, but maybe it's more
standbox or something like that. I don't

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know, maybe you can, yes, So yeah, if we think,

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if we if we think about a
typical, typical piece of work that a

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development might do. So a request
might come from the business and say we

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want to execute this flow inside of
our salesforce environment. When as a lead

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moves from this stage to this stage, this is a Salesforce developer salesforce appening.

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Sometimes depending on skill sets, et
cetera, and what's actually required,

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we'll go, we'll pick up pick
up that ticket and they will operate in

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a a sandbox environment which somewhat mimics
the production environment in the real life environment.

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What they'll do is they'll then add
their customizations either directly in that developer

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environment using the clicks of code interface
that Salesforce has. If custom scripting is

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required, then the developer will be
involved and they will they will build that

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and then they will test it and
make sure it works in their developer environment,

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and then what they will do is
they will then look to ship that

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and push that to a testing and
usually another testing environment, so this will

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be an environment that is a lot
closer to the live production environment, and

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best practice is for most orders to
have what they would call a UAT or

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staging or pre proud sometimes the naming
convention varies, or or to org and

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then that will be then be tested
against to make sure that those new customizations

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that you've added will then be able
to work with everything else that already exists.

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So it's very common for Salesforce to
be integrated with other ERPs or billing

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systems and things like that, so
making sure that any customization that happens doesn't

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break those integrations and integrations with other
APIs before then shipping those changes up to

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production and for the end users to
play with. How long that process takes

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varies widely from organizations to organizations.
So a lot of the larger, larger

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enterprise companies will will only release production
every two weeks. For example. Smaller

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organizations or more agile organizations will be
able to ship changes once a week and

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a couple of times a week or
maybe every day, depending on how their

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debop process is set up and how
fast they can run through the testing requirements

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that Salesforce has itself or their self
and posed testing requirements or any user acceptance

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testing that they might want to do
as well. So, yeah, the

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Salesforce development happens all like within the
Salesforce platform and Salesforce Salesforce gives you plenty

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of customizability. We can expand that
customer ability customized ability with custom code and

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then uh and and make make Salesforce
what you want it to be. No

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two Salesforce are the same unless you
happen to have two people to two organizations

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using just sales Cloud or Marketing Clouder
service plant write out the box with no

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customizations. You can do that,
but it's not recommended. It's probably not

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only going to be basically fit for
purpose. Okay, I'm curious. Uh

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so you talked about some organizations or
release every two weeks, some as frequently

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as once a day, or or
maybe multiplants per day. Is the the

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ideal of continuous delivery and deployment like
in the sense that the developer makes a

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change and everything else from that point
on is automatic, test run automatically.

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Everything's automatic and is deployed as soon
as everything is green. Is that realistic

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within salesforce or uh? Or not? For for the for the reasons you

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are describing. That's a great question, and I might get myself in trouble

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trouble with with the answer here,
can you do it? Yes? Should

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you do it? Probably? Not? So everything everything up to everything from

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that initial development shipped to the first
testing environment. Everything else theoretically can then

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be automated and wait for every every
dream check to go. If you have

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a robust process, and if you
have if you have confidence in that process

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as well, if any of those
checks failed, it could be a fallback

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to developer review and say all those
green lights, all those green lights are

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green. Theoretically you could have the
stage that automatically pushes pushes to a production

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environment. The problem with pushing salesforce
production environment live is when that happens.

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So when that happens without a button
to say go to production. A lot

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of times you will want to deploy
to salesforce production environment outside of user working

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hours or typical user working hours to
make sure that something does go back wrong.

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You can invent your rollback strategy or
things don't just change under under a

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user's speed. So the key thing
about salesforces. Salesforce is in every organization

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with tier one business critical applications.
So if you accidentally take it down by

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having an opmated deployment process and something
does go wrong, even if all the

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green lights pass, something doesn't work
as anticipated, you know you skip,

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you skip a user acceptance testing in
your new business logic doesn't quite work as

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anticipated. Confused as users you know
take you take out your your core business

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application, which can be sometimes be
one thousand, two thousand and three thousand,

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four thousand and five thousand users prevents
them from doing their job. So

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theoretically, theoretically, yes, it
is possible, like a platform like gear

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Set or our confessors is out there
should be able to enable that for you.

