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Surviving your
StackMAGING
RETIREMENTWeb Unleashed 2019 – September
Kevin Daly - Lead Digital Architect – RBC Ventures
kevin.daly@rbc.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-daly-50247a1b/
@therealkedaly

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Who am I?
Lead Digital Architect for RBC Ventures
• Architecture team is responsible for advising all Ventures on architecture
• Encouraging and influencing best practices for Ventures
Experienced cloud architect with over 20 years experience
I’ve been building software and systems since I was 15

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Why should you listen to me?
• Because I know everything! I’ve been doing this for years!

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You shouldn’t!
Your decisions should be based on
•Cost •Talent / Personnel•Use cases•Data

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You shouldn’t!
NOT!
• Because some guy at a conference said so
• You read a blog on the internet
• LinkedIn or some other tech giant is using it!

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What is RBC
Ventures

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PROPRIETARY
REWARDS
INNOVATIVE
PRODUCT LEADER
PERSONALIZED
ADVICE
DATA AND
TECHNOLOGY
SCALE
STRATEGIC
PARTNERSHIPS
RBC’s digitally-enabled
relationship bank delivers
considerably more value
for clients
DIVERSIFIED
DISTRIBUTION
$
$
$
7
RBC starts with a better bank

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RBC Ventures
goes beyond banking
to deliver unique value
for all Canadians
BUSINESS
MOBILITY
CONSUMER
HOME
$
$
$
DIVERSIFIED
DISTRIBUTION
STRATEGIC
PARTNERSHIPS
PERSONALIZED
ADVICE
DATA AND
TECHNOLOGY
SCALE
PROPRIETARY
REWARDS
INNOVATIVE
PRODUCT LEADER
8
WELLNESS
Now, we’re moving beyond
traditional banking

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Keeping you in the know
on the little things
Making renting hassle free
for renters and landlords
Making moving
hassle free
Connecting consumers to
trusted contractors
Helping Canadian SMEs
sell in China
Helps entrepreneurs start
their business
Digital glovebox and
servicing for car owners
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Home search,
reimagined
BUSINESS
MOBILITY
CONSUMER
HOME
WELLNESS
Tracking taxes for the
self-employed
BOOMERANG
Helping retirees make
connections
Securing sale-by-owner
payments
Snapshot of ventures
Helping Canadians make
better spending decisions
Helping you get
more value
Helping newcomers be
successful in Canada
Finding dream jobs for
recent graduates
Amplifying value for
Canadians
Making living with friends
stress free
Earn cashback at
local merchants
Public transit arrival times
and locations

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Things to
consider
Let’s get started!

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So what is a stack?

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So what is a stack?
A software stack is a group of programs that work
in tandem to produce a result or achieve a common
goal.
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/27268/software-stack

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My view of a stack
Users
•Build/Test
•Develop•Commit
•Runtime Environment• • ••Commit •Build/Test •Deploy ••Runtime
Environmen
t

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Stack as culture
•People
•Technology•Process

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So how do you choose a stack?

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You are not Google!
https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb

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A Cautionary Tale
(The Hype Machine)

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Build powerful reactive, concurrent, and distributed
applications more easily

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akka is cool!

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akka is state of the art!
• Cool languages like Scala
• Functional!
• Reactive!
• Concurrent!
• Distributed!
• We could run it on our Kubernetes cluster
• Build out an AI System maybe
• Kafka Cluster
• maybe even build a Block Chain !

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But…
• Distributed Applications are hard
• Actors are a pretty new pattern
• Clusters have some maintenance and support issues
• Nobody at this company understood how this thing worked and the guy who
wrote it left the company.

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So Why?
• 100’s per second
100 * 60 seconds is = 6,000 per minute
X 60 minutes
360,000 per hour
X 24 hours
8,640,000 documents per day

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8,640,000

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8,640,000

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8,640,000
1,000,000

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8,640,000
1,000,000

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8,640,000
1,000,000
500,000

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8,640,000
1,000,000
500,000

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8,640,000
1,000,000
500,000
10,000

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8,640,000
1,000,000
500,000
10,000
90 % Market penetration

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Process

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Let’s talk product market fit and MVP

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AND BREAK
THINGS!

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Can you do both?

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People

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Ventures Reference Architecture

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Ventures Tech Stack

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Why did we choose this architecture?
•People•Process•Technology
• Hire talent easily
Identify talent and hire from larger talent pool
• Transferable internal skills
Developers can support and switch teams as
needed.
• Simple
Easily understood development stack
• Rapid development cycle
• Able to leverage open source and tech
community
•People
•Technology•Process
• Use leading technology
AWS Cloud
• Be scalable and versatile
PostGres is an extremely versatile database.
• Full Stack Development
• Find support and knowledge
NodeJS has a great community

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Lessons Learned “The good stuff”
•Productivity + Cost •Job Candidate Availability•Consistency•Agility •Flexibility

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Lessons Learned “Gotchas”
WTF Is a Full Stack Developer?
What Happens with a partial product market fit?
Technical Debt?
Node Stack doesn’t fit every use case?

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Takeaways
Understand your scale from a most pessimistic to a most
optimistic view
Don’t over engineer!
Know the size of your market
Avoid the hype machine!

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And the most Important Takeaway
•People
•Technology•Process

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Well Almost… Final Thought
Dogmatically pursing a stack as a single
source of truth is a recipe for disaster!

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Kevin Daly
Lead Digital Architect for RBC Ventures
Connect with me
Email - kevin.daly@rbc.com
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-daly-50247a1b/
@therealkedaly