The Seattle Portfolio Review

A head of strategy and a principal engineer debate core portfolio bets late into the evening in a Seattle conference room.

The Seattle Portfolio Review

Listen and choose the right answer

What is happening to the monolith query service?

• It is being upgraded immediately with new servers.
• It is slated to sunset gradually over the next four quarters.
• It is being sold to a competitor in Austin.

Why does Brittany consider the serverless mesh architecture an asymmetric bet?

• Because it guarantees zero cloud costs forever.
• Because the optionality across multi-cloud deployments provides massive strategic upside with limited downside.
• Because Apex Systems recommended it on Slack.

What unexpected news does Brittany receive on Slack?

• Apex Systems is expected to announce a nearly identical identity protocol tomorrow.
• The Seattle office is losing internet connectivity.
• The executive board cancelled the Monday meeting.

What do Ryan and Brittany decide to do at the end of the dialogue?

• Cancel the project and go home to sleep.
• Wait for Apex Systems to launch first.
• Pull an all-nighter to front-run their competitor by releasing their statement tonight.

Listen again and complete the sentences

• Brittany: We've got plenty of ground to cover, Ryan, especially since our ____ revenue is shifting toward adjacent markets faster than expected.
• Ryan: The monolith query service is slated to ____ over the next four quarters.
• Brittany: That makes sense, provided we keep that temporary caching layer as a ____ until the new event bus is fully stable.
• Ryan: Agreed, and that migration serves as a solid ____ against unexpected database lockups.
• Brittany: What about our infrastructure spend? Are we ready to ____ on that serverless mesh architecture?

Sources: photo by Josh Hild on Pexels