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However, in terms of best practice
and the realistic vision for and what

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salesforce is used for in every organization
that often makes it not practical. What

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you can do, however, is
do all of those green light checks and

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validate against production as well. So
Salesforce is a function where you can validate

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a deployment package of new features to
production and allow you to be able to

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then deploy that at a time of
your choosing. So everything up until that

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last stage can be automated to some
extent. Where the Salesforce development is again

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is a typical. Often the less
mature delivery teams won't use something like version

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control, so a lot of the
listeners here will be used to working with

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version control, and that's your de
fact that development method working in those branches.

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But because Salesforce is a lie is
continually continually live environment, production can

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actually be edited as as it is
by a Salesforce administrator. If you have

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the permissions, it's you're not dealing
with It's not we have an application and

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we're going to shift and up big
to it, and then you get the

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new version of the application and the
application is always live. So so salesforces

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source of truth if you like,
this is a big This is a big

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argument in in in the Salesforce developed
world is what is your source of truth

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because technically, the source of truth
is production as it is currently live.

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Whereas teams that teams that are developing
in a source driven method, those your

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source driven method will always be a
few steps ahead of production just by the

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nature of development. But your source
of truth technically is as it currently exists.

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Val So, how long have you
been doing your podcast? So I've

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been doing my podcast for I started
in November November, all right, so

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a year approximately. Yeah, So
that should give you a pretty good amount

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of time to answer my next question, which is going to be what are

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some of the biggest challenges that come
up for whether it's a perception or technical

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challenges whatever, what are some of
the biggest challenges that devlops people face when

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interacting with with salesforce and salesforce deployments
and teams. Yes, I try and

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pick just one. So I think
the word that you used there was a

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perception, and the perception is for
a lot of folks that salesforce step ups

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is quite difficult to be able to
do salesforce stepmomps really well and really effectively.

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It does involve implementing version control.
It does then extend to ultimating parts

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of that and the foundations tends to
be verage control. I've mentioned already a

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couple of times Salesforce has a has
a Clique NOTT code interface, and that's

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how the majority of Salesforce development work
is done. So Salesforce, if we

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look at the history of the platform
and how a work traditionally traditionally went,

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it started with clicks not code,
like that was all rage Salesforce. You

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then started to see folks move away
from them, and the more bespoke business

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processes were requested developers and coding became
quite heavily important. So there there are

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Salesforce orbs out there that are so
heavily customized with custom code that you know

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that those orbs can become fairly unmanageable, and that obviously increases the complexity of

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the devils process and all the checks
and balances that need to happen and and

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make make making sure that code is
maintained. But over the last couple of

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years, Salesforce internally have been doing
this really big push to use the law

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more of the native the native functionality
that's built into the platform that they've built

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for you to refer to that with
clicks not code, messaging so so as

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a result, a lot of the
Salesforce ecosystem, I don't really want to

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put a figure on it, but
I would say good sixty to seventy percent

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of Salesforce administrators for developers, for
example, don't have experience coding, which

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as a result makes that barrier to
entry for adopting devilops best practice is quite

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difficult because version control, when you're
trying to wrap your head around it is

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I remember when I when I first
started a gear so I don't have a

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tech background, like I'm not developing
myself. When I came to Gearson four

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and a half years ago, I
had to wrap my head around versus control

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and the what SALESFORCECTIC best practices look
like in comparison to how our engineers were

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working. And version control is quite
a scary concept, and that barrier to

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mentoring, that initial barrier to entry, I think is quite high, and

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that learning curve can be quite steep, and that's something that we've made quite

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a concerted effort to do it.
Gearsa is build a platform. So we

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have a learning platform related to Salesforce
DevOps called DevOps launch Pad, which I

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like to burge control fundamentals have to
get started to burgeon control for the salesforce

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and things like that. That barrier
to entry can be can be quite high.

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The I think the other biggest challenge
for any salesforce team looking to change

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the way they're working is a cultural
thing. So this is where so I

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have a gear set called rob He
is a salesforce developer and architect by trade,

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and as the background, he's spread
super technical, whereas a lot of

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my career I've focused a lot more
on business change and culture change. And

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there is this in a lot of
teams. This this pro sets in inertia.

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You know, we've always done it
this way, and we're so scared

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of this thing looks quite demops,
looks quite hard and quite difficult to difficult

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to implement, and we've always done
it this way. Yet it's pretty painful,

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but it works. It's not optimal, but it works. That we've

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always done it this way in mindset
can be quite hard to change because typically

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a lot of teams tend to be
risk averse. There's a lot of challenges

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on the platform as it is,
let's not mess with anything. So driving

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people to see and envision that there
is a better way of doing things.

