Fusion Development with Marcel Ferreira

[mark]: 1:21
today's guest is from washington in the united states he's a senior program manager at microsoft you can find links to his bio et cetera in the show notes for this episode he originally comes from new zealand now i say that because it's tongue and cheek because you're brazilian aren't you marcelle

[marcel]: 1:44
that's correct mark originally from brazil but i consider new land home so i'm glad to hear that

[mark]: 1:51
so you've obviously done some time in new zealand how did you come to end up at microsoft in the u s

[marcel]: 1:58
yes well i like traveling so long story short in brazil i joined microscope originally twenty eleven and i'm from r p background so always worked with er p development as a softer developer and i join microsopht to do the localization for a product color dynamics x in brazil so i did that for two years then twenty thirteen i wanted to go to europe and i went to work for a couple of partners in europe and eventually in twenty four teen my arriving news and basically because my wife and i

[mark]: 2:33
right

[marcel]: 2:33
we were looking for a place where we could call home where english would be the first language and country where we could have kids and we chose new zealand and no regret said oh we had a great time there

[mark]: 2:45
wow

[marcel]: 2:46
uh

[mark]: 2:46
wow wow

[marcel]: 2:47
uh

[mark]: 2:47
and so then how did you obviously you're in new zealand for a while i see your name on some of the great projects that happened over here how did you end up how did you know how did your career journey take you back into microstoft specifically in seattle

[marcel]: 3:03
yeah so in new zealand i was working originally for farmlands which is a company in the south island and they had they have a nice story about dynamics implementation so i helped them to do find the future for for their digital transformation as a solution architect after that i worked for a couple of partners as well micro soft and eventually i got i got connected to someone who was working for microsoft and they wanted to start a position in new zealand to help partners on the finance and operation space and that's when i joined back microsoft and after a couple of years actually one year in microsoft in new zealand i got the opportunity to come here to seattle and i decided to um um

[mark]: 3:51
oh

[marcel]: 3:52
basically because i wanted to explore to be part of the product to be part of this this thing that we would talk about which is low code no code so that's basically how i come here and i have no regret so far i love new zealand here is great as well ah

[mark]: 4:13
so how long you've been in seattle now

[marcel]: 4:14
yeah i moved in twenty twenty one june

[mark]: 4:20
oh wow wow

[marcel]: 4:20
so is less than a year a couple of months

[mark]: 4:58
so how did you find moving during covid to seattle yeah

[marcel]: 5:05
okay moving during Covid it was very interesting for example to shipping your stuff very complicated so we just decided to sell it all and start over here afresh

[mark]: 5:19
good idea

[marcel]: 5:21
and but but it was not as bad it was not it was okay i would say it was okay it's interesting challenging but it's good to go back to normal

[mark]: 5:34
yeah

[marcel]: 5:34
kind

[mark]: 5:35
yeah

[marcel]: 5:35
of yeah

[mark]: 5:41
yeah i was going to ask you something about the move from

[marcel]: 5:45
oh

[mark]: 5:45
the back end of microsoft but we don't need to put that on her so i want to switch gears now and we'll talk about let's talk fusion development i know this is an area that you're very passionate about and it's in it i'm finding the more customers i engage with there tends to be a lot of confusion around

[marcel]: 6:05
yeah

[mark]: 6:05
it and

[marcel]: 6:06
correct

[mark]: 6:07
and and and i suppose i'll ast give you some some of the premise i was recently involved in a lard implementation like all at large twenty two thousand power ap seats

[marcel]: 6:19
yeah

[mark]: 6:20
for a public sector agency in australia and one of you know and and the big problem that i see you know when anybody's doing large project is resourcing right and i

[marcel]: 6:33
yeah

[mark]: 6:33
feel that the partner eco system and the model partners work even now and supporting a cust

[marcel]: 6:38
yeah

[mark]: 6:38
it is evolving over you know my twenty odd years in this space what i'm seeing is that rather than a partner doing a massive implementation and then walking away or putting an a m s agreement in place what happens is more and more companies now if they're adopting the platform as part of their digital transformation strategy they are wanting to have a head count of skill inside their business right but one of the things i'm noticing is that the only way they think to do this is to go outside their organization and hire somebody with ten plus years experience and of course power platform as we know it has not been around ten years and so you know they're struggling and specifically in a pub set agency you've got to have citizen resources because they need to be cleared from a security perspective and so they'll only do that on citizens within the country so and what i'm you know i often have these conversations is that hey you need to develop skill from within the ranks of your organization right you need to be finding the subject matter expert getting them up to low co and they're like oh we love the power platform but we don't want to touch the low code we don't want anybody just and i'm like well you you're missing the full put this full picture here you're missing the full way to create a model where you can sustain and not run out of resources to help you build your applications so when you talk about fusion teams how do you plain it and and and and what are the moving parts particularly not from a developer are because we'll get into that in a moment but from a business outcomes objective

[marcel]: 8:18
yeah that's a very interesting question and here's the thing like fusion development or fusion teams is not something that we created is just a

