That’s a fancy schmancy title – Andrew

That P word, it’s following me.

When I was at GDS:

  • we had an entire session, with a lot of smart people in the room, debating what was a Platform
  • I worked on a product with Platform in the title (and was pretty uncomfortable with that the whole time)

My default is to use the definition from Marc Andressen:

If you can program it, then it’s a platform. If you can’t, then it’s not.

What I’m doing at M&S looks like it will be exactly that. Initially this will be for internal use, and then we will publish things as they become useful.

I’m very happy with this. My initial, self-definition of the role started out with:

My job is to allow M&S engineering to safely, sustainably deliver business value at internet speed

Jez Humble has published a lovely redesign of his site. It’s now even better. I was pleased (confirmation bias klaxon!) to see similar wording to my definition. You could simplify it to say my current role is to help Marks and Spencer do Continuous Delivery.

I’m hoping that evolves (stealing from Tom/Russell) to:

Applying the culture, practices, processes, and technologies of the internet era to people’s raised expectations – Tom Loosemore

That’s what making an organisation Digital means.