On this podcast episode, we sit down with Jared Pritchard, Factor Principal Consultant, to discuss:

• Importance of Testing Business Outcomes: Jared emphasizes the need to focus on testing whether the right thing is built, rather than merely testing if it was built correctly, highlighting the importance of aligning technical development with business objectives.
• Advantages of Low-Code Solutions: They discuss the benefits of using low-code solutions like Microsoft’s Power Platform and Dynamics 365, including lower costs, faster turnaround times, and access to mature and secure platforms that can be easily integrated with existing systems.
• Significance of Company Culture and Expertise: They highlight the importance of company culture, relationships, and expertise in successfully delivering projects, emphasizing how The Factor’s focus on its people and their skills contributes to its success as a solutions partner.

These points encapsulate key insights about testing methodologies, the value of low-code solutions, and the role of company culture and expertise in driving project success.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Jared Pritchard: I think because the platforms quite easily understood that sort of level of detail creeps into the requirements rather than, yeah, what’s the business outcome? What are we trying to achieve? When we’d write those stories and test against them, we should be testing that we’ve built the right thing rather than we’ve built the thing right. so there’s like a subtle difference there. Yeah, testing that we’ve built the thing right might be like unit testing and that the field is in a particular spot, so maybe we’ve got some Y frames or something when that’s needed. But testing we’ve built the right thing would be, if we’ve tested the first thing, so tested that we’ve built the thing we might say, yes, the field is in that section on that form as prescribed, but we’re not testing whether that field should be there in the first place.

[00:00:46] Juvi Rivera: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the IT Factor podcast. I’m your host, Juvi Rivera, and I’m the digital marketing manager for The Factor. Today, I’m interviewing Jared. Pitch hard. Jared is a Principal Consultant with The Factor specialising in the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform space as a solutions architect. He has over 20 years experience in the IT industry, starting as a full stack developer on what was Australia’s largest water trading platform. He then spent eight years as a business analyst, scrum master, and business architect before returning to his passion in technology.

He’s a black belt in Taekwondo, husband to Zoe, and a proud dad of three cheeky kids. Welcome to the podcast, Jared.

Juvie. So I want to ask you a few softball questions. How long have you been doing taekwondo?

[00:02:07] Jared Pritchard: I haven’t done it in many years. I finished up in 2010. I think it was, but I don’t think I’ve ever done it.

I think the journey started, I think the journey took about five years to get to the black belt.

[00:02:17] Juvi Rivera: Yeah, cool. What made you start that?

[00:02:20] Jared Pritchard: It’s just a bit of fun, bit of fitness, that sort of thing. Martial arts has that kind of a certain appeal and just wanted to try something new.

I dabbled in a few different things. Canoe polo was another one. So that was, I think just before Taekwondo. So that was, getting in the boats and the kayaks and the pool and throwing a ball around and trying to score goals. And when I moved on from that one, I just was wondering, what’s next and so yeah, I chose Taekwondo.

[00:02:48] Juvi Rivera: I feel like your interest in all these sports parallel your interest in your career and how it’s just balanced between a lot of different things. I used to do karate.

I think I got up to a green belt when I was. 14 or 15, and I too love a good water sport. I did did dragon boating for a little while. Oh yeah. That’s hard work. Yeah. A lot of hard work. But yeah. I love that you have this appetite to try different things. And as a result of that in your own career, as well as your personal life, you’ve had all of these skills.

And so what I found interesting as we talk about your history before coming to Factor is that you started your career as a developer, then as a BA, then a scrum master and a business architect which is pretty much running the gambit in the terms of careers in the IT space.

Can you tell us a little bit about how and why you ended up in those roles?

[00:03:56] Jared Pritchard: Yeah so I started, freshly out of school. I worked for my dad for a little while. He’s a draftsman, so I did a bit of drafting work and we did some work for a guy- this is back in Dubbo, my hometown, and just did some work for a guy who wanted to, this is the water trading platform.

So he had this marketplace where you could buy and sell water allocations for your farm, and he wanted to build a little mini data center at the back of his building that he had. And so we did some drafting work for him and I got talking to him and I’d always been interested in computers . I’d studied that at school and so on.

As we were talking, just fell into doing some bits of bits and pieces for him just to uplift his website. Now, can you. Make an ad for me, like a little image that for a broker, we can put on the website. And can you fix this little part over here? And can you get in there and fix that bit over there?