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It requires a little bit of upfront
work and a bit of upfront effort to

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change, but it can be done, I think is one of the other

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other biggest, biggest challenges and drivers
behind that. So yeah, that that

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cultural piece is absolutely absolutely huge,
and it starts with it starts with the

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people. But if you have the
people there and you invest in the people

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in their learning journey, the importance, the importance of salesforce develops and the

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benefits else worse devellops and users getting
features faster and things like that really start

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to come into the fold. If
if that, if you have I guess

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executive sponsorship is a big thing.
The exec sponsor's got You've got to have

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somebody that says, yes, this
is a good idea from a slightly higher

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level, and especially when there's larger
teams, to say, hey, yeah,

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we do want to do this,
we do want to improve everybody's lives

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and one of at the end of
the day, improve our end users lives.

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And you know, adopting best practice
debuts does change the salesforce delivery team's

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lives. It was a common thing. So I used to I used to

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sell gear sets, products, I
used to be an account executive and help

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build the sell a team at gear
Set. Commonly, I would speak to

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salesforce teams and their developers and appmans
will be would be up at two three

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am in the morning doing un deployment. It would take ten hours to do

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a production deployment because of how quirky
and challenging the system is to deal with.

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And then when they implement a solution
like gear Set for example, or

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any of our any of our competitors, that brings it down to do it

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two hours and you know, being
able to go home at seven pm on

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a Friday rather than eleven pre Those
are very very real, real life stories

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that you hear pretty frequently in this
space. So yeah, that was That

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was a bit of a rambling answer
to what was a very simple questions.

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No, it wasn't a simple question. I mean a simple question, but

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I expected a fair amount of nuance. I'm curious, Maybe I don't know

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how much you want to talk about
your career, but I'm curious how you

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got interested in DevOps in sales sports. You know, how did you know

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we jump up being an account executive
and you know, so you sounds like

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your career is taking a more of
a technical turn at some point. How

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did that happen? Yeah, it's
a really interesting, really interesting story,

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I think. So. My background
prior to prior to your set, well,

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I did find a bunch of different
different things beforehand, but predominantly hugs

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In didn't retail sales. Did I
didn't work for a local utilities company.

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I did, And the job that
I have before Gearset was as a recruiter,

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so I specialized in building architecture and
design, not architecture as we as

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I t people think about architecture.
So I did that for for three years

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and an opportunity came up to work
at gear Set. In the early days,

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Gearset was thirty other people. When
I joined the company in March of

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twenty nineteen, an opportunity came up, came up to be a recruiter,

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so I spoke to the CEO and
went through that process and they ended up

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going with somebody else for the recruiter
role. And CEO turned to me and

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he said, given, if somebody
else did a lot bit more experience based

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on what we need, we do, but we really liked you and think

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you could do a good job on
ourself team, do you want to come

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and do that instead? And at
this point I was just like I was

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sold on gear Set because the company
of the culture was amazing and I really

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want to be a part of and
you know, and entry into a tech

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startup, you know, as what
a lot of a lot of folks are

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striving for these days, you know, you know, tech startups seem to

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be seemed to be one of the
places that a lot of people strive for,

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especially coming out of college or university
these days. Anyways, So so

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yeah, it's one of the take
a shot, So kme Gearsett join joined

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the company. We're about thirty people
back then. And when I say so,

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but like, don't don't turn off
when I say sales, folks that

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are listening, you know, so
we're not that scary of but sales and

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gear Set is a lot bit different
different back then. So whilst my time

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was account executive, what we were
really was an account executive and a solution

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engineer kind of wrapped up into one. So we as account executives did the

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demos. So often, folks that
you've ever been on a product demo for

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any of the other stuff where that
you might be investigating. We're currently usual

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have an account executive that does a
bit of a pitch and a bit of

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the sale, and then that would
get taken over by a sales or a

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solution engineer which will then demo the
product and talk to you about the technical

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nuance at the tool and platform and
the problems that you're solving. Big gear

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set, we work on executives and
solution engineers all in them. So me

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and my colleague, a few of
my colleagues were that and the sales so

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as a result of that, they
got quite embedded into the technical issues that

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folks face on the platform. You
know, growing startup kind of wore different

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hats and customer success as well,
so often in the early days I would

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be doing customer support as well when
I had a spare minute and we needed

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support. So all of our support
is done by an intercom, which is

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a chat widget in the app itself, so in the early days I'll be

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in there and helping debug issues with
customers that they might be facing. So

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a lot of the early days of
working for a start giving me a lot

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of exposure to a lot of different
things rather than just doing sales. So

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I hope you're the sales team there, helped implement different selling motions and things

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like that, And I was just
like, there's some things that I like.

