Steve Smith
Global VP of Technology at Scale
About Steve
Steve is the Global VP of Technology at Scale at Equal Experts. With over 20 years of experience in digital delivery programmes, Steve advises technology leaders in large enterprise organizations on how to transform delivery, operations, and culture at scale.
Steve focuses on creating aligned autonomy at scale, so teams can understand the big picture and solve problems without dependencies or handoffs. He combines people, processes, and tools into the capabilities needed to boost revenues and reduce total cost of ownership.
He has led numerous complex transformations, including establishing platform engineering and continuous delivery for 80 teams and 1,000 microservices in a £500 million UK government department. Steve also introduced paved roads and the You Build It You Run It model into 40 teams with 100 microservices at John Lewis & Partners, a £10 billion UK retailer. He also advised a $9 billion US media conglomerate on integrating reliability engineering into 40 teams with 120 microservices for a greenfield streaming platform.
Steve is a regular speaker at international technology conferences and has written multiple books, including Measuring Continuous Delivery and Build Quality In. He is a regular contributor to Equal Experts Playbooks, our series of experience-based good practice guides, and regularly shares his experience and expertise in blog posts and expert talks.
Take a look at some of his insights below. If you want to contact Steve and the Scale Service, complete the form below.
Steve's insights
Scaling agile delivery
4 ways to successfully scale agile delivery
Equal Experts’ customers often want to know how to speed up innovation and reduce total cost of ownership at scale by scaling agile delivery successfully.
Why you need alignment with autonomy at scale
To succeed at scale, give your teams contextual alignment with autonomy. Independent, empowered product teams can achieve spectacular results. Read the blog
Not dead, just resting - how to win at maintenance mode
Steve explains how to do maintenance mode in a DevSecOps world. He covers the pros and cons of three different ways to scale teams down to cut costs, without sacrificing the reliability of your live services. Watch the talk
Why unplanned tech work is a silent killer
Unplanned tech work has a proven link to poor technical quality. While it can’t be eliminated entirely, it can be effectively controlled. Read the blog
You Build It You Run It
You Build It You Run It Playbook
Learn more about the YBIYRI operating model empowering product teams to build, deploy, operate, and support their own digital services.
Based on first-hand experiences, this playbook contains the principles, practices, and pitfalls we associate with You Build It You Run It for digital services.
5 ways to minimise your run costs with YBIYRI
A deeper look at how to guard against or even escape on-call costs.
Read the blog
You Build It You Run It sounds great… but it won’t work here!
Steve demystifies fears about You Build It You Run It, drawing on experiences from multiple enterprise organisations who’ve successfully implemented on-call product teams. Watch the talk
How to decide when to use YBIYRI (and when not to use it
YBIYRI is great but it’s not universally applicable so it’s important to understand if it's right for your team, and your business outcomes, before you make any major decisions. Read the blog
Platform Engineering
Digital Platform playbook
Expert knowledge about how digital platforms can enable an organization to achieve continuous delivery and operability at scale. The Equal Experts approach is based on first-hand experience building digital platforms, and our deep expertise in both continuous Delivery and operability.
Benefits of a digital platform
Embarking on building a digital platform can be a rewarding experience for your organization but it’s no small undertaking. It’s important to understand the benefits and assess whether they align with your digital strategy. Read the blog
Measuring Continuous Delivery
Steve explains how measuring stability and speed can power a successful adoption of continuous delivery in an organization of any size. Watch the talk
How to win at delivery assurance with DORA metrics
Delivery assurance is important, and it’s easy to get it wrong by measuring team outputs. The DORA metrics are statistically significant predictors of IT performance and are relatively straightforward to automate. Read the blog
Find out how Steve and the Scale team can help your team explore and implement continuous delivery practices, and operability strategies to speed up innovation or reduce the total cost of ownership. Complete this form to get in touch with the team.