Can you add this feature? And so I taught myself as I went this. So it was old programming language. And he didn’t have an IT team at that time. His IT guy had left. It was like one man operation. So slowly I picked up all these bits and pieces and suddenly I looked after the database and the operating systems and everything and cutting that story short, I suppose he moved to Canberra.

I followed down there and eventually moved on to what was Cordelta at the time. We went to Cordelta to redo the water trading platform from scratch basically. And I went over it as a subject matter expert and the guys at Cordelta said you’re actually pretty good at explaining how you do things and why you do things and those requirements.

Have you ever thought of being a business analyst? And I didn’t even know what that was at the time. I thought, okay, it sounds. Yeah, pretty interesting. And my boss from this water exchange he was quite happy to let me go and contract us back in. Then he didn’t have to find me work all the time.

I made that transition . With the water exchange, I was with them for 7 or 8 years so full stack development there. And then with Cordelta, I took on that more business analyst side, understanding requirements and diagramming things and writing up, technical specs or tech writing, I should say specifications and yeah, dabbled, just exploring what else is out there, but a project management, a bit of solution architecture, scrum mastering, did scrum mastering for a number of years with especially with CSIRO, one of the clients. So that was, a bit of a journey in itself into that aspect of things. But as I went along, I felt that I really missed that sort of technical side and diving into code and building tangible things. So eventually just shifted back into that role and went from there.

[00:06:41] Juvi Rivera: That’s really interesting how you you’ve seen both sides, like the business side and then you started off the development side and then you came back, full circle back to development. And I think a lot of people like Kieran’s one of them, he started Factor because, he was off the tools for a while and he just like really wanted to be more hands on.

And I feel like that’s definitely what separates a lot of like true, like developer, like IT people, like they just really love the hands on tactile work.

[00:07:15] Jared Pritchard: Yeah. And I did find it. Yeah, I guess playing both sides, like more of the business side and more of the technical side. It’s a really rounded out, my experience.

So I understand where the BA’s are coming from when they’re talking about things, but I understand what the developers need in terms of guidance from requirements and so on. So I found that it’s really helped a lot.

[00:07:38] Juvi Rivera: Can you give us an example of how BAs and developers kind of buttheads because they lack that 360 scope that you would have.

[00:07:47] Jared Pritchard: Some of the ones I run into fairly often would be a business analyst that might be very technical in their requirements. What we really want is an understanding of what the business needs. The BA I see is a translator basically.

So they talk to business, they understand the business problem and need, and they translate it to the team so the team can go away and build what’s needed. But what can happen is the BAs will go and listen to the business. They understand the problem really well, but then instead of articulating that problem, they’ll convert it in their head already into the solution, and we end up with requirements that are very solution oriented, which can be a problem when it gets to developers and solution architects. I’m in a solution architect role now where the requirements were handed are actually how to build the system rather than what to build or why and we’ll often find there’s a much better way to do it.

All the way it’s prescribed is not secure or something like that. And for us to, if we have a better way to do it, it’s not just go and do it the better way because it’s in all the acceptance criteria. That’s what the testers are going to get test against bugs are going to get raised and so on.

So there’s a lot of back and forward just in making sure the requirements and what we’re going to build or be tested against match what the solution should be, basically. So I find that’s a really common one. Yeah. There’s sometimes a bit of coaching, or guidance, just helping the BAs understand what’s useful for us as developers and solution architects and designers.

Which usually goes quite well, but it can be a big mind shift because people are used to doing things in a particular way. And there’s a lot of gray area as well. Because sometimes you’ve built something and if you get feedback from users and all you need to do is tweak a part of the UI or add some hover text and people are like isn’t this design is that’s okay.

We can be pragmatic too.

[00:09:46] Juvi Rivera: I love how you describe BAs as like translators. Code in itself is like a whole other language too. So you’re, trying to translate like a business problem into a solution and then also understanding what is possible. Do you find that with the emergence of low code solutions, does that translation make it easier?

[00:10:10] Jared Pritchard: I’ll probably find the opposite. So with low code like these platforms, like the ones we work with in Power Platform and Dynamics 365 people who have been around it for a while, the BAs and the testers, they get used to it and they understand, oh, yeah, we’re creating a table or an entity and adding a form and a view.

Because I think there’s a lower learning curve they get used to that and that sort of language creeps into the requirements and acceptance criteria. Instead of saying for example we have an event and we need to capture the budget and the user as entering the budget needs to be able to put it in different currencies because we’re working across the globe instead of describing requirements like that.

