2314 - Rethinking Software Development the Military Way with Form100 Consulting's Nate Amidon

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0:58With us right now, it's Nate Amidon. Nate, you are the founder and CEO of Form 100 Consulting. You're found on the web at form100consulting.com. Nate, it's great to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me, Josh. Fellow veteran as well. Now, you're still in the reserves, is that right? I am. I am still a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves. And so, yeah, I fly C-17s. Those are big cargo planes. Wow. Well, Colonel Amidon, when you are not flying planes and not running your company, what do you do in your free time? What do you do for fun? Yeah, so I love to fly fish. I'm pretty addicted to that hobby, which is a lot of fun.

1:41Skiing in the winter and just being outside. I don't blame you. So how did you get into fly fishing and what makes it unique compared to, I mean, obviously we've seen, you know, I think we've all seen, you know, there's a lot more choreography. right yeah I well I grew up in Minnesota and I actually grew up on a river in Minnesota that was a smallmouth bass river and so I learned to fly fish there and there that's a ton of fun and then went to school in Colorado Springs at the Air Force Academy got into trout fishing there and then ever since then I've just it's just been it's almost like meditation for me you know because I'm out you're outside you're in the you're in the water you're just focusing on your next cast and And yeah, it's just a really great way to reset and, you know, get away from the grind.

2:30Oh, I completely, I, you know, that to me, that's just, that's meditative. Exactly. You know, just, you got the phones all put away just in the zone. It sounds divine, Nate, especially, I've been out to Colorado Springs quite a while. I can imagine there's some pretty good fishing out there. Yeah, it's great. Awesome. Well, tell us a bit about your work with Form 100 Consulting. What do you do? Yeah, so we're experts in the process of software development. So when software development teams are, let's say, writing a piece of software, a new feature, an app, they have to go through a full process of how that idea gets generated, how we get the requirements ready to go for the engineering team, and how the engineering teams operate.

3:13We use frameworks like Agile, Scrum, those types of words. And then it has to get deployed and released into production and get feedback. So we specialize in helping organizations stay aligned, bring clarity, and actually understand what's going on. So most of our clients are larger enterprises, but mid to large enterprises, when you start to scale the size and the number of software development teams, it starts to get pretty chaotic and we really help drive alignment. Well, I would imagine in 2020, 25, 25 here, we're in second half. I would imagine that you've done quite a bit of work incorporating AI technologies.

3:56Aside from that, I would imagine you're welcome to talk about that. What other trends are you seeing this year? Well, I think there's obviously been, well, AI is a huge piece of this. I mean, everything is affected by AI, especially in the software development realm. I don't think we're at the point where code writes code. We still need people. We still need teams of people. I think we're always going to need teams of people. And so getting AI integrated in the right spots, where it makes sense, is obviously a huge trend. And there's just a lot of consolidation. I think after COVID hit, everyone was working remote.

4:35And then now everyone's starting to come back in the office and engineering. You don't really need to be in the office. And so there's there's been a lot of, I would say, churn in the industry around, at least in the software development space. Yeah. So who do you typically serve? So our target clients are really going to be large enterprises that are in a very bureaucratic type system. So most of our clients are, I would say, non-software first companies. That's the way I think about it is they don't have software as their product. So you're thinking large manufacturing services, CPG type companies, and they don't have a culture of developing software because software development is a little bit unique in how you operate.

5:21Things move faster. You can't walk the factory floor, for example, and see how the widgets are being built. It's on someone's computer. It's in a test environment. There's multiple environments. So driving alignment and clarity in those organizations, that's really where the value comes. Yeah. Well, Nate, I would imagine that, have you been incorporating AI in any way into your projects this year? Yeah. Well, so, you know, AI is super interesting and it's so fascinating because a lot of times people, when they think about AI is like, well, hey, this is the thing that, you know, is going to turn into like Jarvis from Iron Man, right?

6:04I mean, that's what everyone wants. Everyone wants the, well, I just tell it what to do and then it does it. But that's not really how it's going to be implemented. And so, you know, what's really fascinating is the ability to pinpoint where there's value added in optimizing a certain system and then doing it incrementally and in a sustainable way that will actually produce results long term. So there's been some studies out and you've probably seen them 90%, 95 % of AI initiatives don't provide an ROI. And that's really because they're adding tools where there isn't the actual need to improve the step of the system.

6:47So one thing I've been thinking about, Josh, is like, you know, we're really going back to lean manufacturing in a lot of ways. We're going back to this theory of constraints where we really have to think about the process flow and where the constraint is, optimize for that constraint. But then also understand that just because we can do something that makes it faster doesn't may not improve the system of value delivery. And so it's kind of like we're going back to the 80s when lean manufacturing theory of constraints was the hot terms. And so I think those terms are going to come back. Do you mind just giving a quick 101 on lean and agile?

7:31Yeah. I mean, so if you think about it from a manufacturing perspective, you're going to have like a warehouse and assembly line. And you'll start with, you know, hey, we have raw materials that come in. And then there's all these different steps, depending on the product you're making, to get that ready and completed as a finished product. So if you optimize a certain step in that system, well, you can optimize that step. That step can make you can make that that one step go faster. But if it doesn't result in the end game of delivering more product faster, then it's not really helping that much.

8:06And in fact, you can make it worse. You can create a ton of excess inventory. You can create different bottlenecks up and downstream from that step. And so what's interesting is that software development and the actual process, it's not the physical, you're not physically moving parts around. But there's still a process that needs to happen so you can actually build the right things and build the right things for the market and do it quickly at the speed at which a market changes. And so if you think about your business processes, it doesn't have to be software development, but it can be anything.