[mark]: 8:27
yes

[marcel]: 8:27
term that actually describes something which is happening the market so actually the first time someone used this term it was actually gardener who defines this term he defined his fusion development as distribute and multi disciplinary digital business teams that blend technology other types of the main expert times so again it's just a way of describing something which is happening is happening anyway you can call fusion development or you cannot call fusion development and that's okay some people don't like from pragmatic point of view the way i like to define fusion development arise and low code solutions with first god components for example this is a very pregmatic from developer point of view which is usually in the team where i am today it is the perspective that

[mark]: 9:18
yeah

[marcel]: 9:19
i look i look after the pro developer teaming that that context that's a

[mark]: 9:25
so if you

[marcel]: 9:26
yeah

[mark]: 9:26
if you were looking at fusion teams from a company perspective what would you know what would we consider mix of that team to look like and how would you define um or how would you encourage a company to think about developing their resource in that respect

[marcel]: 9:46
yeah um the main go

[mark]: 9:49
wow

[marcel]: 9:49
in fusion development is scaling the application development

[mark]: 9:53
yeah

[marcel]: 9:53
basically okay so

[mark]: 9:54
yeah

[marcel]: 9:54
as you said it is it is a it is a demand problem it's hard to hire new developers we don't have people with that time of experience working we need to do something we need to do something the market needs new developers and it's not that it is about empowering as well every organization on the planet to achieve more and sits and developers as well so who knows better about the company usually is what we call sits and developers so what sits an developer is is usually a business user he knows a lot about the business process and he has a clear idea about how to improve a process or he has a specific need like i need a nap for this process or i need to outomate this process so how can we how can we empower this user to achieve that does he need a developer does he need the too for that so that's mainly

[mark]: 10:54
yes

[marcel]: 10:55
the they need for fusion development

[mark]: 11:00
yeah

[marcel]: 11:01
okay

[mark]: 11:02
yeah yeah so so you know we've looked at citizen developer and they're one in a continuum of developer skills what are the other than if we expand out of fusion team beyond citizen developer what are the other type roles that you see that would make up a very robust scalable fusion team

[marcel]: 11:23
good question so again

[mark]: 11:26
yeah

[marcel]: 11:26
i might i might focus a lot in the pro

[mark]: 11:29
oh

[marcel]: 11:30
developer let me know if i go out of this cope but usually

[mark]: 11:32
yeah

[marcel]: 11:32
we have we have sits a developer as the business

[mark]: 11:36
oh

[marcel]: 11:36
user and we have a professional developer and the professional developer usually we classify in tree persons this is how we classify we classify as i t or the bobs engineer we classify as a front an developer or as a back and developer and i will quickly define each one of these person as they might be differen to people in this team they might be the same so the front end developer is the person responsible for the for the look and view of the applications right so he can be building is he can be building web controls this kind of thing the back end developer is the guy who built a p is or he has responsibility over the

[mark]: 12:24
yeah

[marcel]: 12:24
data where i start this data how do i model this data so this is the back developer and the devopsengineer or the itadiming is the person responsible for you to deploy that un to maintain as well he keeps the application running in product and he defines which environment it is and how do you move from death to test to production so this tree person as the developer are important we talked about the seats and developer as well and it is important to also someone with the view of project management skills how to facilitate the collaboration the important here it is we are not trying to make seats and developers code first developers and also we

[mark]: 13:15
correct

[marcel]: 13:15
are not trying to make code first developer seats and developers we want day to collaborate and do we want to meet them where r okay that's basically how do we see we don't want to change that

[mark]: 13:30
make totally makes sense so you've mentioned now a couple of times the word collaborate and so tell me about the tools around things like the power platform visual studio gethubzor what's a microstoph providing that allow collaboration between really four different developer persons right citizen developer id devops developed the front end and the back end developers what's the collaboration frameworks that you're putting in in place across those assets like power platform visit studio get up and azure

[marcel]: 14:04
yeah it's a very good question because of very common assumption when many a developer for example i interact a lot with developers and i am a developer myself when they see loco o they think but i don't want to stop coding but hey hang on we don't want you to stop coding definitely now keep coding please we need you so we do have

[marcel_: 14:26
our man too is really our

[mark]: 14:29
we

[marcel]: 14:30
vs code

[mark]: 14:31
yeah

[marcel]: 14:31
integration o v s code integration you can do front frontin developer backhand development and now so i t or the obs and

[mark]: 14:41
yeah

[marcel]: 14:41
what supports this is a two that we call paccliunpac lize basically a common line interface it is a common

[mark]: 14:50
yeah

[marcel]: 14:50
interface for the developers to enter act with the companies of a power platform a so again

[mark]: 14:59
yeah

[marcel]: 14:59
vasco extension is the key but we have also we don't want to dictate what to do you want to use if you use assure evops we do have but tasks specifically for for sure develops for you to keep your c c there if you use get up we have getubactions where you can oltomate all our work flows and also you can abstract lots of complicated tasks and let me give a concrete example of that you ask