We’ll get a requirement that says add a currency field to this table and this form in this position and then calculate. Yeah, XYZ as a result. What the BA may not realize is we’ve already got a currency field there. It’s just behind the scenes. And we’re calculating things in a slightly different way because it rolls up better or a whole range of things.

Yeah, I think because the platforms quite easily understood that sort of level of detail creeps into the requirements rather than, yeah, what’s the business outcome? What are we trying to achieve? When we’d write those stories and test against them, we should be testing that we’ve built the right thing rather than we’ve built the thing right. so there’s like a subtle difference there. Testing that we’ve built the thing right might be like unit testing and that the field is in a particular spot, so maybe we’ve got some Y frames or something when that’s needed. But testing we’ve built the right thing would be that we’ve built the thing we might say, yes, the field is in that section on that form as prescribed, but we’re not testing whether that field should be there in the first place.

So it doesn’t achieve the business outcome by having that basically.

We need to know, what’s the goal? What are we trying to achieve from the business side? Yeah. Okay. So we are working globally and we need to capture these event budgets in multiple currencies.

So then I can take that away and go, what’s the best design for this? How should we approach this? Do we take the out of the box currency field and put it in there? Do we capture the market rates market exchange rate or the budget exchange rate from the department of finance against that is a separate reference data, how we’re going to manage all this stuff and bring it into the event budget.

So yeah, we take the goal, the, what are we trying to do and why, and then we figure out how.

[00:12:41] Juvi Rivera: I’d like to touch back on the type of solution that we use. So at Factor, we specialise in low code business solution as you say, Power Platform and Dynamics 365. So let’s make it super simple for people. How would you describe low code? No code and pro code versus bespoke engagement?

[00:13:06] Jared Pritchard: Yeah, sure. I think it’s a good question. I think for our conversation. Let’s define those, especially probably between pro code and bespoke.

, I think no code and low code. Probably pretty intuitive to people. No code is pretty much what it says on the tin that there’s no code involved. So if you want to build a system to solve some problem, it’s you don’t have to, write JavaScript or understand a programming language.

[00:13:30] Jared Pritchard: Usually these sorts of tools visual there’s a UI you might be dragging and dropping things onto a form and laying things out like that. So you don’t have to get your hands dirty with code. Maybe a simple example would be Microsoft Excel. So you don’t have to code anything like disregard formulas, but if you just want to put in some data and drag and drop a pivot table or a graph one you can do that quite easily.

Low code. Is that sort of next level up? Typically, we’d still have drag and drop stuff. We can pull some things onto a, onto some sort of layout and configure how the system will work. But then we have the option of some basic coding and there might be some really simple expressions . Let’s take Excel again, so that might be where you’re getting into formulas now. Maybe some of the more advanced formulas. So you can extend a bit of the functionality and tweak how it behaves in the Power Platform world. That might be something like power automate to automate some of your workflows.

Then we have pro code. So pro code is when we are now looking at something that requires actual coding experience. It’s a more traditional coding. But I’m going to differentiate it from bespoke development. So I’m going to talk about pro code in the sense that this can still be on a platform like Dynamics or Dataverse where you might have a plugin, for example, so you can extend the system by writing a plugin, and that might be in a more serious lack of a better term, serious coding language like NET or something like that. So this is, yeah, where we need more of that specialisation in coding but we’re still talking about, extending a platform that might be low code

and I’m going to talk about bespoke development as something that’s like completely custom made something that’s tailored to very specific needs of a client or projects usually very unique requirements. basically we’re starting from scratch effectively. So take that Excel example again, a pro code example in Excel might be writing VBA Scripts, macros whereas with bespoke development, you might be writing your own Google sheets alternative to Excel.

Yeah, ground up kind of thing. You could use libraries and pull in a few other tools and so on, but basically, yeah, starting from scratch.

[00:15:54] Juvi Rivera: What would be the benefit of doing a bespoke engagement versus just building off of something that already has like a low code to pro code platform?

[00:16:07] Jared Pritchard: So bespoke development, there are times when you definitely need that. What it gives you a bespoke development is Complete customisation. So you’re not limited by some of the constraints of a platform.

You can just basically do what you want. You have that complete flexibility and control. There might be times when there are just no tools out there for the kind of work that you want to do. Maybe you have a very unique mobile application that needs to talk to some specific hardware and there’s just no platforms out there to do that so you’d write from scratch. Or completely from scratch website you’ve developed for your unique branding needs. Some sort of functionality or features that you just can’t get from a website platform.