8:41If you're a small business owner, we have to actually map out how we go from this idea to something that delivers value to the bottom line. And using those lean principles allow you to actually identify where those are and then using whatever tools you have, including AI, to optimize those. Excellent. Well, well, Nate, to our friends that are listening, what are some other like if you were to give a piece of advice? And again, these are mostly I'd say most of folks that listen are going to be in that small, medium sized company, likely been at the helm, maybe technically adept. Maybe they just hire a bunch of developers.

9:26I suspect that's going to likely be the predominant group there. What advice would you give to someone who wants to hire developers? Well, I mean, I guess I would say a few things about small business owners and, you know, people that like we're a small business. And how would you how would you actually think about where to implement AI? Let me start there and we'll talk about the engineers. I would just say start to map out your processes, figure out what you're spending the most amount of time on and then understand and then try to search and do some research. Like it's going to take work to figure out what's actually out there.

10:04All right. And understanding the tools that you can use to mitigate those constraints. Okay. Now, obviously every there's, it's so hard to keep up with all the new stuff coming out on AI, but, but understand, find a target space and a specific objective that you want to increase and then do it incrementally. Make small steps and then build in sustainability. And by sustainability, I mean, like have some governance around it. Like understand that if you're going to create a process, how does that process sustain? Like how can it break and how do we make sure it doesn't? And then from an engineering perspective, if you say, hey, we actually want to build some software and we need help.

10:45Again, I think it's still incremental. You know, don't get caught up in a huge like, hey, all of a sudden I need to bring on three software development teams. Oh. Because, because engineering, well, you saw in the Navy, you know, I'm in the Air Force and small teams are more effective. There's a reason why we have, you know, the SEAL teams and the spec ops folks are always six to nine teams. Well, software development teams in a different domain completely have landed on the same number, six to nine, right? And it's because as you add more complexity to your system, as you add more people that are doing things, you're going to add more overhead and there's going to be diminishing returns on the amount of the size and scope that you do.

11:30So when organizations come to me and they say, look, we have this one software development team, but we want to triple our capacity. We should triple our software development footprint. Like it doesn't work like that. It's not one-to-one because when you add, you add more connections, you add more handoffs, you add more communication lines. Those things will slow you down. Yeah. So to our friends that are listening right now, I know you've got some resources available. You're a decent follow also on LinkedIn. I recommend connecting with you there, Nate. but where would folks go after they've heard this conversation?

12:07Yeah, I think following me on LinkedIn is the best way to stay in touch. You know, I'm on there a lot and so I'm responsive that way. Obviously, going to our website, inform100consulting.com, you can reach out to us that way. You can get a better feel for how we approach things. And so, yeah, I think that's probably the best way to reach me. I, I'll, unfortunately I'm not a super social savvy, so you're not going to find me on, on the Tik TOks yet. Not doing Tik TOK dances to drum up business with your enterprise level clients.

12:42Nate, what, one thing I, you know, finally I wanted to ask you about is, you know, as your, your military background, how has that informed you as a founder of your own company? And then obviously overseeing the work that you do today. Yeah. So one thing that is interesting about what we do, and we really lean in on our military background. So every one of our consultants are former military officers or senior NCOs. And obviously, we like to help veterans break into technology and help the transition. But really, we do that because it's valuable. It's because the software development and technology domain is really dynamic.

13:23Things are moving really fast. There's constantly changing requirements. You have to stay aligned and communicate. You have to make decisions without all the right information. And these are all the things that we learned in the military as leaders. And so it's incremental. It's really foundational to our business model because we bring that military leadership to organizations. We embed those leadership, you know, those leaders in with teams. and then as far as starting a business you know the military does a great job on operations right the ability to to get things done to see the goal to accomplish the mission to operate in large bureaucracy I mean there's a lot of really great traits but you know full disclosure on the other side almost we've also been taught to be quiet professionals right I mean we've been we've been taught to do our job, not brag, not bother people.

14:20So, you know, sales and marketing, that's probably not one of the strong suits that veterans have coming out of the military. Yeah. And look at me. Yeah. That's all I do. Right. But you can learn it. And that's what I think. Well, for veterans transitioning out, you know, we're, we're constantly just learning new things and you're going to be uncomfortable and you have to lean into it. Yeah. And you were, So I was a journalist, so the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree in my case. But yeah, and I would imagine your work specifically flying has probably given you some areas of discipline that are probably pretty helpful as well.

15:03Right. Well, so what's weird is I would fly a big cargo plane and we would go on about seven to 14 day missions and I would lead a crew. and we would go to remote places where we didn't have any support and we would really just problem solve our way to mission completion. And so you learn how to communicate. You learn what's important to talk about and what's not. You learn how to brief to make sure everybody's aligned and on the same page. And those are all the skill sets that software development and technology programs really need. And so from that perspective, it really feels almost like we're doing the same thing, except in very different domains.

15:45Yeah. Nate Amidon, your website form100consulting.com. When you go there, there's a button right up in the upper right-hand corner that says get in touch. And of course, they can learn all about you. You've got some great videos on here. And again, you're connected. Your LinkedIn is all connected here. You've worked, by the way, I didn't mention You've worked with brands like Hershey, Boeing, Rite Aid, Alaska Airlines. You definitely work with some enterprise brands. So, Nate, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a great conversation. Yeah, no, I'd love chatting with you, Josh. Thanks so much.

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