Your TrailblazerDX 2023 Guide in 5 Minutes
Image courtesy of Salesforce
April 21, 2023
This article was written by Prabhjot Gadri, Salesforce Consultant and Delivery Team Lead and Cole Berry, Salesforce Consultant.
The TrailblazerDX 2023 event hosted by Salesforce was an exciting gathering of professionals from different industries, all coming together to explore the most recent innovations in the world of technology. The event was filled with informative sessions, inspiring keynotes, and insightful discussions on various topics on the Salesforce platform. Our Belmates were super excited to learn about all the latest trends on Salesforce; here are some of our key takeaways from TrailblazerDX this year:
Artificial Intelligence
One of the most significant themes of TrailblazerDX was the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). From the opening keynote to the various sessions throughout the event, there was a clear consensus among speakers that AI is set to revolutionize the way we work, live, and interact with the world around us. Some of the key takeaways from the discussions on AI included:
AI is not just a technology, but a mindset. It’s not just about developing better algorithms or building smarter machines. It's about adopting a new mindset that sees data as a strategic asset. Ultimately, it's knowing how to ask the right questions to generate your desired output.
Einstein GPT (Salesforce’s new AI technology) is an interactive virtual assistant that lives in the Salesforce org. Internal members can use Einstein GPT to query their entire database to gain additional insight and/or information. It allows every organization to tap into the power of AI to improve efficiency - and it’s not just for end users! Developers and admins are also able to use this powerful tool.
Einstein GPT is included in multiple Salesforce products. Einstein GPT is in several products, including Service, Sales, Marketing and Developers. Slack will also be getting its own Einstein GPT integration in the near future.
Ethics and accountability are critical. As AI becomes more pervasive, it's essential to ensure that it's used in an ethical and responsible manner. In addition, these models aren't perfect and can still make mistakes. It's important to vet your results to prevent errors from happening.
Composability
Composability (AKA Composable Architecture) refers to the ability to compartmentalize technology into building blocks or "composable units" that can be easily assembled and disassembled as needed. This allows organizations to adopt and pivot technologies on demand, without being tied to a particular vendor or platform. It’s essentially a framework where multiple purpose-built microservices are connected via APIs to create a technology stack that’s designed to best meet the specific needs of the business.
It offers freedom by allowing development teams to pull in nearly any tool — open-source, third-party, or house-built. Plus, these modules, tools, and components can be infinitely constructed, deconstructed, and restructured to fit the next project or newest digital channel. Our learnings around composability consist of the following key takeaways:
Composability enables agility. By breaking down technology into composable units, organizations can respond quickly to changing business needs and customer demands.
Standards are critical. To achieve true composability, there need to be standards around how composable units are defined and how they interact with each other.
Culture is key. Composability requires a culture of collaboration, experimentation, and continuous learning. It's not just a technical solution, but a way of working that requires a shift in mindset and behavior.
Development Operations
Another key theme was the importance of development operations (DevOps) in today's rapidly changing digital landscape. DevOps is a set of practices that bring together development and operations teams to deliver software more quickly, reliably, and securely. Our Belmates highlighted these DevOps takeaways from TrailblazerDX:
Having an efficient DevOps process is vital. It enables you to save time due to faster and more reliable deployments, increase release cadence from automation, and have fewer bugs and/or errors shipped to production thanks to testing. Another important factor is that it allows for better collaboration between developers and admins, partly because of the audit trail showing who changed what, when, and why (version control).
Security is non-negotiable. With the increasing frequency and severity of cyberattacks, security cannot be an afterthought. It needs to be built into every stage of the software development lifecycle, and with DevOps, better security can be achieved by measures like monitoring and backup.
Salesforce will be releasing DevOps Center, a DevOps tool that will help teams release technology faster. It is going to be a free tool which will be a value add for many organizations. Some cool features of DevOps Center include:
Automated Change Tracking: As development teams make changes in their sandboxes, DevOps Center will automatically track the changes, meaning you have total transparency into which items need promoting through environments.
Pipelines: Prior to DevOps Center, Salesforce did not provide a way to define the pipeline of development environments. Now teams can create customized pipelines with their desired method of promoting changes.
Source Control: Teams using DevOps Center can now integrate with GitHub source control, with full visibility of who changed what (and when).
Deploy Changes: Once you’re satisfied with changes, DevOps Center provides an easy way to view your entire development pipeline and bundle, and migrate changes from one stage to another – all using clicks, not code.
Process and Best Practices
Finally, TrailblazerDX also explored some of the best practices and processes on the Salesforce platform. Several sessions we attended focused on organization migrations and road mapping, all of which we found to have great insights. Some of the key takeaways include:
Many companies might’ve been working off of an older Salesforce instance, and may be deciding between different options when implementing Salesforce. These are some steps that can be followed when identifying whether to start from scratch or build on top of an existing system.
1. Assessment - Understand the organization as a whole, not just their Salesforce instance. What are the different technologies they use, and how does their business work? What are the current process’s pain points?
2. Analysis - Analyze all the information you gathered in the assessment phase, and compare and contrast the different options available. Make sure that you understand the risks, business processes, and how different data moves between the various pieces of technology that the client is using.
3. Recommendation - Now that you’ve assessed and analyzed everything, it’s time to propose the way forward for your client. Should they start their Salesforce instance from scratch, build on top of their existing legacy system, or some sort of integration - and why do you think that is?
One essential approach we’ve gathered from the sessions is that Salesforce is now encouraging us to build roadmaps for clients prior to implementation, but how do we build an effective one? The 4-step process to great roadmapping includes the following phases:
1. Collaborate: this is where capability mapping comes in, as well as understanding business processes across your client’s organization.
2. Focus: capability gap analysis will play a big part in this step. It’s crucial to identify if there are any gaps in the current process.
3. Prioritize: revisit your client’s business objectives to identify what proposed phased approach would look like. What’s the critical path? What are the critical dependencies?
4. Deliver: After all your hard work, it’s time to deliver the roadmap to your client! Remember to set clear expectations of what the roadmap looks like prior to actually jumping in on your project.
Our Belmates had an amazing time at TrailblazerDX 2023 this year in San Francisco. We attended lots of informative sessions, and brought major learnings back to our internal team, and now you! It’s clear that the rise of AI, composability, DevOps, and processes were huge topics, and we’re excited to see how these themes will evolve over the next few months. We’ll be eagerly waiting next year’s TrailblazerDX event - in the meantime, if you have any questions, contact us below!
