Apidays New York 2024 - The secrets to Graph success, by Leah Hurwich Adler, Culture Builder

The secrets to Graph success, from inception to general availability
Leah Hurwich Adler, Associate Director | Technical Strategist | Team Leader | Culture Builder | Skilled Communicator

Apidays New York 2024: The API Economy in the AI Era (April 30 & May 1, 2024)

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1. The Secrets to Graph Success, from Inception to General Availability API Days New York, 2024 Leah Hurwich Adler Senior Staff PM, Apollo GraphQL

2. You should walk away with Best practices to establish trust and garner support A framework to map your own graph adoption journey Examples of how to apply best practices at different stages of your graph maturity This session will focus on how to successfully advocate for a federated GraphQL platform

3. Platforms must deliver measurable and perceived value to succeed Measurable Value “Data shows this was a good investment because… Perceived Value “I feel like this was a good investment because…” “We love to believe we are rational, thinking people who, on occasion, feel some emotion … Everything we know about who we are as people neurobiologically points to one thing and that is we are emotional, feeling beings who on occasion think.” Brene Brown, (SxSW Keynote 2016)

4. Platforms must deliver measurable and perceived value to succeed Measurable Value “Data shows this was a good investment because… Perceived Value “I feel like this was a good investment because…” “...it makes my job easier” I can focus on building solutions germaine to my workspace instead of reinventing the wheel. Platforms reduce friction in the dev cycle. “...it solves problems that keep me up at night” I need to level up my technical stack to compete I can worry less about infrastructure concerns because someone else is. “...It saves on cost” Centralizing shared capabilities reduces the cost of creating extensible solutions. Better site reliability reduces incidents and related costs. “...it improves business performance” Faster time to market and quicker experimentation lead to better business results. Faster page loads improve conversion, sales, and customer satisfaction

5. The Secret to Success Lies in Understanding Your Org Build relationships to educate users, identify pain points, and more strategically grow your graph. Know Your Users

6. Educate senior leaders to more effectively garner support . Engage Leaders Build relationships to educate users, identify pain points, and more strategically grow your graph. Know Your Users The Secret to Success Lies in Understanding Your Org

7. Manage others’ expectations to build trust and improve your brand Set Clear Expectations Build relationships to educate users, identify pain points, and more strategically grow your graph. Know Your Users Educate senior leaders to more effectively garner support. Engage Leaders The Secret to Success Lies in Understanding Your Org

8. Manage others’ expectations to build trust and improve your brand Set Clear Expectations Recognize it takes time for people to see things differently or change their minds. Be Patient Build relationships to educate users, identify pain points, and more strategically grow your graph. Know Your Users Educate senior leaders to more effectively garner support. Engage Leaders The Secret to Success Lies in Understanding Your Org

9. Real World Example

10. Real World Example Leading home goods retailer Fortune 500 Company Owns five unique brands, each with their own website and native app, that operate across multiple geographies Beginning to move into omnichannel Offers 14M items from more than 11K global suppliers Employs over 2,000 engineers supporting 100s of millions of daily visitors

11. Define Your Starting Point Based on Company Needs Start Challenge 1: Lack of GraphQL Expertise. Limited GraphQL knowledge degraded endpoint performance , negatively impacting the business. Know Your Users

12. Start Challenge 1: Lack of GraphQL Expertise. Limited GraphQL knowledge degraded endpoint performance , negatively impacting the business. Know Your Users Challenge 2: We needed a change to keep growing the business. Teams all contributed to a 20 year old monolith. The company reached a peak in its deploy velocity. Engage Leaders Define Your Starting Point Based on Company Needs

13. Design With Customers To Create Greater Buy In How it helped Ensured our proposed solution would work across teams What we did Leveraged working groups to solve concrete problems Know Your Users Design (~8 months) Start

14. Design With Customers To Create Greater Buy In Design (~8 months) Start How it helped Ensured our proposed solution would work across teams What we did Leveraged working groups to solve concrete problems Know Your Users How it helped Secured required funding to continue to grow our graph What we did Engaged leadership early in our platform strategy Engage Leaders

15. Design With Customers To Create Greater Buy In Design (~8 months) Start How it helped Created buy-in to move slow to move fast What we did Emphasized federation was a cultural change Set Clear Expectations How it helped Secured required funding to continue to grow our graph What we did Engaged leadership early in our platform strategy Engage Leaders How it helped Ensured our proposed solution would work across teams What we did Leveraged working groups to solve concrete problems Know Your Users

16. Invest in Community to Disseminate Best Practices Rollout (~16 months) Design (~8 months) How it helped Enabled us to deliver significant business value sooner What we did Supported pilots while building our foundational platform Know Your Users Start

17. Rollout (~16 months) Design (~8 months) Start How it helped Enabled us to deliver significant business value sooner What we did Supported pilots while building our foundational platform Know Your Users How it helped Ensured continued buy in when challenges arose What we did Provided regular updates to pivotal leaders identified in our design phase. Engage Leaders Invest in Community to Expedite Platform Rollout

18. Rollout (~16 months) Design (~8 months) Start How it helped Enabled us to deliver significant business value sooner What we did Supported pilots while building our foundational platform Know Your Users How it helped Allowed us to increase our impact without further growing our team. What we did Articulated clear goals and working models for both our platform and pilots Set Clear Expectations How it helped Ensured continued buy in when challenges arose What we did Provided regular updates to pivotal leaders identified in our design phase. Engage Leaders Invest in Community to Expedite Platform Rollout