[00:16:52] Juvi Rivera: What would be the benefits of going to a platform like Microsoft that has the low code to pro code suite built in?

[00:17:02] Jared Pritchard: Heaps of benefits. I’ll start with just the total cost of ownership.

Generally speaking, not always the case, but generally speaking the initial cost in developing your system is much lower. A lot of the groundwork’s already done for you. For example, a lot of the security’s already in place. Then you’re building on top of that security or some of the basic functionality.

So you don’t have to reinvent that stuff. So the initial cost is usually lower. It’s also easier, to use these drag and drop things that’s probably simplifying a bit too much, but these things are very modular. You can just drop things in and just configure them versus a long time in developing something from the ground up. There’s also lower maintenance costs. If you’re upgrading, you don’t have to worry about upgrading your platforms usually for, if it’s like a SAS offering that’s done for you by the vendor. So the ongoing costs are lower.

You do have licensing fees that you wouldn’t have but on the whole yeah, it’s a lower cost of ownership. Generally get a faster turnaround time especially initially, like you can get something out to your stakeholders and they can see what’s happening and give you feedback. So it’s really quite conducive for an agile methodology where you have sprints, for example, and you want to show progress quite often. I Think as well, another key one is the level of maturity in these platforms. It does depend on, which low code, no code platform you’re going with, of course, but, generally the vendors who are providing these have Invested a lot of money and time in getting it quite mature and robust.

Yeah, the security is there. It’s been tested. They’re throwing everything at it. The performance has been tested. So yeah, so you get a lot of that sort of stuff and you get a lot of the interoperability. So you’re able to integrate with other systems quite easily.

You get a lot of features and functionality get rolled out all the time. So your investment keeps paying for itself. Like Microsoft, if we’re talking Power Platform, they’re releasing new functionality all the time. They might be introducing new apps on top of Yeah, the dataverse which might address a particular vertical or so on.

Yeah, so you’re you’re just getting that as part of your license. You get the support as well. You get yeah, you get a whole host of things that you wouldn’t get if you’re bespoke build. Yeah.

[00:19:27] Juvi Rivera: And don’t forget about the AI integrations as well. Can’t forget about that.

[00:19:34] Jared Pritchard: Try bespoke building co pilot.

Let’s see how that goes.

[00:19:37] Juvi Rivera: Exactly. Exactly. So I think it’s safe to say that there will always be space for bespoke engagement, but overall being able to host your business applications on something like Microsoft will give you a greater return on your investment and make sure that your business app will continue to stay current with the times.

So that’s what’s really exciting about working with Microsoft. Are there any other particular reasons why, you know, the public sector or federal government would want to partner with Microsoft? Are there specific pain points within those industry that Microsoft can solve?.

[00:20:18] Jared Pritchard: Yeah. So just some obvious benefits that we’ve touched on already, which, there’s your total cost of ownership and having secure platforms and faster turnaround times things like that, which, yeah, everyone’s going to want I think with FedGov in particular, there’s usually policies within the departments or the agencies, which advise that we should be using commercial off the shelf software or there’s platforms or sometimes government software first before we go to bespoke development that comes from a review.

I think it was in 2008 as the Gershon report Which got turned into policy with that direction to save the public service a lot of money. So to be more efficient in the way that they build their systems. I think that’s very important. If you can utilise Dynamics 365 sales or customer service or something, rather than building your own case management system then that’s going towards that general principle. Why Microsoft in particular, because there are obviously other vendors out there, I think some of the key things for Microsoft is they’re very big. They’re very big. They know what they’re doing.

They’ve been around for a long time. They’re not going away soon. They invest tens of billions of dollars in research and development every year. So the products that come out like Dynamics and the Power Platform and Power BI and Virtual Agents and all of those things. They’ve sunk so much money in testing it and testing with users and testing the security and testing everything.

They’ve got all the user experience theory that have gone into it. So they spend a lot of time and. in building these things out really well. With smaller vendors, you’re obviously not going to get that level. So it’s really just, it’s world class in terms of your security and your features and extensibility.

And you also get the support from Microsoft is usually very good. And I think as well, a lot of organisations and a lot of government bodies in particular will have Microsoft So things like Active Directory and Azure Active Directory or Entra, as it’s called now and Outlook and Office.

