 Hey, I'm here with Annika and Michelle from Microsoft Consulting Services, which are here for Microsoft Ready. We're going to a little bit talk about their job and what they are doing. So, Michelle, can you tell me what are you doing and working in consulting services? Sure, thanks. So basically, I'm an architect in the Solution Architect Office. That's a group in the CTO office. It's a pretty long title, as you can imagine. Our job is to unblock delivery, which means we are driving readiness, capabilities on the delivery part in an offering, which means the instructions for project managers, architects and consultants, how to implement. But also when things get more complicated, so-called escalations for strategic opportunities, then we are on point to help the guys on the ground to make things work. Okay, so you basically help these large enterprises, getting the architecture right, the cloud setup right. And if there are escalations, which I guess there are never escalations, so then you help as well. Yeah, it's kind of a three pillar split. The main task will be to help our own folks, so to make them successful. So the team I'm part of, so it's a worldwide team, about 15 people are doing a similar job for difficult, not difficult, different technologies. Yeah. They are difficult sometimes, but the idea is that we enable the others. So the secure infrastructure domain where we belong into has about 3,500 people. So it's all about scale. So if you define an offer, it should be applicable for many others and all the regions that they can use that and make it specific for their customers scenario. So that is the idea. So that's why I call it unblock delivery and that has different aspects. Of course, escalations is the most interesting part, but also the most challenging. But my main role these days is about the delivery IP and the readiness of the consultants. So many for our audience right now would ask like, okay, you're dealing with all these Azure stuff and Azure is huge. Is there any particular ways of technology you're working with or services or basically covering almost everything? So what we are trying to address here, and that was also the reason why we came to Redmond these days. We had a bootcamp to get a few more consultants and architects trained up how we implement landing zones enterprise control plans in Azure. And the idea here is to, they need to have the Azure knowledge already. So we have all the push to go through the certifications. So you have to do that as well, I assume. So everyone at Microsoft being technical or not technical had to go through the certification pass. So our consultants and architects have already that level. But what is missing is how to apply that to a certain offer. And the huge challenge there is really to go into this HR way of working. And that's also the reason why I have Annika with me as a HR project manager. Okay, that sounds super interesting. Like HR project manager sounds for me like, okay, that's super interesting if you do that. So what is your part of that? Like, what are you doing? My part is actually, I mean, we are talking here about digital transformation projects, right? And it's not only about technology here, it's also that mindset shift in terms of how do we deliver, how do we provide value to our customers? Not only as Microsoft, but also from our perspective, do how do we enable our customers to provide value to their customers? So that's like the heart of the digital transformation we have here with our customers. So the technology side, but also on the other hand, that how can we enable the customer to continue to deliver or provide value? Okay. And here, agile is a new approach that is evolving. Yeah. We started with waterfall, like sequential phases of different activities. But then in the end, you see, okay, you design something which it will be then out of value. So with agile, which also comes from software development, we have the opportunity to ourselves deliver projects with flexibility and also with the focus on continuous delivery of value. Yeah. But then also enable our customers who are not there yet though. So we are getting to agile, but it's a long process. Yeah. I think that's very important. I think when I did work as a consultant out there and we went from these classic IT projects where we have basically, this is the concept, this is like, okay, we're gonna implement this the way it is. And that's it. And then we had like a start and end point. And now with having the cloud where services change all the time, which concepts maybe need to adjust. I guess it's very difficult for customers but also for us to understand like, okay, how do we actually go forward? I think that's what you're addressing, right? Yeah. That's why also why my role is kind of two-fold. So on one hand, we need to enable our consultants or architects to follow that agile approach. Yeah. Like how can we adjust to changing customer requirements, to changing technology, but also on the other hand, how can we enable our customers to apply that particular mindset in order to have them providing value to their customers? Yeah. Makes total sense. So now we talk a little bit about what you're doing. And I think a lot of people are asking, okay, how does that look like in like real work? How does that do? So what were kind of like the real like engagements you had in the last couple of times which you want to talk about or you can share a little bit of information with what you were doing there. So. Well, I think that we alluded in that. So we started to redefine how we implement Azure landing zones, especially because we need to be more on point, services are changing, but also requirements do change. If a customer is starting with Azure, then they start to realize, well, we can do much more or then maybe some priorities are shifting. So we call that also, we need to have iterative design processes. So you start with a minimal functional design or an MVP. And then you need to have a vision where you want to land, but you can't fix everything on day one. I mean, if we go back to our high PV days, it was five years life cycle, you knew what can be done, what can't be done. So basically that mindset is still very much out. And that's what we need to break through. But also services role is, I would say a little bit different. We need to make the market, we need to lead with newest technology, we need to enable that with our customers and partners. So that's why we should not go the easiest path. It's really about leaving an impact, a big footprint to make sure that the customer is able to use Azure in the way it was designed for. Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't really speak to customers, it's not just about creating a virtual machine and that's it. And then create thousands of virtual machines and that's it, right? Really having that control over the environment making sure everything is in the right place and getting them started in the right way. I think that's hugely important part. So what the kind of like tools would you or like, what is the thing you get started on, like to basically get started when you talk to a customer in a technical way? Like obviously there's a lot of conversation going on but what would you like, what are the tools we would like use for this? So I think one highlight we share here is we don't use slides anymore. Okay, okay. So the tool is bite board. And as the office company, we love PowerPoint and I think every consultant has thousands of decks and the idea is not to make use of them anymore. So really go in and say, well, okay, let's start on a blank sheet of paper and just do the requirement engineering. And we should definitely make sure that we harvest all the concerns or the requirements. And especially when we talk about compliance and control as you mentioned, we need to understand what is the bigger picture. So that's why our process is really to harvest as much as possible to understand the customer, to learn from them and then come up with our opinion on what is our design proposal. And that will be then the fundamental to say, well, on that we're gonna build. Yeah. So bite board is the tool. Yeah, it's so funny when you mentioned the slide deck. I remember like the early days where we had the slide decks and then what happened was basically we always needed to update because they were outdated basically a day later when we created them, right? Because everything changed again. And so I really like that that needs to be a clear approach from moving like shifted mindset a little bit. So there's a side note to it. On one hand, I think it's much cooler to use the whiteboard and then you can leave bigger impact and interact better with the customer. On the other hand, I share that I'm responsible for delivery IP, which means that I'm certainly accountable or responsible to get the slide deck fixed and updated all the time. So if I look at the workload which would end up on my shoulders, I will, you know what, my board is much cooler. We get rid of really, I think 800 to 1,000 slides which were used in older days. That was a complete different approach. And the first reaction from our delivery folks is, oh, wow, I need to learn something completely new. No, it's actually what we are doing as consultants any day. Yeah, you just use a different tool or you don't use a different tool or use a different tool and you'd like do the... Everyone used whiteboard already, but it was very easy to have these PowerPoint texts as a support. And then customers do not have the knowledge then you can go really deep. But on the other hand, also the readiness from our customer is really, they matured a lot. So I think that everyone had interactions with a cloud provider already these days. There's a lot of compete, of course, that people are starting with other clouds, which is fairly okay. Not everyone can be perfect. So then basically our cloud is then something where we need to identify, okay, where do we fit in? But we don't need to go in and say, well, that's a private cloud, hybrid cloud, public cloud, these conversations are definitely not required. Not by us in services. There are other teams taking care of it. And I think you guys do an amazing job to share all these technical information which is required to get people ready. I hope you do, I hope you do. There's still also a long way to go. So you shared a little bit of what you're doing and how that looks like. So how is it for you? How do you engage with customers or your job? Actually, it's easier just to say that, okay, we need to enable the customer to do Agile. And when I'm talking about Agile, because there's usually some confusion about the term, it's a methodology. We should then execute through different frameworks such as Scrum or Kanman. So when I now switch to maybe Scrum, the concept is the same. So it just enables flexibility and also that focus on continuous delivery of value. So how do I approach the customer? So on the one hand, we have our consultants enabling the customer to do like cool technology stuff. And here in that context, we are talking about digital transformation projects, cloud enablement projects. The focus is on automation. So we do a lot of infrastructure as code. So that's a consultant job. And I set the framework, let's so to say, to have the consultants transfer knowledge to our customers. So we have like from my side, I organize at Brownback sessions with the customer. We have a body program. So that's the technical focus. But on the other hand, it's actually even more difficult because you encounter not only the development teams of the customer, but basically the whole organization. Because again, that's a mindset shift going from waterfall to Agile. And this doesn't happen overnight. And it's not only about just executing Scrum ceremonies or so. So it's really how, yeah. How do we engage the customer with it? Sometimes it's easy because the customer already wants to do Agile. So they at least are motivated to change. But then you come back to that, let's say project delivery discussions and it appears, okay, you want to do Agile, but you also ask me for milestones and the project plan or also the tracking of deliverables. So what is needed here is really some change management. This cannot only be done by myself in my project management role, but I'm there to have a discussion with the customer, create awareness throughout the whole customer organization so that from sea level to the development teams, everyone knows, okay, we are changing and it's for a reason that it's good. And while it's actually easier to do that with the development teams because they're keen to apply that new way of working because they are able to do really cool stuff in a very short duration because with Agile you have a focus on you deliver value and by value I mean like product increments within weeks. So in this Scrum concept, there would be two to four weeks and then you have a potentially releasable product. So there it's not so difficult because they think, oh, it's cool and although at the beginning, usually everyone is hesitant to do- And you fall probably back, right? It happens like, okay, we'll start doing it and at one point you fall back in these old metallurgies. Is that something you see as well? Not necessary again with the development teams because I mean, they get also support from our consultants who already apply that new mindset and they learn quickly. But again, the customer project management or the customer sponsors who are usually like driving the project or sponsoring the project there, it's difficult because they still want to know when you go into the steering comment tape, for example, these are guys who like provide the budget and they want to see results which is totally understandable which what they don't see is like, okay, they are continuous results but they just see a small picture out of it. So that's why they continue asking about deliverables what has been achieved and it would be there needs to be some switch. So how do we tackle that? We usually start especially with that cloud transformation or foundational project. We started with just doing waterfall. And while we are doing waterfall, we already do transfer knowledge transfer sessions. Also, sometimes if we have the budget bring in an agile coach. So we