19. General Availability Rollout (~16 months) Design (~8 months) Leverage Your Expanding User Base to Prioritize Needs How it helped Ensure proposed solutions will work across teams What we did Maintain multiple avenues to hear from different types of users Know Your Users Start

20. General Availability Rollout (~16 months) Design (~8 months) Leverage Your Expanding User Base to Prioritize Needs Start How it helped Ensure proposed solutions will work across teams What we did Maintain multiple avenues to hear from different types of users Know Your Users How it helped Control the narrative, maintaining the teams’ positive brand What we did Provide regular leadership updates Engage Leaders

21. General Availability Rollout (~16 months) Design (~8 months) Leverage Your Expanding User Base to Prioritize Needs Start How it helped Ensure proposed solutions will work across teams What we did Maintain multiple avenues to hear from different types of users Know Your Users How it helped Control the narrative, maintaining the teams’ positive brand What we did Provide regular leadership updates Engage Leaders How it helped Expedites learnings and aligns teams around universal best practices What we did Empowered users while maintaining that we were an opinionated platform. Set Clear Expectations

22. After two years, the federated graph handled 220M+ requests across ~80 subgraphs 220M+ Daily Requests < 20ms Round trip latency 99.999% Uptime 3 contracts 80 subgraphs Across Powered by That’s highly performant 500 Users 7 platform team members 35 SMEs accountable for graph governance +5% Monthly Increase 100 Questions monthly Growing at Asking Supported by The Community The Graph

23. Building a Federated Graph is Not a Linear Process Be Patient Instead of this…. General Availability Rollout (~16 months) Design (~8 months)

24. Building a Federated Graph is Not a Linear Process Be Patient Instead of this…. General Availability Rollout (~16 months) Design (~8 months) Think This….

25. Learning Takes Time: Keep Iterating and Play the Long Game 4 Terms cycled through before aligning on our graph governance body 3 Graph architectures considered before aligning on our final design 2 Years from our first tiger team to reaching general availability 1 Year from beginning to advocate for, until spinning up our governance body Be Patient

26. Learning Takes Time: Keep Iterating and Play the Long Game 4 Terms cycled through before aligning on our graph governance body 3 Graph architectures considered before aligning on our final design 2 Years from our first tiger team to reaching general availability 1 Year from beginning to advocate for, until spinning up our governance body Be Patient Key Callout: Being patient does not mean passively waiting. You must work to build momentum. Publicly celebrate small wins and take credit for how your graph contributed to users’ success stories.

27. Enthusiastic Novice High Level WHY Go deep on WHAT Enthusiastic Expert Let them share the WHY and the WHAT Skeptical Novice High Level WHY High Level WHAT Skeptical Expert Go deep on WHY Let them share WHAT Interest Proficiency Build momentum by converting skeptics into enthusiasts Stakeholder Squares Be Patient

28. Move stakeholders up and to the right in the “stakeholder squares” framework, focusing on incremental change. Advocates and early adopters’ success stories were our most effective tool in slowly garnering this support. Enthusiastic Novice High Level WHY Go deep on WHAT Enthusiastic Expert Let them share the WHY and the WHAT Skeptical Novice High Level WHY High Level WHAT Skeptical Expert Go deep on WHY Let them share WHAT Interest Proficiency Stakeholder Squares Be Patient Default Build momentum by converting skeptics into enthusiasts

29. Enthusiastic Novice High Level WHY Go deep on WHAT Enthusiastic Expert Let them share the WHY and the WHAT Skeptical Novice High Level WHY High Level WHAT Skeptical Expert Go deep on WHY Let them share WHAT Interest Proficiency Stakeholder Squares Default Be Patient Build momentum by converting skeptics into enthusiasts Move stakeholders up and to the right in the “stakeholder squares” framework, focusing on incremental change. Advocates and early adopters’ success stories were our most effective tool in slowly garnering this support.

30. Enthusiastic Novice High Level WHY Go deep on WHAT Enthusiastic Expert Let them share the WHY and the WHAT Skeptical Novice High Level WHY High Level WHAT Skeptical Expert Go deep on WHY Let them share WHAT Interest Proficiency Stakeholder Squares Default Be Patient Build momentum by converting skeptics into enthusiasts Move stakeholders up and to the right in the “stakeholder squares” framework, focusing on incremental change. Advocates and early adopters’ success stories will be your most effective tool in slowly garnering support. Influence

31. Enthusiastic Novice High Level WHY Go deep on WHAT Enthusiastic Expert Let them share the WHY and the WHAT Skeptical Novice High Level WHY High Level WHAT Skeptical Expert Go deep on WHY Let them share WHAT Interest Proficiency Stakeholder Squares Default Be Patient Build momentum by converting skeptics into enthusiasts Move stakeholders up and to the right in the “stakeholder squares” framework, focusing on incremental change. Advocates and early adopters’ success stories will be your most effective tool in slowly garnering support. Influence

32. Recognize it takes time for people to see things differently or change their minds. Be Patient Your Organization is Your Key to Perceived and Measurable Success Manage others’ expectations to build trust and improve your brand Set Clear Expectations Educate senior leaders to more effectively garner support . Engage Leaders Build relationships to educate users, identify pain points, and more strategically grow your graph. Know Your Users