I guess it’s a natural step to then bring in the Power Platform, which natively integrates with all this stuff. When you’re setting up security and Dynamics, for example, you can use a security group from Azure Active Directory Entra. I’m going to correct myself. Yeah. And I think as well, they got, an excellent, partner network.

So like The Factor, like ourselves there are lots of partners out there working with Microsoft. So there’s lots of resources available to do the implementations.

[00:23:01] Juvi Rivera: Yeah and what does it mean to be a Microsoft business partner?

[00:23:06] Jared Pritchard: A couple of key things there.

So to become a partner, you need to reach certain levels and have certain competencies or certifications. So with the fact that we have to have a certain number of our staff certified in the stuff that we specialise in for us to reach, silver and gold status as a partner and have to have worked with a certain number of customers and so on.

It shows immediately a level of maturity and proficiency and skill, like we’ve shown we can deliver. We’ve shown that we are training our staff. So just to even get that partner status that’s a great indicator that you’re working with a reliable company. We have access into Microsoft so we can access resources that non partners can’t access.

Yeah, that’s probably another key one.

 

[00:23:58] Juvi Rivera: Why would we be chosen as a solutions partner for the federal government to create Microsoft solutions for them.

[00:24:10] Jared Pritchard: Yep, good question. So what differentiates us basically from other partners out there? Yeah So number one, we specialise in the Power Platform. So we specialise in, Dynamics 365, Dataverse, Power Automate ,Canvas apps, all these sort of low code, no code slash sometimes pro code platforms.

That’s our bread and butter. So we know it really well. We’re not distracted by other disciplines. I if someone is looking for a partner in the Power Platform or business applications we’re very skilled at it. I think our decades of experience within just our executives including, some that have held, senior Microsoft positions So having access to knowledge and people and resources and yeah, just having that experience is another differentiator.

We do have, security clearances, so that’s important for a federal government. Sometimes you just need that baseline or negative vet one kind of clearance. So you can just do some of the work and above. I think as well, we’ve got a, great track record of some of the clients we’ve been working with.

Obviously available on the website. And just personally, I think the culture of The Factor is fantastic. Which can just help with the morale in teams. I think, it’s a good group of people. We like having fun. It’s one of our values is have fun. We also have these Factor Fridays which is a monthly get together of Factor folk and we go and learn, we upskill and just get together and chat about our experiences and share things. I think that’s really unique. I haven’t seen that before. Not to this level. Yeah. And I think probably one last one is with our our goal of the work that we do leading to good societal outcomes.

I think that’s a differentiator as well

[00:26:12] Juvi Rivera: you touched on a lot of great points. I like to believe that the solutions that we come up with are a product of the investment that we make in our people and in our culture and in creating a space . Yes, delivering is a priority, but also, Being a place where people actually want to work stay motivated to work together.

And there’s a lot of engagements I can imagine, right? That don’t neatly go from A to B. It’s been known to happen. Yeah, it’s been known to happen. But when you have a group of people that you truly enjoy working with, it definitely makes those bumps in the road a lot easier for everyone, for both clients and for developers and for the BAs, just everyone all around, right?

[00:27:04] Jared Pritchard: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You need to these relationships and things you build up through like Factor Friday and just the culture I think really help people just get through those bumps and stick together more. They don’t feel alone. So yeah, it just helps people stick to it.

[00:27:21] Juvi Rivera: Yeah. I think we’ve covered everything that I wanted to talk about today. And I’ve learned a lot of new things about you and also about low code, no code, pro code. I am a novice at all of this. So whenever I interview you experts on this subject matter, I’m always just I’m a student.

So thank you for taking the time to share what you know about this space and to all of the listeners who do tune in and also want to learn. If you’d like to learn more about how we provide these low code solutions, you can look at our website. We have a few offers at the moment. Factor advise is one of them where we go in and we advise you on how to go from, perhaps a more bespoke IT solution to a low code, no code solution. Specifically Power Platform and Dynamics 365. You can find us at Thefactor.com.au and you if you want to learn more about any of our offerings, you can contact us at sales@thefactor.com.au. Jared, do you have any last things you’d like to say?

[00:28:39] Jared Pritchard: We’ll keep this podcast under two hours, I think. Yeah. Thanks for chatting. It’s been fun.

[00:28:45] Juvi Rivera: Yeah, thank you so much for coming on and that’s it for this episode of the IT Factor podcast, and we’ll catch you guys next time.

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