319
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There's there's some things that I really
like about this this job and like

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what I do, and there's some
things that I don't like. How how

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can I do all the things I
like doing and try and abstract what I

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don't enjoy as much? And that's
how I came to have the have the

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job that I have now. So
I enjoy educating, educating folks on DevOps

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that I enjoy presenting public speaking as
has though it was terrifying in the beginning,

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it's something that I quite enjoy.
And being able to interact with folks

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in this space has been really fun
and it's really fun, and I think

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it's just it's one of those things
that you embed yourself into into an environment

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that fosters these best practices and the
like I say, I'm I have a

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colleague robber. It is far more
technical than I am can actually code that

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00:26:57.640 --> 00:27:00.839
we have skills that compliment each others. So I have a lot more experience

331
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in pitching to pitching and speaking in
a in a way that an executive will

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understand and translated to business value,
as well as having enough enough technical knowledge

333
00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:18.240
that a developer or an architecture things
like that well also also listen to me

334
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:22.240
and have a difference. So being
able to have two different style of conversations

335
00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:26.880
to translate value, I guess for
everybody involved, and that's kind of helped

336
00:27:27.759 --> 00:27:32.240
how it how it kind of developed. I still haven't tried to try to

337
00:27:32.240 --> 00:27:34.920
write script anything. Maybe that's something
that I do in a bit of downtime,

338
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:40.160
but I'm quite fortunate to be supported
by my colleague Rob who who handles

339
00:27:40.160 --> 00:27:42.279
the more technical side of the topics
that we cover, and a lot of

340
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what I do is based on extracting
value. So I mentioned earlier in the

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podcast, and Salesforces is a Tier
one business application. The companies run their

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00:27:52.480 --> 00:27:53.920
businesses on it at the end of
the day, and being able to get

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the most value of that platform is
hyper important to them. The selfware develops

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and good DevOps practices not only enables
change faster, so digital digital transformation and

345
00:28:06.079 --> 00:28:11.799
change management is you know, a
huge, huge bausewords and DevOps. DevOps

346
00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:15.440
and poor DevOps is actually a really
big innovator for that, inhibitor of that

347
00:28:15.519 --> 00:28:19.240
happening in our space of being able
to speak to executives in that way to

348
00:28:19.279 --> 00:28:23.119
help them get the most business value
out of what is an expensive platform like

349
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Salesforce isn't cheap. It's probably the
biggest expenditure in any enterprise organization. So

350
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that is that that is super important
and something that I'm passionate about is is

351
00:28:34.440 --> 00:28:38.279
help. It is helping those folks
being able to do their jobs happen faster,

352
00:28:40.079 --> 00:28:41.519
make their lives happier, and like, like again, the amount of

353
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stories I get told about that this
is this was such pain or as such

354
00:28:45.839 --> 00:28:48.480
pain in us positive stress and sleickless
nights, and you know, the implement

355
00:28:48.480 --> 00:28:53.039
a solution to remedy that pain and
it really gets it gives quality of life

356
00:28:53.319 --> 00:28:59.079
back to people's jobs. So so
that's kind of a bit the journey that

357
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have been on, and we'll continue. Sleep driven development is a powerful motivator,

358
00:29:04.319 --> 00:29:10.400
isn't it. Coffee driven development.
I think it's the most common type

359
00:29:10.400 --> 00:29:14.720
of development I see. So if
our engineering team is anything to do by

360
00:29:14.759 --> 00:29:18.920
anyone, I'm curious to learn a
little bit more about gear Set. I

361
00:29:18.920 --> 00:29:27.079
mean, obviously gear Set sells services
related to the salesforce, but can you

362
00:29:27.119 --> 00:29:33.200
maybe elaborate on a little bit what
what does gear set? Do you know

363
00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:38.240
who would hire gear set and port
for Yes, so, so gear set

364
00:29:38.240 --> 00:29:45.079
actually has has an interesting story.
So gear Set as it exists right now,

365
00:29:45.160 --> 00:29:51.720
we are an all in one Salesforce
Salesforce depuls platform for companies that use

366
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Salesforce. So, but when you're
thinking about how do we protect our or

367
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how do we make sure it's backed
up should we have like a production disaster

368
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or what have you, we have
a backup service if you need to need

369
00:30:08.400 --> 00:30:14.240
to move data between environments for testing
or for any other reason than we have

370
00:30:14.359 --> 00:30:18.720
tooling to do that. We have
c I tooling, automation tooling, pipeline,

371
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development pipelines like you would set up
in in bit bocket, or an

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00:30:22.720 --> 00:30:29.559
action similar to things like actions.
We have tooling for for Salesforce specifically.

