Front-end ops and the OODA loop: A decision cycle time strategy for winning in a hostile internet environment

Abstract:

Many organizations are using John Boyd’s OODA loop to describe business strategies driven by continuous innovation cycles and the supporting technical practices. In a hostile environment, whether it is an aerial dogfight or an advertising-supported internet business, survival itself depends on executing the observe-orient-decide-act loop faster than the threat. At Scripps Networks Interactive, we are doing online video syndication and we surely have to contend with a hostile environment. In this talk, I will discuss how we moved our decision cycle time from weeks to hours by instrumenting our embedded video player and using our data operating system to understand what is happening in the field ("front-end ops"). To get the cycle time to minutes or even seconds may require a culture similar to the culture of successful maneuver warfare teams.

Speaker:

Erik Sowa, VP Engineering, ulive