Lightning Talk: Countercultural: Backstage for Consultants - Lizzie Salita, Booz Allen Hamilton

Don't miss out! Join us at our next Flagship Conference: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in London from April 1 - 4, 2025. Connect with our current graduated, incubating, and sandbox projects as the community gathers to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. Learn more at https://kubecon.io

Lightning Talk: Countercultural: Backstage for Consultants - Lizzie Salita, Booz Allen Hamilton

In 1914, Booz Allen Hamilton pioneered the field of management consulting. Today, we are trusted as the largest provider of AI to the federal government. Our goal is to provide technically differentiated solutions that solve complex client problems at scale, and to do that, we are championing a culture of internal reuse. This includes applying InnerSource principles, through a Backstage developer portal, to improve velocity, quality, and DevEx for a technical workforce of 14,000. InnerSource principles of transparency and self-service can be at odds with corporate hierarchy, program silos due to varied client contracts, and the “need to know” mindset required when handling classified information. To get the best of both worlds, our Backstage team has learned to lean into that tension and deploy change management techniques to build community and rally support for new ways of working. This session will explore corporate barriers to Backstage adoption and lessons learned along the way.