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But the gear Set, gear set, the gears term is really interesting because

374
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gear Set was founded by so Kevin
and Matt. We're software engineers at a

375
00:30:40.960 --> 00:30:44.359
company called red Gate. And you
might be familiar with Redgate or if it

376
00:30:44.400 --> 00:30:47.880
sounds familiar. The reason for that
is is because they are a company based

377
00:30:47.880 --> 00:30:52.519
out in Cambridge, UK, which
is where gear sets headboard that create uh

378
00:30:52.839 --> 00:30:57.599
that have databased det ups, tooling
for Microsoft tools, SEQ server and things

379
00:30:57.640 --> 00:31:04.480
like that. So when when Redgate
we're looking at Salesforce and doing their own

380
00:31:04.920 --> 00:31:07.240
Salesforce implementation, they were just like, Oh, there must be a better

381
00:31:07.279 --> 00:31:11.079
way to do all of this than
what Salesforce gives you out in the books.

382
00:31:11.200 --> 00:31:14.720
And that's how you founded is founded
by We're used to being able to

383
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:18.240
do all these cool things for the
Microsoft products that that we made tooling for,

384
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:22.240
Let's see if we can do it
for Salesforce. So bringing that that

385
00:31:22.359 --> 00:31:30.640
engineering culture to Salesforce and Salesforce DevOps
specifically is how Gears has founded. So

386
00:31:30.920 --> 00:31:36.640
one of one of Breadgate's flagship products
is SQL compare, which allows you to

387
00:31:36.640 --> 00:31:42.160
compare compare side by side those those
bases, and that's what where gear Sets

388
00:31:42.160 --> 00:31:47.319
started, being able to compare what's
in a sandbox environment versus what's in a

389
00:31:47.400 --> 00:31:52.559
production environment, which can drift dramatically
in Salesforce developments. That's that's kind of

390
00:31:52.599 --> 00:32:00.079
the journey. And through so our
CEO is and stuffware engineering background CPOs or

391
00:32:00.079 --> 00:32:05.519
engineup our background. Really our company
has grown from software development best practices is

392
00:32:05.559 --> 00:32:08.720
Anyway, I think that's where Gear
said is kind of set apart from our

393
00:32:08.759 --> 00:32:15.960
competitors in this place, is we
are really best peraps engineering first and making

394
00:32:15.119 --> 00:32:21.839
lives Salesforce developers, Salesforce administrative,
Salesforce architects, Salesforce DevOps engineers, all

395
00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:30.720
those people's lives better. Awesome.
Oh one other questions I have before I

396
00:32:30.759 --> 00:32:37.720
ask, well, getting ahead of
myself, if anybody listening is interested in

397
00:32:37.799 --> 00:32:43.279
learning to do Salesforce development, do
you have any suggestions or support or direction

398
00:32:43.480 --> 00:32:50.680
tips for them to consider. Yeah. So, the great thing about Salesforce

399
00:32:50.839 --> 00:32:54.039
and Salesforce development in particular is anybody
can learn it, and anybody can learn

400
00:32:54.079 --> 00:33:01.799
it for free. So Salesforce have
this amazing it's like an academy if you

401
00:33:01.920 --> 00:33:07.920
like. So it's called Trailhead.
So Trailhead is a learning platform for any

402
00:33:07.960 --> 00:33:12.039
Salesforce professional which will allow you to
go and learn the basis of Salesforce,

403
00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:16.920
teach you how to code apex for
Salesforce. You can, you can go

404
00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:22.079
and you can it's all self learning. Trailhead dot com create free account.

