Coffee with Developers

How does a major retailer transform its 95% legacy tech stack? By reorganizing into 64 agile product teams and moving to a cloud-native architecture.

#1about 2 minutes

Tracing a CIO's passion back to the Commodore 64

An early fascination with coding in BASIC and directly manipulating memory on home computers sparked a lifelong career in technology.

#2about 3 minutes

Why the retail industry is ripe for digital transformation

The retail sector presents a massive opportunity to leverage underutilized data and modernize processes, especially with the rise of e-commerce.

#3about 4 minutes

Shifting from a hierarchy to autonomous product teams

Moving from a traditional hierarchical structure to small, fully-staffed product teams enables faster decision-making and high-speed delivery.

#4about 5 minutes

Creating a frictionless checkout with computer vision technology

Piloting autonomous stores where cameras track items taken from shelves allows customers to walk out without a traditional checkout process.

#5about 2 minutes

Using data science for forecasting and inventory replenishment

Advanced forecasting models that incorporate factors like weather help optimize inventory for fresh produce, reducing waste and improving availability.

#6about 4 minutes

Empowering data scientists to uncover hidden business insights

Giving data scientists the freedom to explore raw data can reveal unexpected correlations and patterns that business experts might not think to ask about.

#7about 4 minutes

Exploring practical blockchain use cases for the retail sector

Beyond cryptocurrencies, blockchain's public ledger technology can be used to create an unforgeable record for supply chain tracking and product provenance.

#8about 4 minutes

The challenge of migrating from a monolithic legacy stack

A significant portion of the existing system landscape is built on monolithic Oracle technology, which is difficult to maintain, scale, and innovate on.

#9about 5 minutes

Building a new cloud-first and API-first technology stack

The new architecture is designed around key principles like resilience, modularity, and elasticity, using components like Google Cloud Platform and Kafka.

#10about 3 minutes

Attracting talent by fostering an internal startup culture

Framing product teams as individual startups with clear economic focus and purpose helps attract and motivate talent to solve meaningful business problems.

#11about 8 minutes

How a CIO stays technically sharp and hands-on

A personal commitment to learning a new programming language each summer by working on practical projects like home automation helps maintain technical skills.

#12about 6 minutes