prepare the customer slowly for that agile delivery. Okay, you're not just coming in and like following all of it. I mean, although they're willing to do agile, they don't know what it is, they don't know what is required or like even if they think they are doing agile already, it's not what they like really executing. So we take necessary time to prepare the customer and then transition smoothly. That's like a hybrid approach. We call it water scrum fall. Okay. It's quite funny. Well, it's also a journey, right? And then even though the customer has done already something in Azure, has gained experience, it's really how do we take them from the starting point when we understand, okay, what has to be done? We create a design. The idea is not to have a 100 pages design document anymore. It has to be reviewed and approved. So it's also here that the process to get that design document, to drive decisions and track decisions should be more interactive, iterative, agile to make sure that we really have that flow and do not get stopped back. So the idea is so that the way we structure our engagement that we show value every two weeks in a sprint or milestone, whatever you call it. But it's really to show back results very quickly and then to adjust when needed. But that's the landing sound concept when you start to build your Azure infrastructure to the first shared infrastructure case or whatever. But later on, we transfer that into a competent center. So I think it's important that if you're there for six to eight week, you don't leave that footprint. Of course, you give all the modules used to have the infrastructure as code set up done. So we are relying on Azure DevOps, for example, have the pipelines as standardized modules to really set everything up. But the mindset that needs time. And then also it's just the first MVP. So what is required in addition? So what other initiatives are we supporting with the customer? And these cloud center of excellence is really a very strong initiative, which is, I mean, there are gardener starters around it. I think everyone wants to do it. The way we are delivering is we have this body system that you have Microsoft people and people from the customer and you have these different teams to really develop the products which are supporting the business. So it's not focused on IT. It's really to enable the business to be successful, to drive everything into the cloud and to use the full potential of the cloud in a controlled way, secure with strong governance in a managed environment. No, I like that. I was like always when I was thinking about consulting services, I was always thinking, okay, now I have just some consultants showing me the technology part, right? And especially with now that all the cloud things happening, I see that there's much, much more going on which you need to do next to just implementing technology but also changing the mindset and the processes. And maybe even, I don't know, the organizational structure of companies, like how they're building their teams and stuff like that. I think that goes hand in hand with this competence center approach that you have these COEs or however you name it. It's a function which needs to work differently. So in the past, standard IT and network teams, storage team, hypervisor teams without calling the names. But that is different in the cloud. You need different personas. You need different skills and different ways of interacting. And I think that has to change. And this function or organizational change is really helping to build a new group of people. But yeah, it is also to reuse them. I mean, give them the time to change into a cloud model and to operate the cloud as it deserves it and not to apply an on-premises concept to the new way over. So I think that's something where we try to be very supportive that we have over a period of multiple months, six to 12 to be very effective. But then also to leave that footprint. The idea is that we can step out at some point. So it's not that we are an outsourcer, not at all enterprise services here to, I call it as an icebreaker to help them to get the path through. Or if you are into movies like Fast and the Furious, when you need to kind of catch up with your competitor, you just inject some additional gas and then you will get really a boost. And I think that mindset we have gained internally at Microsoft, that's what we wanna share. Go back six, seven years, we had to change from a Windows license company to cloud consumption. And that was a huge transformation we went through. And that learning we share with our customers. Now, kind of like also like a coach, right? It's more like not just implementing stuff, it's really about coaching the customer to do the right thing and work with the cloud. So we're actually back at what's called consulting, right? We are working as Microsoft Consulting Services years back. It was, we came there, provided the technology and left. Right now, that's why I'm talking about cloud enablement projects. We are there not only to provide the customer with necessary technology, but also to enable the customer to actually use that technology. And that's at the heart of that cloud, cloud set of excellence projects. Okay, so this is all like super fine. And I think like a lot of companies should basically go that approach, especially because you can write so much value and knowledge during these projects. So how do customers engage or start an engagement with consulting services? And where would you point out, like if someone wants to know more about our, about these offerings and setups and processes and all that we have here? If they want to know and learn more about it, where would you send them? So I think regular readiness, the cloud adoption framework is a very good starting point. We as services are contributing to engineering content, the customer success unit. So the other entities who are enabling customers to move to the cloud. So we are collaborating with our learning share our IP. So that will be published in their sites. We don't have our own space on dock. So we don't need that. So it should be one voice. What we are having is an enterprise service block where we share our stories as well and the reference cases. So I think that's another good entry point to know more about what we are able to do, how we can help. But then the local representatives in the subsidiaries, they're always here to help. If you have a time technology account manager and account delivery executive and account manager, we have so many roles. If you know someone said, well, I want to speak to services. I think they can help. And otherwise, they can reach out to you or me. And we will redirect it to the right place. Absolutely. Okay, with that, I want to say thank you very much for being here. I learned a lot about how you do and start with cloud projects, especially in large enterprises. For you, I put all the links and everything in the description. So if you want to know more about how you engage with consulting services or about the cloud adoption framework, as well as your blogs and social media links into the description. And thank you very much. Thanks.