405
00:33:22.880 --> 00:33:25.480
You know that there's mascots and fund
trails and they give you you get your

406
00:33:25.480 --> 00:33:29.519
own environments to build all of these
things in and you can learn so much

407
00:33:29.519 --> 00:33:32.839
about the platform. So if you're
interested in Salesforce development from what Salesforce is

408
00:33:32.920 --> 00:33:39.079
used for and the hundreds of applications
that you can that you can apply to

409
00:33:39.079 --> 00:33:44.000
to the business, then Trailhead is
definitely the place to go. If you're

410
00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:51.920
interested in Salesforce DevOps and how that
is different in comparing to to what you

411
00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:57.400
what you currently do or getting best
development practices, then DevOps launchpad dot com

412
00:33:57.599 --> 00:34:00.960
is the place to go. So
caveat that is a platform the gear Set

413
00:34:00.119 --> 00:34:05.960
created as well as our learning platform. However, is it is agnostic,

414
00:34:06.079 --> 00:34:09.400
so it is all about Salesforce develops
and the different different flavors of that and

415
00:34:09.440 --> 00:34:13.559
what's involved. Yes, of course
there's your gear set courses on how to

416
00:34:13.599 --> 00:34:16.400
use a gear set product on there, but the learning journey is super agnostic

417
00:34:16.519 --> 00:34:22.159
when when it comes to learning versus
control best practices and things like that for

418
00:34:22.320 --> 00:34:25.559
the platform. But yeah, trail
anybody can go and learn, learn Salesforce

419
00:34:25.599 --> 00:34:30.159
and develop on Salesforce with trail h
platform. And it's often it's one of

420
00:34:30.199 --> 00:34:36.559
those things that Salesforce is an incredible, incredible platform because it's because because of

421
00:34:36.599 --> 00:34:40.840
that low barriers and entity to learn
salesforce and that clicks not code mentality,

422
00:34:42.119 --> 00:34:47.880
so many people from every different background
can can get involved. So folks from

423
00:34:49.119 --> 00:34:53.440
underrepresented groups and things like that have
a free platform that they can use to

424
00:34:53.480 --> 00:35:00.400
start a career in tech and like
routinely changes changes people's life. So there's

425
00:35:00.440 --> 00:35:06.920
a number of great nonprofit organizations out
there like pep up Tech or Maribus for

426
00:35:06.920 --> 00:35:13.000
for veterans that have learning programs dedicated
to salesforce to give give people that that

427
00:35:13.079 --> 00:35:17.559
leg up into technology salesforces. Salesforce
is a guidance and guidance evaluation of thirty

428
00:35:17.559 --> 00:35:21.880
six billion or something that as a
company for the for the next year,

429
00:35:22.119 --> 00:35:28.320
and the ecosystem around that will be
many many, many, many many billions.

430
00:35:29.400 --> 00:35:32.159
So it's it's it's it's an industry
where there there's a lot of money

431
00:35:32.159 --> 00:35:36.480
to be made and there's a lot
a lot to go around, and you

432
00:35:36.559 --> 00:35:42.199
can start start a career in salesforce
fairly easily. It will take will take

433
00:35:42.280 --> 00:35:46.320
drive and determination if folks aren't aren't
already in in that space. Because it

434
00:35:46.360 --> 00:35:51.840
is competitive and a lot of people
career transitioning, they see it as this

435
00:35:52.199 --> 00:35:54.320
can see it as a golden ticket, I guess. But with bit of

436
00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:58.519
determination and hard work, all the
resources out there, you just got to

437
00:35:58.519 --> 00:36:02.760
go and get it awesome. Is
there anything else that I should ask you

438
00:36:02.800 --> 00:36:06.880
about or anything important that I that
we should discuss that I that I haven't

439
00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:14.840
before we move towards the end of
the program. It's it's all. It's

440
00:36:14.880 --> 00:36:21.480
it's all important, I think.
I think for the biggest thing for for

441
00:36:21.599 --> 00:36:27.480
folks either either looking at Salesforce and
think about Salesforce, Salesforce develops like in

442
00:36:27.559 --> 00:36:31.679
particular life, there is Salesforce DevOps
is a challenge. So I would I

443
00:36:31.719 --> 00:36:38.840
would encourage anybody that's listening to the
podcast or two to take a look at

444
00:36:38.880 --> 00:36:44.320
Salesforce DevOps and I think there is
there is There is probably probably a gap

445
00:36:44.599 --> 00:36:52.920
for Salesforce DevOps specific engineers and people
with a really good DevOps background two to

446
00:36:53.039 --> 00:36:57.840
go in and and learn a little
bit more about Salesforce and then help help

447
00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:01.800
the team transform transform that they're doing
internally. With that little bit of understanding.