[mark]: 15:31
oh

[marcel]: 15:31
about collaboration as i said don't want to make

[mark]: 15:35
ah

[marcel]: 15:35
seats and developers developers seats and developers they usually they don't know what is a source control they don't know what is a checking they don't know what is a poor request and that's fine they don't need to know but we need the developer the pro developer to build a safe to fa environment

[mark]: 15:55
yeah

[marcel]: 15:55
where the cits on developer they can explore they can view their applications and they can feet in the process under the hoods and get hub actions is a way for you to do that we have we

[mark]: 16:07
yeah

[marcel]: 16:07
have a co to kit for example which facilitate this collaborate and there are multiple ways for you to abstract all these complicated concepts to the to the citizen dave and what else we also have visual s to do integration for for developers who be dat is

[mark]: 16:27
yeah

[marcel]: 16:27
for example you can publish your apis in easure unction you can use a pi management as a gateway and you can create a connector with one clicking measure portal and we we are always looking after this perience we don't want the developer to leave their development environment we want the developer to be there another thing that you can see even in the but we just did an announcement in which is m custom connectors which is a way for you to connect your apis you can use these

[mark]: 17:04
yeah

[marcel]: 17:04
now as a code first control so developers can use to

[mark]: 17:10
kay

[marcel]: 17:10
our view scold extension or pexialie

[mark]: 17:12
yeah

[marcel]: 17:14
to interact with with our platform as well without the need of leaving their development environment so we have we have too many to se lots of those ways to integrate our platform

[mark]: 17:26
are you coming across any and you know you don't need to mention any name specifically but anybody you know out in the community that is doing this as well it's getting these teams framed up well using the full advantage of the collaboration tools that mark toft is providing here do you have any kind of use cases where it's working well

[marcel]: 17:47
we have a couple of years we have a couple of there and this is this is where what is interesting everyone has their own way of doing things so for example i mentioned that we have integration specifically with sure bobs and also get ub there are some people using different tools

[mark]: 18:08
yeah

[marcel]: 18:08
and they are using packs he allied to ultimate their processes their c i s the and it is working well we have some we have some

[mark]: 18:19
yeah

[marcel]: 18:20
some cases where only professional developers are using which that's fine as well they find for example if you have a team they don't focus reading in the u they want a quick way for them to is the a p is that they have for a platform is fantastic for that because you can very very easily but the u and just publish your

[mark]: 18:43
oh

[marcel]: 18:43
apiserasceston connectors but application really really simple um

[mark]: 18:50
yeah

[marcel]: 18:50
in the r p world for example is always very expensive if you want to custemize anything power as is a fantastic way for you to create very simple obligation and i m not high cost and very very effective and you still have have all the governance all the controls all the alm processes so and there is not only one way of doing this there is no right way

[marcel_]: 19:19
there is no

[mark]: 19:19
yeah

[marcel]: 19:19
wrong way the important thing it is to find the best way to collaborate and to make everybody welcome if they want to country it

[mark]: 19:27
i like it what resources do you recommend that people if they want to explore one you know using fusion teams and fusion development and really understanding is proper and and applying at the various tools what resources do you recommend they look at

[marcel]: 19:44
yeah if you are a professional developer specifically we have our documentation we are actually building new commendation for developers who are not familiar to the platform so it's a great star one point if you go to a k a dot s slash fusion dev uh can i just quickly confirm the link yeah sorry for that just a minute

[mark]: 20:20
that's all right that's all right

[marcel]: 20:21
oh

[mark]: 20:22
yeah

[marcel]: 20:23
okay i got the wrong one okay so yes we do have

[mark]: 20:29
yes

[marcel]: 20:30
we are refuting we are creating documentation for developers who are not familiar to the platform and the link for that is aka

[mark]: 20:40
yeah

[marcel]: 20:40
dot ms lash power dev

[mark]: 20:44
powerdev yep

[marcel]: 20:45
yes

[mark]: 20:45
yep

[marcel]: 20:46
a dot ms slash power dev so this is the commendation for any developer professional developer are we called cold first developer so you can't understand what are they tention points

[mark]: 20:58
oh

[marcel]: 20:58
and how to get familiar how to

[mark]: 21:00
yeah

[marcel]: 21:00
extend the platform we also have a dot as slash fusion let

[mark]: 21:06
oh

[marcel]: 21:06
that's a book for as our developers it goes a step by step for you to create a fusion story and gives more deep eep example on what fusion development is and also a dot s slash fusion development that's learning content on that

[mark]: 21:29
excellent okay a hat's a great lot of resources and closing out as anything you'd like to add

[marcel]: 21:35
uh yes just one thing also lots of people ask about license we have a plan called developer plan so

[mark]: 21:44
yeah

[marcel]: 21:44
in these documentation that i found you can find you can try for free the developer plan has no limitations

[mark]: 21:50
yeah

[marcel]: 21:51
at all for you to using test and development environment so go ahead and also give your feedback for us would be keen to hear me use cases

[mark]: 21:59
yeah

[marcel]: 21:59
and interact with professional developers and yeah that's it

[mark]: 22:05
i like it i like it marcel thank you so much for coming on the show

[marcel]: 22:10
fantastic thank you very much always good to talk to new zealand