448
00:37:02.079 --> 00:37:06.199
There will be frustrations because of the
way the Salesforce works and some of

449
00:37:06.920 --> 00:37:10.239
some of the API limitations and things
like that. However, that and the

450
00:37:12.079 --> 00:37:16.480
methodology wise, I think there there
is generally a gap for in larger enterprises,

451
00:37:16.519 --> 00:37:20.760
you're going to see both with that
kind of knowledge anyway, and a

452
00:37:20.800 --> 00:37:27.559
lot of like previously previously and working
working here have done liaison with internal DevOps

453
00:37:27.639 --> 00:37:30.079
teams that don't understand why things have
to be done a certain way in Salesforce,

454
00:37:30.159 --> 00:37:35.199
and you know that that relationship management
is is really important when you think

455
00:37:35.199 --> 00:37:40.199
about think about debuts for Salesforce,
but like things like implementing robust testing,

456
00:37:42.159 --> 00:37:46.280
so not just not just the testing
that Salesforce makes makes you do. Some

457
00:37:46.360 --> 00:37:52.239
Salesforce has uh testing, you have
to test written for all your custom code

458
00:37:52.280 --> 00:37:57.239
and have to code coverage about a
certain percentage and things like that. So

459
00:37:57.280 --> 00:38:00.519
it's like managtory testing and Salesforce.
But the more that you can do in

460
00:38:00.599 --> 00:38:07.719
terms of setting up a robust testing
strategy for security and load testing and testing

461
00:38:07.800 --> 00:38:13.199
that make sure but you're functional testing
and the user regression testing and things like

462
00:38:13.239 --> 00:38:16.440
that, those things and how that's
importanated into the process and where those kind

463
00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:21.280
of things start and you know best
practices it can be taken from software development

464
00:38:21.280 --> 00:38:24.480
and applied to a Salesforce team.
Can be really powerful, especially if you

465
00:38:24.519 --> 00:38:30.039
have this. It's not uncommon to
see three or four teams working on salesforce

466
00:38:30.280 --> 00:38:35.719
and they all have different processes,
so being able to unify and government processes

467
00:38:36.079 --> 00:38:42.400
is really important. So there is
there are challenges in in the salesforce space

468
00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:47.800
I think can be solved by develops
engineers from from a traditional background, if

469
00:38:47.840 --> 00:38:51.960
you will. So it's really interesting. It's not great. It's not for

470
00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:54.800
everybody, not for everybody for sure, but there are a lot of interesting

471
00:38:54.880 --> 00:39:00.239
challenges and a lot of a lot
of things that can be solved by quite

472
00:39:00.280 --> 00:39:06.599
driven, driven driven people in this
place, for sure. Cool. Well,

473
00:39:06.679 --> 00:39:08.400
Jack, how can people are get
in touch with you? Are you

474
00:39:08.440 --> 00:39:13.199
on social media? Obviously? Have
a podcast? There's your chance to tell

475
00:39:13.280 --> 00:39:15.760
us all the all the places where
you live on the internet. Yes,

476
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:21.599
sure, so you can hear more
of my voice, actually probably slightly less

477
00:39:21.760 --> 00:39:22.960
less of my voice. I should
let the guests do the talk, a

478
00:39:23.000 --> 00:39:25.480
lot of the talking. And it's
just that the shoes been on the other

479
00:39:25.480 --> 00:39:30.960
foot today, which is which is
quite strange. My podcast or gear sets

480
00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:37.320
podcast DevOps Stories, which my host
is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

481
00:39:37.519 --> 00:39:40.960
All those good places, exciting Times
is a recently rehabb the format, and

482
00:39:40.960 --> 00:39:45.000
then have done recorded a few video
episodes on YouTube as well. You'll be

483
00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.039
able to see that on the Gearset
YouTube channel. But yeah, debups ditories.

484
00:39:49.039 --> 00:39:52.639
I talk a lot about salesforce develops
in particular with my guests, but

485
00:39:52.679 --> 00:39:58.360
I also have guests come on and
talk about cultural changes and things like that

486
00:39:58.400 --> 00:40:04.880
as well, talking about their kind
of career journeys and burnout, mental health

487
00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:07.800
and all those kind of things are
featured on the podcast as well, all

488
00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:13.719
the things that I think can contribute
towards improving for sure. You can find

489
00:40:13.719 --> 00:40:17.880
me on on x or on Twitter
if you like it so underscore j x

490
00:40:17.960 --> 00:40:22.559
C k n c C providing Elon
hasn't burned it down in the next couple

491
00:40:22.639 --> 00:40:27.880
of weeks with its new valuation that
came out today, which is how the

492
00:40:27.880 --> 00:40:31.760
Bloody bought it for and you can
find me on LinkedIn as well, posted

493
00:40:31.760 --> 00:40:37.760
a lot on across Twitter and LinkedIn. Awesome, well, Jack, thanks

494
00:40:37.840 --> 00:40:40.320
for coming on. I feel like
i' learned quite a bit. One last

495
00:40:40.360 --> 00:40:44.239
thing before we in the program.
On this show, we like to do

496
00:40:44.320 --> 00:40:47.920
picks, So I don't know if
you have anything you want to pick.

497
00:40:49.440 --> 00:40:52.719
I have one thing I will pick. Uh, do you want to go

498
00:40:52.719 --> 00:40:55.880
first or do you want me too? You go first, I'll go first.

499
00:40:55.880 --> 00:40:59.920
Okay, So I'm going to pick
a book. I listen to the

500
00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.719
audio format. It's called The Art
of Action. How Leaders Close the gaps

501
00:41:04.719 --> 00:41:07.800
between plans, actions and results.
And it was a really fascinating book.

502
00:41:07.840 --> 00:41:15.159
It's it's about, well, how
do I say what it's about. It's

503
00:41:15.199 --> 00:41:21.039
sort of some case studies dating back
to pre World War One military operations and

504
00:41:21.119 --> 00:41:24.960
how they can apply to business with
regard to sort of a bias for action

505
00:41:25.119 --> 00:41:30.639
or how we how we can interact, how we can well, as the

506
00:41:30.639 --> 00:41:34.880
subtitle says, bridge the gap between
plans, actions and results. So it's

507
00:41:34.920 --> 00:41:38.840
it's kind of the antidote in a
sense, or one possible antidote to the

508
00:41:38.880 --> 00:41:44.880
strict, top down hierarchy approach that
you know, Taylorism may be promoted.

509
00:41:45.800 --> 00:41:51.800
So it really ties in with,
uh, the the ideology of agile and

510
00:41:51.840 --> 00:41:53.679
DevOps and all this sort of stuff, which is why I'm bringing up on

511
00:41:53.679 --> 00:41:58.199
the show. So it's it's a
it's an interesting book. If you like

512
00:41:58.320 --> 00:42:01.519
history, uh andy like business,
this is the perfect book because it really

513
00:42:01.519 --> 00:42:05.719
ties those two together for you.
So that's my pick for the week.

514
00:42:05.800 --> 00:42:09.039
The Art of Action by Stephen Bungay. I think is how you say his

515
00:42:09.159 --> 00:42:15.000
name, So that's my pick.
Cool. I am gonna take a take

516
00:42:15.039 --> 00:42:19.760
a little bit of a different angles, So my pick is going to be

517
00:42:20.760 --> 00:42:23.800
actually, what I watched on Netflix
last night. So I watched I watched

518
00:42:23.920 --> 00:42:31.280
Pain Hustlers on Netflix last night.
I thought it was fantastic. So Pain

519
00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:42.960
Hustlers is based on the true story
of a company's rise of rise whilst selling

520
00:42:43.119 --> 00:42:52.199
a Sentinel Sentinel spray and how their
business practices contributed to the opioid crisis in

521
00:42:52.199 --> 00:42:57.559
in the United States. I think
the best way I can kind of describe

522
00:42:57.559 --> 00:43:04.800
it is it's a hone down version
of the Wolf and Wall Street by the

523
00:43:05.760 --> 00:43:08.800
toneedown version of Wolf and Wall Street. But it's shot really well. The

524
00:43:08.840 --> 00:43:15.840
into interpersonal relationships in that in that
movie you are fantastic and there's some really

525
00:43:15.840 --> 00:43:20.000
great acting. It's directed by David
Yates. So if you're a Harry Potter

526
00:43:20.039 --> 00:43:23.000
fan, I like what you did
with that. This is a certainly more

527
00:43:23.440 --> 00:43:30.679
grounded and based version of of his
his way of storytelling, which I thought

528
00:43:30.719 --> 00:43:35.320
was really excellent. So Yeah,
Pain Hustlers on Netflix with t out of

529
00:43:35.320 --> 00:43:37.519
ten. I'll check it out.
What's a good Thanks Jack, it's better

530
00:43:37.599 --> 00:43:40.320
a pleasure. Hope to chat to
you again soon. Donan, thanks for

531
00:43:40.360 --> 00:43:43.119
having me. Thanks everybody, Yours

